dreams, but his lengthy study on the interpretation of dreams deals exclusively with the dreams of the neurotic.[1] Stekel believes, moreover, that from the structure of the dream life conclusions may be drawn not only as to the life and character of the dreamer, but also as to his neurosis, the hysterical person dreaming differently from the obsessed person, and so on. If that is the case we are certainly justified in doubting whether conclusions drawn from the study of the dreams of neurotic people can be safely held to represent the normal dream-life, even though it may be true that there is no definite frontier between them.[2] Whatever may be the case among the neurotic, in ordinary normal sleep the images that drift across the field of consciousness, though they have a logic of their own, seem in a large proportion of cases to be quite explicable without resort to the theory that they stand in vital but concealed relationship to our most intimate self.
Even in waking life, and at normal moments which are not those of revery, it seems possible to trace the appearance in the field of consciousness of images which are evoked neither by any mental or physical circumstance of the moment, or any hidden desire, images that are as disconnected from the immediate claims of desire and even of association as those of dreams seem so largely to be. It sometimes occurs to me—as doubtless it occurs to other people—that at some moment when my thoughts are normally occupied with the work immediately before me, then suddenly appears on the surface of consciousness a totally unrelated picture. A scene arises, vague but usually recognizable, of some city or landscape—Australian, Russian, Spanish, it matters not what—seen casually long years ago, and possibly never thought of since, and possessing no kind of known association either with the matter in hand or with my personal life generally. It comes to the surface of consciousness as softly, as unexpectedly, as disconnectedly, as a minute bubble might arise and break on the surface of an actual stream from ancient organic material silently disintegrating in the depths beneath.[3]
- ↑ The special characteristics of dreaming in the hysterical were studied, before Freud turned his attention to the question, by Sante de Sanctis, "I Sogni e il Sonno nell' Isterismo," 1896.
- ↑ See also Havelock Ellis, "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," Vol. I., 3d ed., 1910, "Auto-erotism."
- ↑ Gissing, the novelist, an acute observer of psychic states, in the most personal of his books, "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft," has described this phenomenon: "Every one, I suppose, is subject to a trick of mind which often puzzles me. I am reading or thinking, and at a moment, without any association or suggestion that I can discover, there rises before me the vision of a place I know. Impossible to explain why that particular spot should show itself to my mind's eye; the cerebral impulse is so subtle that no search may trace its origin." Gissing proceeds to say that a thought, a phrase, an odor, a touch, a posture of the body, may possibly have furnished the link of association, but he knows no evidence for this theory.
