It is the more remarkable, as Strümpell observes, that, in spite of all
these reasons for forgetting the dream, so many dreams are retained in
memory. The continued efforts of the authors to formulate laws for the
remembering of dreams amounts to an admission that here too there is
something puzzling and unsolved. Certain peculiarities relating to the
memory of dreams have been particularly noticed of late, _e.g._, that a
dream which is considered forgotten in the morning may be recalled in
the course of the day through a perception which accidentally touches
the forgotten content of the dream (Radestock,[54] Tissié[68]). The
entire memory of the dream is open to an objection calculated to
depreciate its value very markedly in critical eyes. One may doubt
whether our memory, which omits so much from the dream, does not falsify
what it retained.
Such doubts relating to the exactness of the reproduction of the dream
are expressed by Strümpell when he says: “It therefore easily happens
that the active consciousness involuntarily inserts much in recollection
of the dream; one imagines one has dreamt all sorts of things which the
actual dream did not contain.”
Jessen[36] (p. 547) expresses himself very decidedly: “Moreover we must
not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded, that in the
investigation and interpretation of orderly and logical dreams we almost
always play with the truth when we recall a dream to memory.
Unconsciously and unwittingly we fill up the gaps and supplement the
dream pictures. Rarely, and perhaps never, has a connected dream been as
connected as it appears to us in memory. Even the most truth-loving
person can hardly relate a dream without exaggerating and embellishing
it. The tendency of the human mind to conceive everything in connection
is so great that it unwittingly supplies the deficiencies of connection
if the dream is recalled somewhat disconnectedly.”
The observations of V. Eggers,[20] though surely independently
conceived, sound almost like a translation of Jessen’s words: “...
L’observation des rêves a ses difficultés spéciales et le seul moyen
d’éviter toute erreur en pareille matière est de confier au papier sans
le moindre retard ce que l’on vient d’éprouver et de remarquer; sinon,
l’oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l’oubli total est sans gravité;
mais l’oubli partiel est perfide; car si l’on se met ensuite à raconter
ce que l’on n’a pas oublié, on est exposé à compléter par imagination
les fragments incohérents et disjoints fourni par la mémoire ...; on
devient artiste à son insu, et le récit, périodiquement répété s’impose
à la créance de son auteur, qui, de bonne foi, le présente comme un fait
authentique, dûment établi selon les bonnes méthodes....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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