Dreams | Page 6

advantage of the
luminous dust which fills it, effect its transformation into forms and
colors. M. Max Simon tells of having a strange and somewhat painful
dream. He dreamt that he was confronted by two piles of golden coins,
side by side and of unequal height, which for some reason or other he
had to equalize. But he could not accomplish it. This produced a feeling
of extreme anguish. This feeling, growing moment by moment, finally
awakened him. He then perceived that one of his legs was caught by
the folds of the bedclothes in such a way that his two feet were on
different levels and it was impossible for him to bring them together.
From this the sensation of inequality, making an irruption into the
visual field and there encountering (such at least is the hypothesis
which I propose) one or more yellow spots, expressed itself visually by
the inequality of the two piles of gold pieces. There is, then, immanent
in the tactile sensations during sleep, a tendency to visualize
themselves and enter in this form into the dream.

More important still than the tactile sensations, properly speaking, are
the sensations which pertain to what is sometimes called internal touch,
deep-seated sensations emanating from all points of the organism and,
more particularly, from the viscera. One cannot imagine the degree of
sharpness, of acuity, which may be obtained during sleep by these
interior sensations. They doubtless already exist as well during waking.
But we are then distracted by practical action. We live outside of
ourselves. But sleep makes us retire into ourselves. It happens
frequently that persons subject to laryngitis, amygdalitis, etc., dream
that they are attacked by their affection and experience a disagreeable
tingling on the side of their throat. When awakened, they feel nothing
more, and believe it an illusion; but a few hours later the illusion
becomes a reality. There are cited maladies and grave accidents, attacks
of epilepsy, cardiac affections, etc., which have been foreseen and, as it
were, prophesied in dreams. We need not be astonished, then, that
philosophers like Schopenhauer have seen in the dream a reverberation,
in the heart of consciousness, of perturbations emanating from the
sympathetic nervous system; and that psychologists like Schemer have
attributed to each of our organs the power of provoking a
well-determined kind of dream which represents it, as it were,
symbolically; and finally that physicians like Artigues have written
treatises on the semeiological value of dreams, that is to say, the
method of making use of dreams for the diagnosis of certain maladies.
More recently, M. Tissié, of whom we have just spoken, has shown
how specific dreams are connected with affections of the digestive,
respiratory, and circulatory apparatus.
I will summarize what I have just been saying. When we are sleeping
naturally, it is not necessary to believe, as has often been supposed, that
our senses are closed to external sensations. Our senses continue to be
active. They act, it is true, with less precision, but in compensation they
embrace a host of "subjective" impressions which pass unperceived
when we are awake--for then we live in a world of perceptions
common to all men--and which reappear in sleep, when we live only
for ourselves. Thus our faculty of sense perception, far from being
narrowed during sleep at all points, is on the contrary extended, at least
in certain directions, in its field of operations. It is true that it often

loses in energy, in tension, what it gains in extension. It brings to us
only confused impressions. These impressions are the materials of our
dreams. But they are only the materials, they do not suffice to produce
them.
They do not suffice to produce them, because they are vague and
indeterminate. To speak only of those that play the principal rôle, the
changing colors and forms, which deploy before us when our eyes are
closed, never have well-defined contours. Here are black lines upon a
white background. They may represent to the dreamer the page of a
book, or the facade of a new house with dark blinds, or any number of
other things. Who will choose? What is the form that will imprint its
decision upon the indecision of this material? This form is our memory.
Let us note first that the dream in general creates nothing. Doubtless
there may be cited some examples of artistic, literary and scientific
production in dreams. I will recall only the well-known anecdote told
of Tartini, a violinist-composer of the eighteenth century. As he was
trying to compose a sonata and the muse remained recalcitrant, he went
to sleep and he saw in a dream the devil, who seized his violin and
played with master hand the desired sonata. Tartini wrote it out from
memory when he woke.