But we have already found a number of doubts, which seem to attack not
so much the correctness of the somatic theory of stimulation as its
adequacy.
However certain all the representatives of this theory may have felt
about the actual facts on which it is based—especially in case of the
accidental and external nerve stimuli, which may be recognised in the
content of the dream without any trouble—nevertheless none of them has
been able to avoid the admission that the abundant ideal content of
dreams does not admit of explanation by external nerve-stimuli alone.
Miss Mary Whiton Calkins[12] has tested her own dreams and those of
another person for a period of six weeks with this idea in mind, and has
found only from 13·2 per cent. to 6·7 per cent. in which the element of
external sensory perception was demonstrable; only two cases in the
collection could be referred to organic sensations. Statistics here
confirm what a hasty glance at our own experience might have led us to
suspect.
The decision has been made repeatedly to distinguish the “dream of nerve
stimulus” from the other forms of the dream as a well-established
sub-species. Spitta[64] divided dreams into dreams of nerve stimulus and
association dreams. But the solution clearly remained unsatisfactory as
long as the link between the somatic sources of dreams and their ideal
content could not be demonstrated.
Besides the first objection, of the inadequate frequency of external
exciting sources, there arises as a second objection the inadequate
explanation of dreams offered by the introduction of this sort of dream
sources. The representatives of the theory accordingly must explain two
things, in the first place, why the external stimulus in the dream is
never recognised according to its real nature, but is regularly mistaken
for something else (_cf._ the alarm-clock dreams, p. 22), and secondly,
why the reaction of the receiving mind to this misrecognised stimulus
should result so indeterminately and changefully. As an answer to these
questions, we have heard from Strümpell[66] that the mind, as a result
of its being turned away from the outer world during sleep, is not
capable of giving correct interpretation to the objective sensory
stimulus, but is forced to form illusions on the basis of the indefinite
incitements from many directions. As expressed in his own words (p.
108):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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