But what is the significance of the appearance of undesirable
presentations in the dream? What inferences may be drawn for the
psychology of the waking and dreaming mind from these nocturnal
manifestations of contrasting ethical impulses? We may here note a new
diversity of opinion, and once more a different grouping of the authors.
The stream of thought followed by Hildebrandt, and by others who
represent his fundamental view, cannot be continued in any other way
than by ascribing to the immoral impulses a certain force even in the
waking state, which, to be sure, is inhibited from advancing to action,
and asserting that something falls off during sleep, which, having the
effect of an inhibition, has kept us from noticing the existence of such
an impulse. The dream thus shows the real, if not the entire nature of
man, and is a means of making the hidden psychic life accessible to our
understanding. It is only on such assumption that Hildebrandt can
attribute to the dream the rôle of monitor who calls our attention to
the moral ravages in the soul, just as in the opinion of physicians it
can announce a hitherto unobserved physical ailment. Spitta,[64] too,
cannot be guided by any other conception when he refers to the stream of
excitement which, _e.g._, flows in upon the psyche during puberty, and
consoles the dreamer by saying that he has done everything in his power
when he has led a strictly virtuous life during his waking state, when
he has made an effort to suppress the sinful thoughts as often as they
arise, and has kept them from maturing and becoming actions. According
to this conception, we might designate the “undesirable” presentations
as those that are “suppressed” during the day, and must recognise in
their appearance a real psychic phenomenon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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