Experience teaches us that the road leading from the foreconscious to consciousness is closed to the dream thoughts during the day by the resistance of the censor. At night the dream thoughts gain admission to consciousness, but the question arises, in what way and because of what change. If this admission was rendered possible to the dream thoughts through the fact that the resistance watching on the boundary between the unconscious and foreconscious sinks at night, we should then get dreams in the material of our presentations which did not show the hallucinatory character which just now interests us.
The sinking of the censor between the two systems, Unc. and Forec., can explain to us only such dreams as “Autodidasker,” but not dreams like the one of the burning child, which we have taken as a problem at the outset in these present investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no other way than by saying that the excitement takes a retrogressive course. It takes its station, not at the motor end of the apparatus, but at the sensible end, and finally reaches the system of the perceptions. If we call the direction towards which the psychic process continues from the unconscious into the waking state the progressive, we may then speak of the dream as having a regressive character.
This regression is surely one of the most important peculiarities of the dream process; but we must not forget that it does not belong to the dream alone. The intentional recollection and other processes of our normal thinking also require a retrogression in the psychic apparatus from any complex presentation act to the raw material of the memory traces lying at its basis. But during the waking state this turning backward does not reach beyond the memory pictures; it is unable to produce the hallucinatory vividness of the perception pictures. Why is this different in the dream? When we spoke of the condensation work of the dream we could not avoid the assumption that the intensities adhering to the presentations are fully transferred from one to another through the dream-work. It is probably this modification of the former psychic process which makes possible the occupation of the system of P to its full sensual vividness in the opposite direction from thought.
I hope that we are far from deluding ourselves about the importance of this present discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to an inexplicable phenomenon. We call it regression if the presentation in the dream is changed back to the perceptible image from which it once originated. But even this step demands justification. Why this naming, if it does not teach us anything new? I believe, however, that the name “Regression” will serve us to the extent of connecting a fact familiar to us with a scheme of the psychic apparatus which is supplied with a direction. At this point, for the first time, it is worth the trouble to construct such a scheme. For, with the help of this scheme, any other peculiarity of the dream formation will become clear to us without further reflection. If we look upon the dream as a process of regression in the assumed psychic apparatus, we can readily understand the empirically proven fact that all mental relation of the dream thoughts either is lost in the dream-work or can come to expression only with difficulty. According to our scheme, these mental relations are contained not in the first Mem-systems, but in those lying further to the front, and in the regression they must forfeit their expression in favour of the perception pictures. The structure of the dream thoughts is in the regression broken up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible during the day? Let us here be content with assumption. There must evidently be some alterations in the charge of energy belonging to the single systems causing the latter to become accessible or inaccessible to the discharge of the excitement; but in any such apparatus the same effect upon the course of excitement might be brought about through more than one form of such changes. This naturally reminds us of the state of sleep and of the many changes of energy this state produces at the sensible end of the apparatus. During the day there is a continuous coursing stream from the Ψ-system of the P toward the motility; this current ceases at night, and no longer hinders a streaming of the current of excitement in the opposite direction. This would appear to be that “seclusion from the outer world” which according to the theory of some authors is supposed to explain the psychological character of the dream (vide p. 30). In the explanation of the regression of the dream we shall, however, have to consider those other regressions which originate during morbid waking states. In these other forms the explanation just given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression takes place in spite of the uninterrupted sensible current in a progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of mentally normal persons, I can explain as actually corresponding to regressions, being in fact thoughts transformed into images; and only such thoughts are subjected to this transformation as are in intimate connection with suppressed or unconscious recollections. As an example I shall cite one of my youngest hysterical patients—a boy, twelve years old, who was prevented from falling asleep by “green faces with red eyes,” which terrified him. The source of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious, memory of a boy whom he had often seen during four years, and who offered him a deterring example of many childish bad habits, including onanism, which now formed the subject of his own reproach. His mother had noticed at the time that the complexion of the ill-bred boy was greenish and that he had red (i.e. red bordered) eyes. Hence the terrible vision which constantly served to remind him of his mother’s warning that such boys become demented, that they are unable to make progress at school, and are doomed to an early death. A part of this prediction came true in the case of the little patient; he could not successfully pursue his high school studies, and, as appeared on examination of his involuntary fancies, he stood in great dread of the remainder of the prophecy. However, after a brief period of successful treatment, his sleep was restored, he lost his fears, and finished his scholastic year with an excellent record.
I may also add here the interpretation of a vision related to me by an hysteric forty years of age, as having occurred in her normal life. On opening her eyes one morning she beheld in the room her brother, whom she knew to be confined in an insane asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the child should be frightened on seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she pulled the sheet over the little one; this done, the phantom disappeared. This vision is the re-casting of one of her infantile reminiscences which, although conscious, is most intimately connected with all the unconscious material in her mind. Her nursemaid told her that her mother, who had died young (the patient was then only a year and a half old), had suffered from epileptic or hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the patient’s uncle), who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over his head. The vision contains the same elements as the reminiscence, viz. the appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and its effect. These elements, however, are ranged in different relations, and are transferred to other persons. The obvious motive of the vision, which replaces the idea, is her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking resemblance to his uncle, should share the latter’s fate. Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to sleep, and may therefore be unsuitable as proof for my assertion. I may therefore refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory paranoia,[[FP]] and to the results of my hitherto unpublished studies on the psychology of the psychoneuroses in order to emphasize the fact that in these cases of regressive thought transformation one must not overlook the influence of a suppressed or unconscious reminiscence, this being in most cases of an infantile character. This recollection, so to speak, draws into the regression the thought with which it is connected, which is prevented from expression by the censor—that is, into that form of representation in which the recollection itself exists psychically. I may here mention as a result of my studies in hysteria that if we succeed in restoring infantile scenes to consciousness (whether recollections or fancies) they are seen as hallucinations, and are divested of this character only after reproduction. It is also known that the earliest infantile memories retain the character of perceptible vividness until late in life, even in persons who are otherwise not visual in memory.
If, now, we keep in mind what part is played in the dream thoughts by the infantile reminiscences or the phantasies based upon them, how often fragments of these reminiscences emerge in the dream content, and how often they even give origin to dream wishes, we cannot deny the probability that in the dream, too, the transformation of thoughts into visual images may be the result of the attraction exerted by the visually represented reminiscences, striving for reanimation, upon the thoughts severed from consciousness and struggling for expression. Following this conception, we may further describe the dream as a modified substitute for the infantile scene produced by transference to recent material. The infantile cannot enforce its renewal, and must therefore be satisfied to return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their phantastic repetitions), as in a manner furnishing the pattern for the dream content, renders superfluous the assumption made by Scherner and his pupils, of an inner source of excitement. Scherner assumes a state of “visual excitation” of internal excitement in the organ of sight when the dreams manifest a particular vividness or a special abundance of visual elements. We need not object to this assumption, but may be satisfied with establishing such state of excitation for the psychic perceptive system of the organs of vision only; we shall, however, assert that this state of excitation is formed through the memory, and is merely a refreshing of the former actual visual excitation. I cannot, from my own experience, give a good example showing such an influence of infantile reminiscence; my own dreams are surely less rich in perceptible elements than I must fancy those of others; but in my most beautiful and most vivid dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory distinctness of the dream contents to the sensuous nature of recently received impressions. On page 368 I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue colour of the water, the brown colour of the smoke issuing from the ship’s funnels, and the sombre brown and red of the buildings which I had seen made a profound and lasting impression on my mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed to visual excitation. But what has brought my visual organ into this excitable state? It was a recent impression uniting itself with a series of former ones. The colours I beheld were those of the toy blocks with which my children erected a grand structure for my admiration on the day preceding the dream. The same sombre red colour covered the large blocks and the same blue and brown the small ones. Connected with these were the colour impression of my last journey in Italy, the charming blue of the Isonzo and the Lagoon, the brown hue of the Alpine region. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition of those seen in the memory.