Concerning the changes to which the dream life is subjected in chronic
psychotic persons, very few investigations have so far been made. On the
other hand, timely attention has been called to the inner relationship
between the dream and mental disturbance, which shows itself in an
extensive agreement of the manifestations occurring to both. According
to Maury,[47] Cubanis, in his _Rapports du physique et du moral_, first
called attention to this; following him came Lelut, J. Moreau, and more
particularly the philosopher Maine de Biran. To be sure, the comparison
is still older. Radestock[54] begins the chapter dealing with this
comparison, by giving a collection of expressions showing the analogy
between the dream and insanity. Kant somewhere says: “The lunatic is a
dreamer in the waking state.” According to Krauss “Insanity is a dream
with the senses awake.” Schopenhauer terms the dream a short insanity,
and insanity a long dream. Hagen describes the delirium as dream life
which has not been caused by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in the
_Physiological Psychology_, declares: “As a matter of fact we may in the
dream ourselves live through almost all symptoms which we meet in the
insane asylums.”
The specific agreements, on the basis of which such an identification
commends itself to the understanding, are enumerated by Spitta.[64] And
indeed, very similarly, by Maury in the following grouping: “(1)
Suspension or at least retardation, of self-consciousness, consequent
ignorance of the condition as such, and hence incapability of
astonishment and lack of moral consciousness. (2) Modified perception of
the sensory organs; that is, perception is diminished in the dream and
generally enhanced in insanity. (3) Combination of ideas with each other
exclusively in accordance with the laws of association and of
reproduction, hence automatic formation of groups and for this reason
disproportion in the relations between ideas (exaggerations, phantasms).
And as a result of all this: (4) Changing or transformation of the
personality and at times of the peculiarities of character
(perversities).”
Radestock gives some additional features or analogies in the material:
“Most hallucinations and illusions are found in the sphere of the senses
of sight and hearing and general sensation. As in the dream, the
smallest number of elements is supplied by the senses of smell and
taste. The fever patient, like the dreamer, is assaulted by
reminiscences from the remote past; what the waking and healthy man
seems to have forgotten is recollected in sleep and in disease.” The
analogy between the dream and the psychosis receives its full value only
when, like a family resemblance, it is extended to the finer mimicry and
to the individual peculiarities of facial expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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