§ 24. Cause of the Rapid Forgetting of Dream-Images

§ 24. Cause of the Rapid Forgetting of Dream-Images.

We make the everyday experience that all ordinary dream-formations, which called forth no affectation of the soul, are already forgotten upon awakening; those, however, which were accompanied by excitations of feeling, although they still remained present upon awakening, nevertheless fell, in the course of the day or of the day following, to the same lot, unless we deliberately transposed and fastened them into the waking memory upon awakening. So constant a forgetfulness cannot, however, be accidental, and the question arises: on what does this so rapid volatilization rest? Its explanation lies in what follows.

All images of dream-perception appear only in the form of the original sense-impression, that is, in the inseparability of its individual moments, and hence in the fused-together concrete totality; the expression of perception is accordingly immediately a unity; whatever is distinguishable within it presents itself as such not for itself, but as fused with the whole and serving only the whole for its representation. Accordingly the perceptual images of the dream are, in and of themselves, of a very smooth nature; they lack all pointed emergence of the individual moment, and as such are also far more quickly escapable to perception than images sharply set off according to their distinct moments. The same smoothness before reception is shared, too, by images poured together into dream-thought-complexes, because the plastic dream-thought does not, like the thought of the understanding in waking life, have as its basis a sharply distinguished momentariness, but rather the general co-being of the images in an undivided state, and hence in a fused expression. — If, then, the dream-formations offer to the conscious grasp only, as a whole, expressive and seizable, but individually very little graspable, masses of perception, there is added to this the further fact that the grasping power itself, being bare of ego-spontaneity and capable only of passive reception of what vibrates in upon it, cannot send out toward them any sharply strained ray of attention for their becoming-conscious; there is thus lacking, too, on the side of the conscious principle, that force which, by its strained nature, would direct itself toward the pointed particularity within the total expression and thereby link the image, together with its total expression, at the same time to consciousness at many individual points, and hence more sharply and firmly; still much less does the conscious receptivity in the dream possess that more deeply incisive attention of the understanding which, by virtue of categorial points of view, would bring forward the particularization within the total expression according to its depths, draw it toward consciousness, and fasten it there. As smoothly, therefore, and as self-turned as the images vibrate in upon perception, so smoothly do they yield impressions that spring away again therein; and since there comes to meet them just as little an inner sharpness of attention that might effect a closer amalgamation, the impression of the dream is by nature also not sustainable in perception, and is, in essence, no longer sustainable than for the moment of its occurring, and only so long as no new, rushing-in impression claims for itself the same right of momentary persistence. But now the images chase one another tirelessly through the dream-sphere, and ever new changes storm in upon perception; scarcely, therefore, has the one struck the conscious receptivity, when the other already overlays it with its own impression, and a hundred others overlay this one and those following; the images, then, even were they possessed of a sharper emergence, would have no time for distinct and lasting impressions, and, in turn, perception itself, were it of a more emergent attentiveness, would have no time for distinct and lasting imprinting; and this all the less, since the moving principle of the dream, the imagination, supports the repelling of the images from perception, since it lies in its eternally creative essence ever to drive forth the new out of itself, and all the less to hold it fast and retain it. — And only those dream-images that stir the soul through with affects awaken a corresponding counter-tension of the conscious receptivity toward themselves, and hence are then, too, gazed upon and regarded with more attention, leave behind them more forceful impressions, and overcome the awakening, that is, the shocks of the actual world upon consciousness that set in with it. But even then, when the dream-impressions awakened a strained interest or a shock, they are sharpened and brought out only upon the surface and at the accidental point of contact with the emotional sensation; but the summary essence of the fabric of dream-thought remains a plastic one, cohering only in very undistinguished moments of fusion, wherefore the common coherence itself is a very delicate, weak, and loose one, and defenselessly exposed to a sharp counter-effect. — If, then, the spontaneous thinking of waking life sets in, and with it the sharp radiance of the understanding spreading out in every direction, the sharp clarity of consciousness thereby called forth already suffices for the decomposition of the dream-formations, just as, on the other hand, the conscious receptivity, now accustomed only to sharply incisive impressions, becomes insensible and blind to the blunt after-images of the dream, and thus for its part likewise contributes to their volatilization; but even dreams deliberately transferred and fastened into the waking memory very easily lose their stimulative force for the memory, since they possess, for the most part, a content unusable for waking sensing and thinking, being brought forth without and against the motives of the latter, and hence can come into little or no contact or association with the formations of waking thought, and thus receive no refreshment; but, confined to their own delicate intensity, they must quickly fade.