§ 30. Fourth Principal Group: The Nerve-Stimulus Dreams

§ 30. Fourth Principal Group: The Nerve-Stimulus Dreams.

They form a richly constituted lineage, appearing with extraordinary variability, of peculiar beauty, and I do not hesitate to designate them as a high point of the dream-life. It is true that they do not spring, like the reflexive dreams and others, from the higher psychic life, but from that of the bodily nerves during sleep; yet there unites itself in their representation, whose original motive is determined by the nerve-stimulus, the higher rational intuition of the dream, which casts its immediate glances into the organic conditions of the body, with the fullest and clearest activity of the symbolic imagination. They show us the greatness of the dream-life according to its preeminent power to see through all the hidden inner spheres of the body and to make them tangible through representation, whereas in waking life the human mind does not possess this capacity; and the dream, with its immediate insight into the living, far surpasses the penetrating curiosity of the anatomist, who is able to attain insight into the interior only upon the dead and through the violent destruction of the organic structures. It cannot be denied that here, during sleep, in every person without distinction, a kind of somnambulistic insight into his interior takes place; and the life of the dream, in that it is that of subjectivity during sleep, betrays from the outset its kinship with the clairvoyant sleep of somnambulism. But if the penetrating power of these dreams and their beautiful imaginative representation are of preeminent interest to the psychologist, then the clarification, coming thereby to light, of the living bodily organization and its hidden conditions claims the attention of the physiologist in equal degree. Indeed, if practicing physicians wish to devote themselves to the exact study of this dream-group, they will, in most of those cases where there is no certainty as to the seat of the inner ailment, arrive at it through the analysis of the patient's dreams; for every nerve-stimulus, however delicate, that is healthy, within the interior of the body during sleep, let alone the sharp morbid one, excites its corresponding dream-formation and mirrors in it its seat in the body and the condition of the affected members and the determinate character of their affection; moreover the sick, given the poor quality of their sleep in their suffering condition, are preeminently swarmed about by dreams and capable of a clear grasp of them. But as regards the knowledge of tracing these dreams back to their organic causes and the practical penetration of their symbolism, the special analysis of the following abundantly collected and precisely observed dream-facts will present this to such an extent that even the physician may obtain from it a thorough beginning for his specific purposes. And, as though in jest, the nerve-stimulus dreams appear finally to reach over even into the domain of the zoologist, in that various insects, which during sleep trouble the bodily life with irritations, owe to them their origin and specific character.

Since the nerve-stimulus is the exciting principle of this dream-group, its varieties are likewise divided according to the different nerve-stimuli; these, however, are essentially of four kinds: mere tension-stimuli, which belong to healthy life, or morbid, that is, pain-stimuli, further cramp-stimuli, and finally crisis-stimuli, which move from sickness toward health. According to these, the four kinds are named. Several of them contain a great multitude of constantly recurring specific stimuli, so that the specific dream-formations shaped accordingly form just as numerous subspecies. In order to show how beautifully and clearly the symbolism of the imagination mirrors, or translates into intuitable form, the seat and organs of the stimulus in question, we must allow the special analysis to enter into this dream-group in its entirety. The cumbersome name “nerve-stimulus dream” we transform into the shorter one of “stimulus-dream,” which we may all the more do, since we give titled names to the dreams resting upon spiritual stimuli according to the respective power of the soul concerned; in the specific designation we place before the general designation “stimulus-dream” the specific name of the corresponding bodily organ or of the particular organic activity.