Similarly Spitta,[64] who seems to think that it is only in our attempt
to reproduce the dream that we put in order the loosely associated dream
elements: “To make connection out of disconnection, that is, to add the
process of logical connection which is absent in the dream.”
As we do not at present possess any other objective control for the
reliability of our memory, and as indeed such a control is impossible in
examining the dream which is our own experience, and for which our
memory is the only source, it is a question what value we may attach to
our recollections of dreams.
(_e_) _The Psychological Peculiarities of Dreams._—In the scientific
investigation of the dream we start with the assumption that the dream
is an occurrence of our own psychic activity; nevertheless the finished
dream appears to us as something strange, the authorship of which we are
so little forced to recognise that we can just as easily say “a dream
appeared to me,” as “I have dreamt.” Whence this “psychic strangeness”
of the dream? According to our discussion of the sources of dreams we
may suppose that it does not depend on the material reaching the dream
content; because this is for the most part common to the dream life and
waking life. One may ask whether in the dream it is not changes in the
psychic processes which call forth this impression, and may so put to
test a psychological characteristic of the dream.
No one has more strongly emphasized the essential difference between
dream and waking life, and utilised this difference for more
far-reaching conclusions, than G. Th. Fechner[25] in some observations
in his _Elements of Psychophysic_ (p. 520, part 11). He believes that
“neither the simple depression of conscious psychic life under the main
threshold,” nor the distraction of attention from the influences of the
outer world, suffices to explain the peculiarities of the dream life as
compared with the waking life. He rather believes that the scene of
dreams is laid elsewhere than in the waking presentation life. “If the
scene of the psychophysical activity were the same during the sleeping
and the waking states, the dream, in my opinion, could only be a
continuation of the waking ideation maintaining itself at a lower degree
of intensity, and must moreover share with the latter its material and
form. But the state of affairs is quite different.”
What Fechner really meant has never been made clear, nor has anybody
else, to my knowledge, followed further the road, the clue to which he
indicated in this remark. An anatomical interpretation in the sense of
physiological brain localisations, or even in reference to histological
sections of the cerebral cortex, will surely have to be excluded. The
thought may, however, prove ingenious and fruitful if it can be referred
to a psychic apparatus which is constructed out of many instances placed
one behind another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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