“This state [of numbness], however, gradually approaches its end in the
early morning hours. The accumulated material of fatigue in the albumen
of the brain gradually becomes less. It is gradually decomposed or
carried away by the constantly flowing circulation. Here and there some
masses of cells can be distinguished as awake, while all around
everything still remains in a state of torpidity. _The isolated work of
the individual groups_ now appears before our clouded consciousness,
which lacks the control of other parts of the brain governing the
associations. Hence the pictures created, which mostly correspond to the
objective impressions of the recent past, fit with each other in a wild
and irregular manner. The number of the brain cells set free becomes
constantly greater, the irrationality of the dream constantly less.”
The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial waking state, or
traces of its influence, can surely be found among all modern
physiologists and philosophers. It is most completely represented by
Maury.[48] It often seems as if this author represented to himself the
state of being awake or asleep in anatomical regions; at any rate it
appears to him that an anatomical province is connected with a definite
psychic function. I may here merely mention that if the theory of
partial waking could be confirmed, there would remain much to be
accomplished in its elaboration.
Naturally a function of the dream cannot be found in this conception of
the dream life. On the contrary, the criticism of the status and
importance of the dream is consistently uttered in this statement of
Binz (p. 357): “All the facts, as we see, urge us to characterise the
dream as a physical process in all cases useless, in many cases even
morbid.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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