Strümpell[66] (p. 40): “The subject becomes more interesting when we
remember how the dream sometimes brings forth, as it were, from among
the deepest and heaviest strata which later years have piled upon the
earliest childhood experiences, the pictures of certain places, things,
and persons, quite uninjured and with their original freshness. This is
not limited merely to such impressions as have gained vivid
consciousness during their origin or have become impressed with strong
psychic validity, and then later return in the dream as actual
reminiscences, causing pleasure to the awakened consciousness. On the
contrary, the depths of the dream memory comprise also such pictures of
persons, things, places, and early experiences as either possessed but
little consciousness and no psychic value at all, or have long ago lost
both, and therefore appear totally strange and unknown both in the dream
and in the waking state, until their former origin is revealed.”
Volkelt[72] (p. 119): “It is essentially noteworthy how easily infantile
and youthful reminiscences enter into the dream. What we have long
ceased to think about, what has long since lost for us all importance,
is constantly recalled by the dream.”
The sway of the dream over the infantile material, which, as is well
known, mostly occupies the gaps in the conscious memory, causes the
origin of interesting hypermnestic dreams, a few of which I shall here
report.
Maury[48] relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from his native
city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where his father
superintended the construction of a bridge. On a certain night a dream
transported him to Trilport, and he was again playing in the city
streets. A man approached him wearing some sort of uniform. Maury asked
him his name, and he introduced himself, saying that his name was C——,
and that he was a bridge guard. On waking, Maury, who still doubted the
reality of the reminiscence, asked his old servant, who had been with
him in his childhood, whether she remembered a man of this name.
“Certainly,” was the answer, “he used to be watchman on the bridge which
your father was building at that time.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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