Now, the analogy between the higher emotional and the bodily states is a
very close one. A sensation of obstruction in breathing has its exact
analogue in a state of mental embarrassment, a sensation of itching its
counterpart in mental impatience, and so on. And since these emotional
experiences are deeper and fuller than the sensations, the tendency to
exaggerate the nature and causes of these last would naturally lead to
an interpretation of them by help of these experiences. In addition to
this, the predominance of visual imagery in sleep would aid this
transformation of a bodily sensation into an emotional experience, since
visual perceptions have, as their accompaniments of pleasure and pain,
not sensations, but emotions.[91]
Since in this vague interpretation of bodily sensation the actual
impression is obscured, and not taken up as an integral part into the
percept, it is evident that we cannot, strictly speaking, call the
process an imitation of an act of perception, that is to say, an
illusion. And since, moreover, the visual image by which the sensation
is thus displaced appears as a present object, it would, of course, be
allowable to speak of this as an hallucination. This substitution of a
more or less analogous visual image for that appropriate to the
sensation forms, indeed, a transition from dream-illusion, properly so
called, to dream-hallucination.
_Dream-Hallucinations._
On the physical side, these hallucinations answer to cerebral
excitations which are central or automatic, not depending on movements
transmitted from the periphery of the nervous system. Of these
stimulations some appear to be direct, and due to unknown influences
exerted by the state of nutrition of the cerebral elements, or the
action of the contents of the blood-vessels on these elements.
_Effects of Direct Central Stimulation._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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