§ 28. Second Principal Group: The Association-Dreams

§ 28. Second Principal Group: The Association-Dreams.

They receive their name from the designation customarily used for connections among representations, that of so-called association of ideas; and since this association is effected by the images themselves, just as the associating images themselves supply the material to be linked, the name “association-dream” will rightly designate the full essence of the matter. While the associations proceed within the dream, the dream-ego beholds the really appearing objects thereby strung to one another, joins itself to them as a visible participant or merely as an ideal spectator, and the association-dream is formed out of the living reciprocal relation of the ego with the objects beheld. But if the associations are of a more glaring, more interesting, more wondrous kind, and so forth, the ego does not content itself with the idle role of spectator, but is drawn in by the imagination as a co-actor, for the strengthening and adornment of the association-formations. The association-dreams in themselves often form pure, independent phenomena, wherein the essence of the connections proceeding from the images themselves appears as the a priori effective and governing principle; but since the associative activities of the images are subordinated to the imagination as mediating levers of its plastic forward movement, and are thus moved at the same time in the service of the imagination, it is natural that their connective forms often relinquish their independence and appear, in every kind of dream-formation, in a subordinate role. But where they occur freely on their own, they often form very long-drawn-out dream-chains, for the most part strung together atomistically, and trail like immense sweeping trains through the show-theaters of the dream; they thus bring in very rich material for dream-perception, and since this, for want of the power and sharpness of the understanding, grants the widest scope to chance, it brings in very manifold and richly varied material. Of dream-formations of this kind we are accustomed to say that they lead us from the hundredth into the thousandth. For the grasping of the matter, a consideration of images linked pairwise already suffices, since the further development of such dreams merely repeats, likewise, the pairwise binding, and thus renews the same essence through altered images. — If, now, all dream-formations resting on the associative activity of images are united into the genus of association-dreams in general, the various modes of association ground the distinct species or subdivisions of this genus, and we shall now consider the several species severally, so far as the rich circle of dream-facts actually contains them and requires them to be taken into account.

1. Order (Species): The Association-Dreams of Accidental Kind.

Their law is: representation-objects that resemble one another at accidental moments link themselves into dream-chains and form, by means of the dream-ego appearing as co-active in beholding or acting, developed connective forms. They fall into two subdivisions, regular and irregular, the latter, in turn, into varieties.