Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 9 Preliminary Research and Its Difficulties (2)
Do dreams have other commonalities?No matter which angle I look at, what I see are all kinds of differences: the length of the dream, the degree of clarity, the amount of emotion, the time limit of memory, etc.We don't expect to see all this in any kind of senseless turmoil.In terms of the length of dreams, there are very short dreams with only one image or a few, single thought, or only one word; some dreams are rich in content, deduce a complete story, and the experience time seems to be very long.Some dreams are as clear as reality, and you don’t know that you are dreaming after waking up; some dreams are extremely vague and hard to remember; even the same dream, some can be remembered clearly, and some parts are blurred. Passed away, not very clear.Some dreams have a coherent, unconflicted plot that can be called witty; others are disjointed, silly, absurd, and grotesque.Some dreams calm our minds, while others make us cry in pain, or even wake up with fear, joy or fear, it is difficult to describe.Most of the dreams are forgotten immediately after waking up, but some dreams are not forgotten for several days, and then become incomplete as the memory becomes blurred; some childhood dreams are so vivid that they are still clearly remembered 30 years later, as if those things were True and just happened yesterday.Dreams, too, are like people, or only one side never returns, or they may appear many times, sometimes in slightly different forms, sometimes in the same form at all.In short, the content of mental activities during sleep has many materials at its disposal, and various things experienced during the day can be creatively adapted one by one, while dreams will never be the same as reality.

With regard to the many differences in dreams we may perhaps suppose a correspondence with the degree of sleep and the different states between waking and sleeping.If this explanation is valid, then the closer the mind is to the awakened state, the higher the content, value and clarity of the dream, and the more clearly the dreamer is in a dream, there will never be some reasonable and clear elements. There are also chaotic and vague elements, and then continue to dream of other things that are clear and organized.It is impossible to change the depth of sleep so quickly.So this explanation is not very helpful; in fact, we have no shortcuts in explaining this problem.

Now let us put aside the meaning of dreams for a while, and try to start from the common characteristics of dreams, hoping to understand the nature of dreams more deeply.We know that dreams are associated with sleep, and thus infer that dreams are responses to stimuli that disturb sleep.We are helped by experimental psychology, which has been proved by precise experimental psychology that stimuli received during sleep can be represented in dreams.Many experiments have been done in this regard, especially Volde's experiment is second to none.Sometimes we can also prove their experimental results through observation.Here I want to tell you about some early experiments.Maury had done this kind of experiment on himself: he let himself smell Cologne perfume in a dream, and then he dreamed that he was in Cairo, appeared in Farina's shop, and then a series of adventures; There was a slight twist on his neck, and he dreamed of applying medicine to his neck, and of a doctor who had seen him in childhood; and of a man who put a few drops of water on his forehead, and at once he dreamed that he was in Italy, Drinking Orvieto and sweating a lot.

A group of dreams called "stimuli" may better account for some of the characteristics of "experimental dreams".The following three dreams are all about the reaction of the alarm clock, recorded by a keen observer Hilbrandt.

"One spring morning I went for a walk. I walked through the green fields until I reached a neighboring village. I saw many villagers in clean clothes and holding hymns to the church. Of course today is Sunday, and they will have morning prayer. So I He also came to participate, but because he was dizzy from the heat, he took the shade in the open space of the church. When he was reading the inscription on the tombstone, he suddenly saw the bell ringer enter a very high attic, and there was a small bell in the building. The bell rang to herald the beginning of prayer. The clock stopped for a while before it began to swing. The sound was loud and shrill, which disturbed my sleep. I woke up and realized that it was the sound of the alarm clock."

The second set of dream images went something like this: "It was a fine winter's day, and there was a lot of snow everywhere. I made an appointment to go on an adventure in a sledge, and I waited a long time to be told that the sledge was left outside the door. So I went to the car, opened the leather blanket first, took out the foot warmer, and got into the sled. At this time, the horse was waiting for the signal to start, so I pulled the bell rope, and the small bell swung violently, and began to emit a familiar sound. However, the high-pitched sound interrupted my lucid dream. It turned out that the sharp sound was made by the alarm clock."

Here's a third example: "One of my kitchen maids was walking towards the dining room with dozens of plates stacked high. I saw the pyramid of china in her hand dangling dangerously. 'Be careful! Your china The disk will hit the floor.' I warned her. Of course she said 'no problem, we're used to it' etc. Of course I was worried, and followed carefully, greatly anxious. My mind was always worried, tense. Then she hit the threshold, and the porcelain plate fell to the ground and fell into pieces. However, the regular chime made me know immediately that it was not the sound of the plate breaking. Only after waking up from the dream did I realize that the chime was an alarm clock.”

These dreams are different from ordinary dreams. They are coherent, delicate and easy to understand.Of course, we have no doubts about this.What all three dreams have in common is that each instance of the dream was triggered by a sound which the dreamer awoke to discover was the sound of an alarm clock.So I know how dreams come about, and that's not all we know.When dreaming, the dreamer did not know the alarm clock at all, and the alarm clock did not appear in the dream, but another sound appeared instead.The sleep-disrupting stimulus is interpreted differently in each instance.What is the reason?There is no answer, it seems to be arbitrary.But in order to explain the dream, we must ascertain the reason why this one, among many sounds, was chosen alone to represent the stimulus evoked by the alarm clock.From this we may object to Maury's experiments that, although the stimulus which disturbs the sleeper occurs in a dream, his experiments fail to explain why it is presented in precisely this way, which does not seem to be explained by the nature of the stimulus which disturbs sleep. .In Maury's experiment there were many other dreams which were also a direct consequence of that stimulus, such as the absurd adventures in the cologne dream, which we also cannot explain.

Perhaps you would think that if dreams could awaken the sleeper, it would help us understand the influence of external disturbances.For many other instances, however, it is not so easy.Because we don't wake up every dream, assuming we remember last night's dream in the morning, how do we know which disturbing stimulus caused it?After waking up from a dream, I presumed the stimulus of a certain sound, and naturally I was also hinted by a special situation.One morning in the Tyrolean hills, I woke up to a dream about the death of the Pope.I didn't know how to interpret the dream, and then my wife asked me if I heard the terrible bells from the church at dawn?I didn't hear it because I was too fast asleep, but luckily my wife told me.Now I can interpret my dream.Sometimes, the sleeper has a dream due to some kind of stimulus, and he doesn't know it after waking up. So, is this situation universal?It is possible to be universal or not.If no one told about those disturbances, we absolutely believed it.In addition, we know that these stimuli can only explain the fragments of the dream, but cannot explain the whole dream response, and we will not consider the external stimuli that interfere with sleep.

Of course, we don't have to abandon the theory altogether: we can still reason the other way around.It does not matter what stimuli the sleeper was disturbed to enter the dream state.Suppose it is not always external stimuli that intrude on a sense, but perhaps stimuli originating in internal organs, so-called "bodily stimuli."This hypothesis is relatively close to the general interpretation of the origin of dreams, and is even consistent. There is a common saying that "dreams originate from the stomach".Unfortunately, the somatic stimuli that interfered with sleep at night receded immediately after waking from the dream and could not be verified.But we can't ignore the statement that "dreams originate from physical stimulation", which can be proved by many reliable experiences.In short, there is no doubt that internal organs affect dreams.It is notorious that many dreams are associated with distended bladders or excitement of the genitals.Apart from these obvious examples there are also dreams whose content it can at least be surmised must have been similarly bodily stimuli, and in which we see generalizations, representatives or substitutes for these stimuli. In 1861, Scherner also advocated that dreams come from physical stimulation, and cited examples to prove it.For example, in his dream, he saw two rows of children, handsome in appearance, fair in hair and clean in skin, and glaring at each other.At first, the two rows of children confronted each other, then let go, and then confronted each other as before.He interpreted the two rows of children as two rows of teeth, and the dreamer "pulled out a big tooth" after waking up, which further proved the reliability of his explanation.For another example, we can interpret the narrow and winding path as the stimulation of the small intestine. Scherner's claim that dreams always replace the stimulating organs with similar objects seems to be confirmed by each other.

We therefore consider it necessary to admit that internal and external stimuli are equal in dreams.Unfortunately, the consideration of this factor has the same disadvantage.In most cases, whether the dream can be attributed to the stimulation of the body cannot be proved. Only a few dreams can make us suspect that it is caused by the intrusion of stimulation in the body, and this is not necessarily the case for most dreams; All sensory stimuli are equal, and dreams are only direct responses to stimuli.Up to this point, the origin of most of the dream content has remained obscure.

Let us now turn our attention to another feature of the dream-life which has been discovered during our investigation of the action of these stimuli.That is, dreams can reproduce stimuli, and stimuli can also be simplified into complex ones, with superficial meanings to make them conform to the dream, and replace them with other things.This is one of the "dream processes" in which we are bound to be interested, or from which we learn of the true nature of dreams.A person's dreaming is not limited by the proximate cause of the dream.Shakespeare wrote the play "Macbeth" to celebrate the unification of the British Isles by the King of England. However, can this history explain the whole content of the play?Can you explain the greatness and mystery of the script?In the same way, internal or external stimuli received by the sleeper are only the origin of the dream, and it is not enough to explain the real nature of the dream.

The psychological activity of dreams is the second common feature, which is difficult to comprehend on the one hand, and insufficient to guide our further research on the other.All dream experiences are mostly visual impressions, can they be explained by stimuli?Are those stimuli really all we experience?Assuming that it is indeed a stimulus, the organs of vision are so little stimulated, why are there so many experienced images in dreams?Another example is the dream of a speech. Is there really a conversation or a conversation-like sound that invades our sleeping ears?I will not hesitate to deny its possibility.

Since taking the commonality of dreams as a starting point cannot improve our understanding of dreams, we might as well discuss their differences.Dreams are often meaningless, confused, and absurd, but there are also some more reasonable and understandable dreams.Now I want to tell you about a plausible dream I recently heard from a young man.The dream is: "I was walking in Conistra, met and walked with someone, and then I went into a restaurant. I saw a man and two women came in together, and sat next to me. I was very tired of this at first. Ignored them, then glanced at them and thought they were very beautiful." The young man said that it was true that he had been walking in Conistra the night before, and that he had met someone on the road.Other dreams are not direct memories, but similar to certain situations in the past.Again, the dream of a lady is easy to understand. "The husband asked the lady: 'Don't you think our piano needs to be tuned?' The lady replied: 'I'm afraid not, the hammers need new leather.'" The dream repeated what she and her husband had said during the day, and exactly the same.What do we gain by these two obvious dreams?Just the fact that everyday life and related events can appear in dreams.If this is true of all dreams, without exception, this is of great significance.But this cannot be the case; such dreams are rare.Most dreams have no connection to the events of the previous day, so it is impossible to infer meaningless or absurd dreams from them.In other words, we have encountered a new problem.We need to know the content of the dream, assuming the example just now, which is obviously clear, and also to be able to know the reason and purpose of the recent facts that reappear in the dream.

If I continue to strive for understanding of dreams, not only will I get bored, but even you will get bored too.It can be seen that if we cannot find a solution to a problem, even if the whole world is interested in it, it will not help.So far we have not found a solution.Experimental psychology contributes little but much to the "dreams are responses to stimuli"; philosophy does nothing but sneer at our subject; They believe that dreams have rich meanings to predict the future, but of course they cannot be fully believed, and there is no way to prove it.Therefore, our efforts can be said to be in vain.

However, in an unnoticed place, we accidentally got a research clue.That is the common saying of the common people.It is true that colloquialisms are not accidental, they are the deposits of ancient knowledge, so naturally we don’t need to pay too much attention to them. It is strange that there is a saying of “daydreaming” in colloquialisms.Daydreams are of course the product of fantasy. This phenomenon is very common. Both healthy and sick people have daydreams, and it is easier for daydreamers to study them by themselves.It is apparently strange that such phantasies are called "daydreams" and do not have the common features of dreams.Daydreaming has nothing to do with sleep, and for the second generality there are no experiences or hallucinations, only imaginations; daydreamers themselves admit that they are fantasies, seeing nothing but thinking.Daydreams mostly appear towards the end of childhood, before adolescence, and continue into adulthood, and then either cease to be daydreams or persist throughout life.The content of these phantasies is clearly governed by motives.Some of the situations or events in daydreams are used to satisfy the dreamer's ambition or desire for power, and some are used to satisfy his lust.Ambition fantasies predominate among young men, while young women focus on the triumph of love, mostly erotic fantasies.However, one thing is that behind men’s fantasies, there are often lustful ambitions hidden. Their success in career and power is just to win women’s praise, admiration and admiration.Among other things, daydreams are diverse, and their fates vary widely.Some daydreams are replaced by another kind of ambition in a short period of time, and others form long books, which change with time and life.Many literary works use this as the subject matter, and writers write their daydreams into novels or plays after modification, dressing up or deletion.The most common subject of a daydream is the dreamer, sometimes appearing directly, sometimes using another person as a mirror image of himself.

Daydreams are called dreams, perhaps because their relationship with reality is similar to that of dreams, and their content is as illusory as dreams.But daydreams are called dreams, perhaps because they have the psychological characteristics of dreams, about which we are still studying, and we don't know yet.Conversely, our so-called "same name is same name" statement may be completely wrong.Exactly how, and wait for the answer later.

(End of this chapter)