The inadequacy of the theory of somatic dream stimuli may also be
demonstrated in another manner. Observations show that I am not urged to
dream by external stimulations, even if these stimulations appear in the
dream as soon as, and in case that, I dream. In response to the tactile
or pressure stimulus which I get while sleeping, various reactions are
at my disposal. I can overlook it and discover only upon awakening that
my leg has been uncovered or my arm under pressure; pathology shows the
most numerous examples where powerfully acting sensory and motor stimuli
of different sorts remain without effect during sleep. I can perceive a
sensation during sleep through and through sleep, as it were, which
happens as a rule with painful stimuli, but without weaving the pain
into the texture of the dream; thirdly, I can awaken on account of the
stimulus in order to obviate it. Only as a fourth possible reaction, I
may be impelled to dream by a nerve stimulus; but the other
possibilities are realised at least as often as that of dream formation.
This could not be the case if the _motive for dreaming did not lie
outside of the somatic sources of dreams_.
Taking proper account of the defect in the explanation of dreams by
somatic stimuli which has just been shown, other authors—Scherner,[58]
who was joined by the philosopher Volkelt[72]—have tried to determine
more exactly the psychic activities which cause the variegated dream
images to arise from the somatic stimuli, and have thus transferred the
essential nature of dreams back to the province of the mind, and to that
of psychic activity. Scherner not only gave a poetically appreciative,
glowing and vivid description of the psychic peculiarities which develop
in the course of dream formation; he also thought he had guessed the
principle according to which the mind proceeds with the stimuli that are
at its disposal. The dream activity, according to Scherner—after
phantasy has been freed from the shackles imposed upon it during the
day, and has been given free rein—strives to represent symbolically the
nature of the organ from which the stimulus proceeds. Thus we have a
kind of dream-book as a guide for the interpretation of dreams, by means
of which bodily sensations, the conditions of the organs and of the
stimuli may be inferred from dream images. “Thus the image of a cat
expresses an angry discontented mood, the image of a light-coloured bit
of smooth pastry the nudity of the body. The human body as a whole is
pictured as a house by the phantasy of the dream, and each individual
organ of the body as a part of the house. In ‘toothache-dreams’ a high
vaulted vestibule corresponds to the mouth and a stair to the descent of
the gullet to the alimentary canal; in the ‘headache-dream’ the ceiling
of a room which is covered with disgusting reptile-like spiders is
chosen to denote the upper part of the head” (Volkelt, p. 39). “Several
different symbols are used by the dream for the same organ, thus the
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