There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 12

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We may wonder why Dr Freud uses so many quotes from other scientists’ research. In my opinion, it was always difficult for a genius thinker, especially in the years before WWII, to express their ideas freely without running into problems with the conservative society of the time. It was not so easy to bring up such revolutionary ideas and remain safe from attacks by colleagues (jealous detractors)! We live in a “very” modern age, when virtually every new idea—even one that seems absurd—will find people willing to share and defend it. In Freud’s and Jung’s time, however, anyone who became famous and entered the public eye faced intense scrutiny, leaving little room for unconventional views or missteps. Dr Jung therefore had much to contend with when he was asked whether he believed in God. He talked about it more easily and more often:

Knowledge of background processes early on shaped my relationship to the world. Basically, that relationship was the same in my childhood as it is today. As a child, I felt alone, and I am still [alone], because I know things and must hint at things that others apparently know nothing of and, for the most part, do not want to know.
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate what seems important to oneself, or from holding certain views that others find inadmissible.
Loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams and reached its climax when I worked on the unconscious. If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

The psychological characteristics of dreams (Die psychologischen Besonderheiten des Traumes)

Freud believed that these characteristics reveal how dreams are shaped by the unconscious mind. He argued that dreams express hidden desires, fears, and conflicts, but do so in a disguised and symbolic form because the conscious mind censors or resists their direct expression. He argues that dreams follow their own psychological “rules,” which differ from the logic of wakefulness. By studying these characteristics, he believed we could better understand the workings of the unconscious mind and the hidden meanings of our dreams.

So, let’s continue reading the second part of this section. The previous one is here!

Burdach has summarised the characteristics of dream life considered thus far in the following statements (p. 476): “Among the essential features of the dream are: a) that the subjective activity of our soul appears as objective,
in that the faculty of perception apprehends the products of the imagination as if they were sensory impressions; … b) sleep is a suspension of volitional control. Hence, falling asleep involves a certain passivity. … Dream images are conditioned by the relaxation of volitional control.”

The task now is to explain the soul’s belief in the reality of dream hallucinations—phenomena that arise only after a certain autonomous activity has ceased. Strümpell argues that the soul behaves correctly in this regard, acting in accordance with its own mechanisms. The elements of the dream are by no means mere mental representations; rather, they are genuine experiences of the soul, akin to those that occur in waking life through sensory mediation (p. 34).
While the soul, in its waking state, forms representations and thinks using word-images and language, in dreams it forms representations and thinks using actual sensory images (p. 35). Moreover, a sense of spatial awareness emerges in dreams, as sensations and images are projected into external space, just as they are during waking life (p. 36). One must therefore acknowledge that in dreams the soul stands in the same relationship to its images and perceptions as it does in waking life (p. 43). If it nevertheless falls into error, it is because, during sleep, it lacks the criterion for distinguishing between sensory perceptions originating externally and those originating internally. It cannot subject its images to the tests that alone would demonstrate their objective reality.
Furthermore, it fails to distinguish between images that can be arbitrarily interchanged and those where such freedom of choice is absent. It errs because it cannot apply the law of causality to the dream’s content (p. 58). In short, its withdrawal from the external world also underpins its belief in the subjective dream world.

Delboeuf arrives at the same conclusion, albeit through a somewhat different line of psychological reasoning. We attribute reality to dream images because, while asleep, we have no other impressions to compare them to—we are cut off from the outside world. Yet it is not simply because we are deprived of the opportunity to conduct tests during sleep that we believe in the truth of our hallucinations. A dream can simulate all such tests, showing us, for instance, that we are touching a rose we see, even while we remain asleep. According to Delboeuf, no definitive criterion distinguishes a dream from waking reality other than—and even then only in a general, practical sense—waking up. I dismiss everything experienced between falling asleep and waking as an illusion once I realise, upon waking, that I am lying undressed in my bed (p. 84).
During sleep, I accepted the dream images as real because of an ineradicable habit of thought: the tendency to assume the existence of an external world to which I contrast my own self. (1)

(1) Haffner undertook an attempt similar to Delboeuf’s to explain dream activity by the alteration that an abnormally introduced condition must necessarily impose upon the otherwise correct functioning of the intact mental apparatus; however, he described this condition in slightly different terms. According to him, the primary characteristic of the dream is its detachment from space and time—that is, the emancipation of the mental image from the individual’s position within the spatial and temporal order. Linked to this is the dream’s second fundamental characteristic: the confusion between hallucinations, imaginings, and the combination of fantasy with external perceptions. “Since the totality of higher mental faculties—specifically concept formation, judgment, and inference on the one hand, and free self-determination on the other—are linked to sensory mental images and rely upon them as a constant foundation, these activities, too, partake in the irregularity of dream imagery. They partake in it, let us say, for in and of themselves, our faculty of judgment—like our faculty of will—undergoes no alteration whatsoever during sleep. In terms of activity, we are just as astute and just as free as we are in the waking state. Even in a dream, a person cannot violate the laws of thought as such—that is, one cannot equate things that present themselves as opposites, and so forth. Nor can one desire anything in a dream other than what one conceives as good (sub ratione boni). Yet, in this application of the laws of thought and volition, the human mind is led astray in the dream by confusing one mental image with another. “Thus it happens that in dreams we posit and commit the greatest contradictions, while at the same time forming the most acute judgments, drawing the most consistent conclusions, and making the most virtuous and holy resolutions. A lack of orientation is the entire secret of the flight with which our imagination moves in dreams, and a lack of critical reflection—as well as of communication with others—is the primary source of the boundless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and wishes in dreams” (p. 18).

To be continued! 🙏💖

Vacation on Helter Skelter Can’t Be Boring!

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Today I’m writing a short piece about my condition and what ultimately happened to me, for anyone’s interest. So, as you probably know, I was on vacation: first for three days with the kids, and then for two weeks in Greece. That sounds lovely, but because my urinary problems were becoming increasingly difficult, the whole experience was a real roller coaster ride for me! I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to my scheduled surgery without ending up in an emergency room in Greece—even though the Greek healthcare system is top-notch.
In any case, the period from July through early August was anything but boring, but somehow I managed to get through it.

Now, I am through with the surgery, and so far, it looks like everything is okay. As I mentioned, I am feeling weak and can’t do the same things as before. I have to sit for a while after doing even a little to catch my breath. Even though I am taking antibiotics, I still feel like something isn’t right inside me. This means visiting the doctor again in the hope of solving the problems.

By the way, whenever I sit in front of a screen—whether on my phone or a computer—everything starts spinning after a while, and I have to stop immediately. So please don’t be surprised if I don’t manage to read or provide feedback on your daily or hourly posts.

As many here likely know (and some, I’m sure, feel deeply!), life isn’t easy, but we have no choice but to keep pushing forward. My political outlook has grown bleak and hopeless. You may have noticed I haven’t posted about Iran in a while. I feel like I’m being played for a fool—as if some shady game is going on behind the scenes and no one cares about people’s suffering. So let them chase profits while the Iranian opposition dreams of fame. I don’t have much time left to change or save the world. As Jalaluddin Rumi wisely said: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” I’ve pretty much given up on it all.

I sincerely value your friendship, loyalty, and trust. I’ll share my contribution to the translation of Freud’s book in following. Since I will be away next week, I will be absent and leave you in peace!

Here are a few pics from our vacation to Greece. 🙏💖🌹

There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 11

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“Every dream, if it is really understood, not only with the intellect but really emotionally understood, has such a shot-like “Aha” effect upon one. If you do not have that, then you have not understood the dream yet…Every understood dream is like a slight electric shock into higher consciousness.” ~ Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemical Active Imagination, pp. 55-56

via Carl Jung Psychology blog

Dreams: Portals to an Unfamiliar Realm! For centuries, dreams have captivated humans, acting as both a source of awe and enigma. Every night, when we sleep, we enter a realm beyond reality—a space where logic gives way to imagination and the impossible becomes normal. This mysterious world has its own rules, landscapes, and inhabitants, often reflecting our deepest fears, hopes, and desires.
The true essence of dreams remains unknown. Researchers and philosophers have long debated their origins and significance. Some believe dreams are the mind’s way of processing memories and emotions, while others see them as glimpses into the subconscious that reveal our innermost thoughts. Regardless of their purpose, dreams remind us that parts of ourselves—and possibly reality—are still unexplored and mysterious.
Dreams encourage us to explore our inner world and foster curiosity and self-awareness. Night after night, they show us that life is more intricate and fascinating than it appears during our waking hours. Through dreams, we glimpse a world beyond our understanding—one that often fills us with wonder or reminds us of things we’ve forgotten.

The psychological characteristics of dreams (Die psychologischen Besonderheiten des Traumes)

In this section of Freud’s book, Interpretation of Dreams, he examines the unique qualities and behaviors of dreams from a psychological viewpoint. Freud states that dreams possess distinctive characteristics that differentiate them from waking thoughts.

Since this section is lengthy, I will divide it into several parts in my translation. I hope you enjoy reading it. 🙏💖

In the scientific study of dreams, we proceed from the assumption that dreams are products of our own mental activity. Yet, the finished dream appears to us as something alien—something we feel so little urge to claim as our own creation that we are just as likely to say “Me had a dream” (mir hat geträumt) as “I dreamed” (ich habe geträumt). What is the source of this “mental alienness” of the dream? Based on our discussions regarding the sources of dreams, we might conclude that dreams do not stem from the material that finds its way into dream content; for the most part, this material is common to both dream and waking life. One might ask whether it is, in fact, alterations in the psychological processes occurring during the dream that give rise to this impression, and thus attempt to outline the dream’s psychological characteristics.

No one has emphasised the fundamental difference between dreaming and waking life more strongly, or drawn more far-reaching conclusions from it, than G. Th. Fechner in certain remarks within his Elements of Psychophysics (Vol. II, p. 520). He argues that “neither the simple depression of conscious mental life below the principal threshold nor the withdrawal of attention from external influences suffices to explain the distinctive characteristics of the dream state as opposed to waking life. Rather, he argues that the arena of dreams differs from that of waking mental imagery. “If the arena of psychophysical activity were the same during sleep and wakefulness, then, in my view, the dream could be nothing more than a continuation of waking mental imagery maintained at a lower level of intensity, and would necessarily share its content and form. But the reality is quite different.”

It has likely not become clear what Fechner meant by such a relocation of mental activity; nor, to my knowledge, has anyone else pursued the path whose trail he indicated in that remark. One would presumably have to rule out an anatomical interpretation in terms of physiological brain localisation, or even one referring to the histological layering of the cerebral cortex. Yet the idea might one day prove ingenious and fruitful if applied to a mental apparatus composed of several agencies arranged in sequence.

Other authors have contented themselves with highlighting one or another tangible psychological peculiarity of dream life and using it, for instance, as a starting point for more far-reaching attempts at explanation.
It has rightly been noted that one of the principal characteristics of dream life manifests itself as early as the process of falling asleep and can be described as a phenomenon that ushers in sleep. According to Schleiermacher (p. 351), the defining feature of the waking state is that the activity of thought proceeds in terms of concepts rather than images. Now, the dream thinks primarily in images, and one can observe that, as sleep approaches—and to the same extent that voluntary activities become difficult—involuntary mental images emerge, all of which belong to the class of visual images. The inability to perform the kind of mental work we perceive as intentional, combined with the emergence of images regularly associated with this state of mental drift—these are two characteristics that remain with the dream, and that we must recognise as essential features of dream life during psychological analysis. We have learned that these images—hypnagogic hallucinations—are identical in content to dream images.

Thus, the dream thinks predominantly in visual images, though not exclusively so. It also operates with auditory images and, to a lesser extent, with impressions from the other senses. Much is also simply thought or imagined in the dream (likely represented by traces of word-presentations), just as in the waking state. Yet the only elements of content characteristic of the dream are those that behave like images—that is, those that more closely resemble perceptions than memory-images. Setting aside the debates regarding the nature of hallucinations—discussions well known to psychiatrists—we can state, in agreement with all expert authors, that the dream hallucinates, that it replaces thoughts with hallucinations. In this respect, there is no difference between visual and auditory presentations; it has been observed that the memory of a sequence of notes with which one falls asleep transforms, as one drifts off, into a hallucination of that same melody, only to give way again—upon the return to consciousness (which may alternate several times with dozing)—to the quieter and qualitatively different memory-image.

The transformation of a mental image into a hallucination is not the only way in which a dream deviates from a corresponding waking thought.
From these images, the dream constructs a situation; it presents something as present and dramatises an idea—to use Spitta’s expression (p. 145). However, the characterisation of this aspect of dream life is only complete if one adds the fact that, while dreaming—as a rule (exceptions require special explanation)—one believes oneself to be experiencing events rather than thinking about them, and thus accepts the hallucinations with complete conviction. The critical realisation that one has not actually experienced anything, but merely thought—or dreamed—in a peculiar way, arises only upon waking. This characteristic distinguishes the genuine sleep dream from daydreaming, which is never confused with reality.

To be continued!

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Here is another quick health update: I visited my doctor—not just because I felt weak, but because my head would spin whenever I read or looked at anything online. I was experiencing vertigo. He ran blood tests and found high inflammation. I need to start antibiotics. We all must stay strong!
Looking forward to seeing what the next steps bring!

There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 10

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Lenole Art (Instagram)

Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources (Traumreize und Traumquellen)

Hello, dear friends. I’m sharing another section of Freud’s book with my translation. I hope you find it interesting and insightful. This part discusses forgetting dreams—I usually forget mine, though the ones that endure seem to stay forever. I believe we forget dreams after waking because we don’t want to remember them right away, so we push them into the unknown for later.

Anyway, Dr Freud explains why we forget our dreams, and I think his research is worth exploring, especially since Dr Carl Jung admired Freud’s work. Here are some quotes from Carl Jung’s Depth Psychology, by my good friend Lewis Lafontaine. 🙏

It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 539

“Freud was kind to people and gave them his interest; that was what cured, and that is what always cures – the human contact.”
~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 48

Let’s proceed with Freud’s arguments. The previous chapter is available here!

Why do we forget the dream after waking up? (Warum man den Traum nach dem Erwachen vergisst?)

It is proverbial that a dream “dissolves” in the morning. Yet it is certainly capable of being remembered. After all, we know the dream only through memory after waking; yet we very often believe that we recall it only incompletely, whereas more of it was present during the night; we can observe how a dream memory—vivid in the morning—fades over the course of the day until only small fragments remain; we often know that we have dreamt, but not what we dreamt; and we are so accustomed to the experience of dreams being subject to oblivion that we do not dismiss as absurd the possibility that a person who, in the morning, knows nothing of the content or even the fact of having dreamt, might nevertheless have dreamt during the night. On the other hand, it happens that dreams display extraordinary persistence in memory. I have analysed dreams of my patients that occurred twenty-five or more years ago, and I can recall a dream of my own separated from the present by at least thirty-seven years, yet it has lost nothing of its freshness in memory. All this is very strange and, at first glance, incomprehensible.

Strümpell discusses the forgetting of dreams at greatest length. This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon, for Strümpell attributes it not to a single cause but to a whole series of reasons.

To begin with, the same factors that cause forgetting in waking life are at work in the forgetting of dreams. When awake, we tend to quickly forget a vast number of sensations and perceptions because they were too weak—because the mental excitation associated with them was insufficiently intense. The same applies to many dream images: they are forgotten because they were too weak, whereas stronger images that occur alongside them are remembered. However, intensity alone is not the decisive factor in retaining dream images; Strümpell, like other authors (such as Calkins), acknowledges that we often quickly forget dream images known to have been very vivid, while many of the images retained in memory are shadowy and faint. Furthermore, in the waking state, we tend to forget events that occurred only once, while remembering better those we perceived repeatedly. However, most dream images are unique experiences (though recurring dreams have been noted; cf. Chabaneix’s collection); this characteristic inevitably contributes to the forgetting of all dreams. A third reason for forgetting is far more significant. For sensations, mental images, thoughts, and the like to attain a certain degree of memorability, they must not remain isolated but rather enter into appropriate connections and associations. If one breaks a short verse down into its constituent words and jumbles them, it becomes very difficult to commit it to memory. “When well-ordered and arranged in a logical sequence, one word supports another, and the whole remains firmly, easily, and enduringly in the memory. We generally find it just as difficult—and rare—to retain nonsensical material as we do material that is confused and disordered.”
Yet, in most cases, dreams lack coherence and order. Dream compositions inherently lack the basis for their own retention and are forgotten because they usually disintegrate almost immediately. – Admittedly, this view does not quite align with Radestock’s observation (p. 168) that it is precisely the strangest dreams we remember best.

Strümpell considers other factors, derived from the relationship between the dream and waking life, to be even more significant in causing dreams to be forgotten. The fact that dreams are forgotten by waking consciousness is evidently merely the counterpart to the previously mentioned fact that the dream (almost) never incorporates organised memories from waking life, but rather only isolated details torn from the familiar mental associations in which they are recalled during the waking state. Dream imagery thus finds no place within the array of mental sequences that fill the mind; it lacks all mnemonic aids. “In this way, the dream formation detaches itself, as it were, from the soil of our mental life and floats in the psychic realm like a cloud in the sky, quickly dispersed by a fresh breath of air” (p. 87). Working in the same direction is the fact that, upon waking, the encroaching sensory world immediately lays claim to one’s attention, so that very few dream images can withstand this force. They give way to the impressions of the new day just as the radiance of the stars fades before the light of the sun.

Sigmund Freud’s Letter to Carl Jung, September 19, 1907

Finally, a factor conducive to the forgetting of dreams is that most people show little interest in them to begin with. For instance, anyone who—perhaps as a researcher—takes an interest in dreams for a time will also dream more than usual during that period; this presumably means they recall their dreams more easily and more frequently.
Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams—added by Bonatelli (cited in Benini) to those proposed by Strümpell—are arguably already implicit in the latter: namely, 1) that the shift in general bodily sensation between sleep and wakefulness is unfavourable to reciprocal recall, and 2) that the different arrangement of mental imagery in dreams renders them, so to speak, untranslatable for waking consciousness.

Given all these reasons for forgetting, it becomes—as Strümpell himself emphasises—all the more remarkable that so much of our dreams is nevertheless retained in memory. The persistent efforts of authors to formulate rules for recalling dreams amount to an admission that, here too, something remains enigmatic and unresolved. Certain peculiarities in the recollection of dreams have rightly attracted special attention of late—for instance, the fact that a dream one believes to have forgotten in the morning may be recalled later in the day, triggered by a perception that happens to touch upon the dream’s—supposedly forgotten—content (Radestock, Tissié). However, the entire phenomenon of dream recall is subject to an objection that could well lead a critical observer to devalue it significantly. One might question whether our memory—which omits so much of the dream—also distorts the fragments it has preserved.

Strümpell also voices doubts about the accuracy of dream reproduction: “It easily happens, then, that waking consciousness involuntarily inserts various elements into the memory of the dream: one imagines having dreamt all sorts of things that the actual dream did not contain.” Jessen expresses himself particularly emphatically on this point (p. 547):
“Moreover, when examining and interpreting coherent and logical dreams, one must give serious consideration to a circumstance that—it seems—has hitherto received little attention: namely, that the truth is almost always compromised in the process, because, when we recall a dream we have had, we—without noticing or intending to—fill in and supplement the gaps in the dream imagery. Rarely, and perhaps never, was a coherent dream actually as coherent as it appears to us in memory.
Even for the most truthful person, it is scarcely possible to recount a remarkable dream one has experienced without any additions or embellishments; the human mind’s drive to perceive everything as a coherent whole is so strong that, when recalling a somewhat disjointed dream, it involuntarily supplies the missing links in the narrative.”

V. Egger’s remarks, which were certainly conceived independently, sound almost like a translation of Jessen’s words: »… l’observation des rêves a ses difficultés spéciales et le seul moyen d’éviter toute erreur en pareille matière est de confier au papier sans le moindre retard ce que l’on vient d’éprouver et de remarquer; sinon, l’oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l’oubli total est sans gravité; mais l’oubli partiel est perfide; car si l’on se met ensuite à raconter ce que l’on n’a pas oublié, on est éxposé à compléter par imagination les fragments incohérents et disjoints fourni par la mémoire …; on devient artiste à son insu, et le récit periodiquement répété s’impose à la créance de son auteur, qui, de bonne foi, le présente comme un fait authentique, dûment établi selon les bonnes méthodes …« {Observing dreams poses particular difficulties, and the only way to avoid error in such matters is to commit to paper, without the slightest delay, what one has just experienced and noted; otherwise, forgetting—whether total or partial—quickly sets in. Total forgetting is of no consequence, but partial forgetting is treacherous; for if one subsequently sets out to recount what has not been forgotten, one risks filling in the gaps—using one’s imagination—within the incoherent, disjointed fragments supplied by memory… One becomes an artist unwittingly, and the story, through repeated telling, comes to be believed by its own author, who then—in good faith—presents it as an authentic fact, duly established according to sound methods…}

Spitta (p. 338) holds a very similar view; he seems to assume that it is only when we attempt to reproduce the dream that we introduce order into the loosely associated dream elements—”transforming the side-by-side arrangement into a sequence or a separation, thereby adding the process of logical connection that is absent in the dream.”
Now, since we possess no means of verifying the accuracy of our memory other than objective confirmation—which is impossible in the case of a dream, an experience of our own for which memory is the sole source—what value can we still attach to our memory of the dream?

_____________Stay tuned! More coming soon!_________________

Thank you all so much, dear friends. As for my condition, I was constantly bouncing around and acting without paying attention to my age. But after the recent surgery, I realise, and must admit, with my tired bones, that I am an old man now! This is the reality of life on this earth, and I accept it.
I may write an extra post about that.

Take care, everyone.🙏🤗

Ego, Egoistic, or Egoism, and How It Can Be Useful!

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Egoism is a philosophical concept and a term that carries significant weight in both ethics and psychology. Derived from the Latin word “ego,” meaning “I” or “self,” egoism centres on the self as the primary, and sometimes sole, motivator of human action. The suffix “-ism” denotes a doctrine or belief, so egoism essentially refers to a system of thought based on the self.

Historically, the term began to take shape in the 18th and 19th centuries, although its roots are much older. Philosophers in ancient Greece, such as Socrates and Epicurus, discussed ideas related to self-interest and personal happiness, but the formal conceptualisation of egoism came later. In the 17th century, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes argued that humans are fundamentally motivated by self-interest, a view that laid the groundwork for later theories. Nowadays—or indeed for quite some time—however, it is perceived as an insult or as offensive. (Egoist!)

In ethics, egoism is most often discussed in two forms: psychological egoism and ethical egoism. Psychological egoism holds that humans naturally act in their own self-interest, even when their actions appear altruistic. In contrast, ethical egoism holds that individuals ought to act in their own best interests. The concept became especially prominent in the works of philosophers such as Max Stirner and Ayn Rand, who advocated the primacy of the self in moral reasoning.

I’ve personally had many experiences with ego and egoism, noticing them in my environment, and I also learned to temper my ego and let it fade away while living with my brother Al. I wanted to support him in his success and, therefore, keep hidden the desires and motivations that would feed my ego.

Today, egoism remains a controversial yet influential idea. It challenges assumptions about morality, altruism, and social responsibility, and continues to spark debate among philosophers, psychologists, and everyday thinkers alike.

“We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego-consciousness would not dim it.”

~Marie-Louise von Franz

In Carl Jung’s psychology, the ego is the necessary centre of conscious awareness and identity, and it serves as the basis for enduring, translating, and integrating the overwhelming forces of the unconscious.
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it,” said Betty DeShong Meador, an American Jungian analyst. Carl Jung himself said something similar:
“But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” (From ‘The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’)

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Here, I’d like to present an excerpt from Marie-Louise von Franz’s book, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. A simple and remarkable explanation of why the ego is necessary.

Illustration at the top: Lágrima (Tear), Digital surrealist painting by Marcel Caram

The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (The Three Feathers, p. 61-62)

…Imagine, for instance, that your instinct tells you to run away in a dangerous situation. (You do not require a very conscious ego to tell you that.) If a bull chases you, you do not need to consult your ego; you had better consult your legs, which know what to do. But if the ego functions with your legs, so that while running away from the bull, you also look for a good hiding place or a fence to jump over, then the situation is perfect: your instincts and your ego function in accord with each other. If, on the other hand, you are a philosopher whose legs want to run away but who thinks: “Stop! I must first find out whether it is right to run away from a bull,” then the ego blocks the instinctual urge; it has become autonomous and anti-instinctive and then becomes a destructive nuisance, such as we see in every neurotic individual. A neurosis could even be defined as an ego formation no longer in harmony with the whole personality, whereas when the ego functions in accordance with the larger totality, it reinforces itself and improves the innate cleverness of the basic instinctive arrangement.

Naturally, sometimes the ego would also be useful in resisting instinct. Imagine, for instance, the North Arctic lemmings, which get an instinctual urge to make a migration into another country where they can start again with a new food supply. Driven by an instinctual urge, they collect together and then march on. If, by a piece of bad luck, they come to the sea or a river, they go into it and drown by the thousands. I am sure you know this story, which has always puzzled zoologists, for it shows the silly unadaptedness of some natural instinct. Konrad Lorenz once gave a lecture with many such examples; I remember one about a bird which, to please his mate in the mating season, produces an enormous red sack on his chest with which to enforce his mating songs. This red sack is so heavy that he can not fly, so his enemies gather and butcher that bird. So that is not a good invention. A beautiful red tail or a red behind like a baboon’s to please his wife would be much better and would not prevent him from flying away. So you see, instinctual patterns are not only positive. If a lemming could ask itself what it was doing and reflect that it did not want to drown, and could go back, that would be very useful for it. So that is probably why nature has invented the ego as a new instrument for us; we are a new experiment of nature, for we have an additional instrument for regulating the instinctual urges. We do not live only on our patterns of behaviour but have this strange addition known as the ego.

PS: While I’m still itching my way towards better health every day, I am not giving up hope. Next week, I will continue with the post on Freud’s work. Thank you all for being there. 🙏💖

There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 9

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Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources (Traumreize und Traumquellen)

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?
~Carl Jung, The Red Book

Carl Jung believed that dreams are direct messages from the unconscious mind. According to Jung, these nightly visions are not random or meaningless; instead, they offer valuable insight into our deepest thoughts, feelings, and truths. By paying attention to dreams, he argued, we can better understand aspects of ourselves that are usually hidden from conscious awareness. He saw dream interpretation as an important tool for personal growth and self-discovery. Through understanding our dreams, Jung believed we could achieve greater harmony within ourselves and that dreams serve as direct messages from the unconscious mind.

“Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.”
~Carl Jung, CW, Vol.10, para 317

However, since Jung is more advanced in his ideas on this issue, we return to the basic findings that Freud had begun to explore and move on to the next level of his book, Dreams’ Meaning. (Preview here!)

“The painting at the top: Andrew Ferez, a surreal Russian illustrator”

In July 1931, the sculptor Oscar Nemon created a bust of Sigmund Freud. Freud posed for Nemon in a garden in Pötzleinsdorf, Vienna, captured here by an unknown photographer.
Source: Freud Museum London

Ad 4) Sources of psychological irritation

When we discussed the relationship of dreams to waking life and the origin of dream material, we learned that it is the view of dream researchers—both the earliest and the most recent—that people dream about what occupies them during the day and what interests them while awake. This interest, carried over from waking life into sleep, constitutes not only a psychological link connecting the dream to real life but also provides a source of dreams that should not be underestimated; alongside the stimuli that become significant during sleep—namely, those acting upon the sleeper—it should suffice to explain the origin of all dream images. However, we have also heard the objection to the above claim—namely, that the dream detaches the sleeper from the interests of the day, and that we—for the most part—only dream of the things that gripped us most deeply during the day once they have lost their immediate relevance to waking life. Thus, in analysing dream life, one constantly gains the impression that it is impermissible to lay down general rules without introducing qualifications such as “often,” “as a rule,” or “mostly,” and without preparing for the validity of exceptions.

If waking interests, together with internal and external sleep stimuli, sufficed to account for the aetiology of dreams, we ought to be able to give a satisfactory explanation for the origin of every element within a dream; the riddle of dream sources would be solved, leaving only the task of distinguishing the respective contributions of psychic and somatic dream stimuli in individual dreams. In reality, however, such a complete resolution of a dream has never been achieved; anyone who has attempted it has almost invariably been left with a substantial number of dream elements whose origins could not be determined. Evidently, waking interests as a psychic source of dreams do not go as far as one might expect, given the confident assertions that people continue to pursue their daily business in their dreams.

No other sources of psychological dreams are known. Thus, all explanations of dreams found in the literature—with the possible exception of Scherner’s, to be mentioned later—leave a significant gap regarding the derivation of the imagery most characteristic of the dream. Faced with this difficulty, the majority of authors have tended to minimise as much as possible the psychological component of dream formation, which is so elusive. While they do distinguish—as a primary classification—between dreams triggered by nervous stimuli and those arising from association (the latter deriving exclusively from reproduction; Wundt, p. 365), they cannot shake the doubt as to “whether they occur without an initiating somatic stimulus” (Volkelt, p. 127). The characteristic of the pure association dream also fails: “In true association dreams, such a firm core is no longer present. Here, the loose grouping penetrates even the centre of the dream. The imaginative life, already freed from reason and intellect, is no longer held together by those more weighty bodily and mental arousals and is thus left to its own colorful pushing and shoving, its own loose, chaotic tumbling” (Volkelt, p. 118). Wundt then attempts to downplay the psychological component of dream excitation by stating that “the phantasms of dreams are probably wrongly regarded as mere hallucinations. Most dream representations are likely in reality illusions, in that they originate from the faint sensory impressions that never cease during sleep” (pp. 359 ff.). Weygandt adopted this view and generalised it. He claims that for all dream representations, “their immediate cause is sensory stimuli; only then do reproductive associations follow” (p. 17). Tissié goes even further in suppressing the psychic sources of stimuli (p. 183): “Dreams of absolute psychic origin do not exist,” and elsewhere (p. 6): “The thoughts of our dreams come from outside…”

Authors who, like the influential philosopher Wundt, occupy an intermediate position do not fail to note that in most dreams, somatic stimuli and the—unknown or recognised as matters of daytime interest—psychic instigators of the dream interact.

We shall learn later that the riddle of dream formation can be solved by uncovering an unsuspected source of psychic stimulation. For the moment, we need not be surprised by the tendency to overestimate the role of stimuli originating outside mental life in the formation of dreams. Not only are these stimuli easily identified and even verifiable through experimentation, but the somatic view of the origin of dreams also aligns entirely with the prevailing school of thought in psychiatry today. While the brain’s dominion over the organism is emphasised most strongly, anything that might demonstrate the independence of mental life from demonstrable organic changes—or spontaneity in its manifestations—alarms psychiatrists today, as if acknowledging such things would inevitably bring back the era of natural philosophy and the metaphysical soul. The psychiatrist’s mistrust has, as it were, placed the psyche under guardianship, demanding that none of its stirrings betrays a capacity of its own. Yet this attitude reveals nothing so much as a lack of confidence in the durability of the causal link extending between the physical and the mental. Even when investigation reveals the mental as the primary cause of a phenomenon, deeper inquiry will eventually trace the path all the way to the organic basis of the mental. Yet where the mental represents the limit of our current knowledge—what ought to be the final station—it need not be denied on that account.

It will continue. I might update my condition here shortly: it’s been about 10 days since my surgery, but I still don’t feel fully well. Still, I need to improve, as I have to work on Tuesday! Take care, everyone.🙏✌

Concise, Straightforward, yet Meaningfully Rich!

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In these moments, my thoughts are preoccupied with worry, discomfort and concern. It’s not about my own condition but about our beloved daughter-in-law, who has been diagnosed with meningitis. Therefore, I just impart a profound insight from Carl Jung that resonates deeply. 🙏💖

My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul; otherwise, you breed dragons and devils in your heart.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, p. 232

There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 8

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Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources (Traumreize und Traumquellen)

Hello, friends! Building on my previous post, I want to share a new insight from Freud’s dream analysis. He emphasizes the crucial role dreams play and their profound impact on our lives. I’ve often observed that during sleep and dreaming, my body feels more sensitive than when I am awake.
In dreams, our souls are much more attuned to our bodies’ condition and our traumas.
As Dr Jung said:
“For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche, and the soul is the psychological experience of the body. So it is really one and the same thing.”
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 355.
And:
Soul and body are not two things. They are one.
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 355

Ad 3) Internal, organic bodily stimulus

If we look for the sources of dreams not outside the organism but within it, we must remember that almost all our internal organs—which, in a healthy state, scarcely make us aware of their existence—become sources of usually unpleasant sensations in states of irritation or illness. These sensations must be placed on the same level as the external stimuli that cause pain or other sensations. These are very old observations that led Strümpell, for example, to state (p. 107): “In sleep, the soul attains a much deeper and broader sensory awareness of its corporeality than in the waking state, and is compelled to receive and be affected by certain sensory impressions originating from parts and changes in its body of which it was unaware while awake.” Aristotle himself considered it entirely possible that one might be alerted in a dream to the onset of a disease that is not yet perceptible in the waking state (by virtue of the amplification the dream accords to impressions; see p. 13 above), and medical authors—who were certainly far from believing in any prophetic gift of dreams—have acknowledged this significance of dreams, at least with regard to the early warning signs of illness. (Cf. M. Simon, p. 31, and many earlier authors.)

There appears to be no shortage of authenticated examples of such diagnostic functions of dreams, even in recent times. For instance, Tissié—citing Artigues (Essai sur la valeur séméiologique des rêves[Treatise on the Semiotic Value of Dreams])—reports the case of a forty-three-year-old woman who, while seemingly in perfect health, was troubled by anxiety dreams for several years; a medical examination later revealed the onset of a heart condition to which she soon succumbed.

Established disorders of the internal organs evidently act as dream-precipitating factors for a considerable number of people. Attention is often drawn to the prevalence of anxiety dreams among those suffering from heart and lung diseases; indeed, many authors place such emphasis on this connection between dream life and physical ailment that I may here content myself with a mere reference to the literature (Radestock, Spitta, Maury, M. Simon, Tissié). Tissié even suggests that diseased organs leave a characteristic imprint on dream content. The dreams of cardiac patients are usually very brief and end with a sudden, startled awakening; the scenario of death under gruesome circumstances almost invariably plays a role in their content. Patients with lung disease dream of suffocation, crowding, and flight, and they are subject in striking numbers to the familiar nightmare—which, incidentally, Börner was able to induce experimentally by having subjects lie face down and covering their respiratory openings. In cases of digestive disorders, dreams contain imagery related to eating and disgust. Finally, the influence of sexual arousal on dream content is palpable in everyone’s experience and provides the strongest support for the entire theory of dream formation triggered by organic stimuli.

When one examines the literature on dreams, it is also quite unmistakable that certain authors (Maury, Weygandt) were led to study the problems of dreaming by the influence of their own pathological conditions on the content of their dreams.

Incidentally, the addition to the sources of dreams drawn from these indisputably established facts is not as significant as one might suppose. After all, dreaming is a phenomenon that occurs in healthy individuals—perhaps in everyone, and perhaps every night—and for which organic disease is evidently not an essential condition. For us, however, the question is not where specific dreams originate, but rather what the source of stimulation might be for the ordinary dreams of normal people.

Yet only one further step is needed to arrive at a source of dreams more abundant than any before it and seemingly inexhaustible. If it is established that the interior of the body, when diseased, becomes a source of dream stimuli, and if we grant that the mind during sleep—cut off from the outside world—can pay greater attention to the body’s interior, then it is natural to assume that the organs need not actually be diseased in order to transmit excitations to the sleeping mind, excitations that somehow turn into dream images. What we perceive only dimly in the waking state—as a general bodily sensation defined merely by its quality, to which, in the physicians’ view, all organ systems contribute—would, if it exerted a powerful influence at night and became active through its individual components, be the most potent and, at the same time, the most common source for the generation of dream images. The remaining task would then be to investigate the rules by which these organic stimuli are transformed into dream images.

We have here touched on the theory of dream formation that has become the preferred one among medical authors. The obscurity in which the core of our being—the moi splanchnique, as Tissié calls it—is hidden from our knowledge, and the obscurity surrounding the origin of dreams, are too closely related not to be linked. Moreover, the line of reasoning that identifies vegetative organic sensation as the source of dreams has another attraction for the physician: it allows for an etiological connection between dreams and mental disorders—phenomena that show such striking similarities—since alterations in general somatic sensation and stimuli arising in the internal organs are also considered to be of far-reaching significance in the genesis of psychoses. It is therefore not surprising that the theory of somatic stimulation can be traced to more than one originator who proposed it independently.

~Carl Jung; The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man; CW 10: 195.

For many authors, Schopenhauer’s line of reasoning, developed in 1851, became decisive. Our worldview arises within us because our intellect casts the impressions it receives from outside into the forms of time, space, and causality. Stimuli originating within the organism—specifically from the sympathetic nervous system—at most exert an unconscious influence on our mood during the day.
At night, however, once the overpowering effect of daytime impressions has faded, those impressions rising from within can command attention—much as, at night, we can hear the trickling of a spring that the noise of the day had made inaudible. Yet how else is the intellect to respond to these stimuli than by carrying out its own characteristic function? It therefore transforms the stimuli into forms filling space and time—forms that move along the thread of causality—and thus the dream is born. Scherner and, later, Volkelt sought to examine more deeply the relationship between bodily stimuli and dream images; we shall reserve our assessment of their work for the section on dream theories.

In a particularly rigorous study, the psychiatrist Krauß traced the origin of dreams—as well as deliriums and delusions—back to the same source: the organically conditioned sensation. It is scarcely possible to conceive of any part of the organism that could not serve as the starting point for a dream or a delusional image. However, the organically conditioned sensation “can be divided into two categories: 1) that of general bodily states (coenesthesias), and 2) that of specific sensations inherent to the principal systems of the vegetative organism—of which we have distinguished five groups: a) muscular sensations, b) pneumatic, c) gastric, d) sexual, and e) peripheral.” (P. 33 of the second article.)

Krauß describes the process by which dream images arise from bodily stimuli as follows: the sensation that has been aroused, in accordance with some law of association, evokes a related mental image and combines with it to form an organic entity; however, consciousness relates to this entity differently than it normally would. For it pays no attention to the sensation itself but directs its focus entirely toward the accompanying mental images, which is precisely why this phenomenon could go unrecognised for so long (pp. 11 ff.). Krauß also uses a specific term for this process: the “transubstantiation” of sensations into dream images (p. 24).

While the influence of organic bodily stimuli on dream formation is almost universally acknowledged today, the question of the law governing the relationship between the two receives widely varying—and often obscure—answers. Within the framework of the bodily stimulus theory, the specific task of dream interpretation is to trace a dream’s content back to the organic stimuli that caused it; yet, unless one accepts the rules of interpretation discovered by Scherner, one is often confronted with the awkward fact that the source of the organic stimulus reveals itself through nothing other than the content of the dream itself.

However, there is a fairly consistent interpretation of various forms of dreams—called “typical” because they recur in so many people with very similar content. These include the well-known dreams of falling from a height, losing teeth, flying, and the embarrassment of being naked or scantily clad. The latter is said to arise simply from noticing, while asleep, that one has kicked off the bedclothes and is lying exposed. The dream of losing teeth is attributed to “dental irritation”—though this does not necessarily imply a pathological state of excitation in the teeth. According to Strümpell, the dream of flying is an apt image used by the psyche to interpret the quantity of stimulation arising from the rising and falling of the lungs, at a moment when tactile sensation in the chest has faded to the point of unconsciousness. It is this latter circumstance that mediates the sensation associated with the idea of ​​floating. The sensation of falling from a height is said to arise when—after conscious awareness of tactile pressure has been lost—an arm drops against the body, or a drawn-up knee suddenly straightens; this restores the sensation of tactile pressure to consciousness, while the transition to conscious awareness is psychically embodied as a dream of falling (Strümpell, p. 118). The weakness of these plausible explanatory attempts evidently lies in the fact that, without further evidence, they allow various groups of organic sensations either to vanish from mental perception or to force themselves upon it, simply in order to create the constellation favourable to the explanation. Incidentally, I shall have occasion later to return to these typical dreams and their origins.

M. Simon has attempted to derive certain rules regarding the influence of organic stimuli on the determination of dream content by comparing a series of similar dreams. He states (p. 34): If, during sleep, an organic system that normally participates in the expression of an affect enters—due to some other cause—the state of excitation into which it is otherwise thrown by that affect, then the resulting dream will contain ideas appropriate to that affect.

Another rule states (p. 35): If an organic system is active, excited, or disturbed during sleep, the dream will produce images related to the performance of the organic function carried out by that system.

Mourly Vold undertook the task of experimentally demonstrating, within a specific area, the influence on dream formation posited by the theory of somatic stimuli. He conducted experiments in which he altered the positions of the sleeper’s limbs and compared the resulting dreams with these modifications. He presents the following propositions as his findings.

  1. The position of a limb in a dream roughly corresponds to its position in reality; that is, one dreams of a static state of the limb that matches the actual one.
  2. When one dreams of the movement of a limb, that movement always takes a form in which one of the positions assumed during its execution corresponds to the actual position.
  3. One may also attribute the position of one’s own limb in a dream to another person.
  4. One may also dream that the movement in question is impeded.
  5. In the dream, the limb in the position concerned may appear as an animal or a monster, establishing a certain analogy between the two.
  6. The position of a limb in a dream can give rise to thoughts related to that limb; for instance, if one is occupied with one’s fingers, one dreams of numbers.
    From such findings, I would conclude that even the theory of somatic stimuli cannot entirely eliminate the apparent freedom involved in determining the dream images to be evoked.

It will continue, though I don’t yet know exactly when. On Monday I’m heading off again—not far this time, just to a nearby hospital for another surgery!
My last break (holiday) was a mix of heaven and hell. For about two weeks now, I’ve been spending a huge amount of time in the bathroom, and it’s absolutely no fun at all!!
Thank you all. Be safe and well. 🙏🤗💖

Another line from an elderly man!

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I’m sharing a brief update today to avoid repeating last week’s mistake of not mentioning my absence. After three days, I took a short trip with my wife and kids. We’re also planning another two-week holiday near Athens, Greece, starting on Sunday. Although my current situation isn’t ideal, I feel like I’m in a twilight zone (pardon me; I pray to be able to empty my bladder every time I go to the toilet!). Still, I don’t want to cancel this trip, which my wife is very excited about. So, after the vacation, before the vacation!

Reflecting on my age, I don’t feel like I’ll be seventy-two soon. I don’t act like a typical person my age, and people are often surprised when they find out how old I am. I recognise that ageing brings wisdom and value: as Carl Jung said, “Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” This idea divides human life into two psychological phases, shifting the focus from survival to inner purpose. “Die Lebenswende” (translated as “The Turning Point of Life” or “The Stages of Life”), a pivotal 1930/1931 essay by Carl Jung.


Certainly, he focuses more on the mental aspect than the physical, as I observe daily that I cannot act or react as I once did. There’s a fleeting warning to slow down; I’m no longer as quick as I used to be.

Eventually, we all age gradually and need to accept our situation, but we should never lose sight of the child within us! Also, continue researching and asking questions; learning never ends. Take care, dear friends.

“Song For The Asking”
Here is my song for the asking
Ask me, and I will play
So sweetly, I’ll make you smile
This is my tune for the taking
Take it, don’t turn away
I’ve been waiting all my life
Thinking it over, I’ve been sad
Thinking it over, I’d be more than glad
To change my ways for the asking
Ask me, and I will play
All the love that I hold inside

PS: I’ll leave the comment open, though I might reply later. You might be aware that I’m on my way and uncertain when I’ll be able to respond. I don’t want to miss your generosity; thanks in advance. 🥰🙏💖

There is always a Beginning to Grasp the Whole! P 7

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Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources (Traumreize und Traumquellen)

While reading and translating this study from Freud’s work on dreams, I was reminded of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Night Terrors,” due to its similarities to REM sleep. Of course, Freud was unaware of this concept; REM sleep was officially identified in 1953 by Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman at the University of Chicago. Aserinsky, then a graduate student, observed rapid eye movements during sleep in both infants and adults and linked these active sleep phases to vivid dreaming.
Anyway, in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Night Terrors” (Season 4, Episode 17), the USS Enterprise crew becomes trapped in a space anomaly called a Tyken’s Rift. This Rift prevents them from entering REM sleep, leading to widespread paranoia, intense hallucinations, and aggressive behaviour unless they find a remedy. As a result, they are unable to sleep or dream and begin to daydream.

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is a unique sleep phase marked by quick eye movements, increased brain activity, and vivid dreams. It happens several times each night, making up 20-25% of an adult’s sleep. REM sleep is essential for both mental and physical health, boosting cognitive abilities such as memory, learning, and emotional regulation by helping the brain process and organise information, consolidate memories, and discard unnecessary data. Good REM sleep enhances problem-solving, creativity, and emotional stability. It also plays a role in physical recovery, especially in brain development during infancy and childhood. Disruptions to REM sleep are associated with mood disorders, memory issues, and weakened immune function. Long-term REM deprivation may lead to irritability, concentration problems, and increased stress sensitivity. Overall, REM sleep is crucial for brain function, emotional health, and physical well-being.

So, let’s now return to Freud’s concerns about dreams, stimuli, and their sources. (previous)

Ad 2) Internal (subjective) sensory excitation (Ad 2) Innere (subjektive) Sinneserregung)

Despite all objections, one must admit that the role of objective sensory excitations during sleep as dream stimuli is indisputable. If, in terms of their nature and frequency, these stimuli appear insufficient to explain all dream images, one is prompted to look for other sources of dreams that operate analogously. I do not know where the idea first arose of invoking internal (subjective) excitations within the sense organs alongside external sensory stimuli; it is a fact, however, that this is done with varying degrees of emphasis in all recent accounts of dream aetiology. “Furthermore,” says Wundt (p. 363), “subjective visual and auditory sensations—those known to us from the waking state as the ‘light chaos’ of the dark visual field, as ringing or buzzing in the ears, etc., and among them especially subjective retinal excitations—play a significant role in dream illusions, explaining the dream’s curious tendency to conjure up before the eye a multitude of similar or identical objects. We see countless birds, butterflies, fish, colourful beads, flowers, and the like spread out before us. Here, the ‘light dust’ of the dark visual field has assumed fantastic shapes; the numerous points of light that compose it are embodied in the dream as an equal number of individual images, which, owing to the mobility of the light chaos, are perceived as moving objects. – It is likely here, too, that the dream’s strong tendency towards a wide variety of animal forms has its roots, as the richness of their shapes readily adapts to the specific forms of these subjective light images.”

As a source of dream images, subjective sensory excitations evidently have the advantage of not being dependent on external chance, as objective ones are.
They are, so to speak, at the disposal of any explanation that requires them. However, they fall short of objective sensory stimuli in that it is difficult, or even impossible, to obtain the kind of confirmation of their role as dream-instigators that observation and experiment yield for the latter. The primary evidence for the dream-inducing power of subjective sensory excitations comes from so-called hypnagogic hallucinations, which Johannes Müller described as “fantastic visual phenomena.” These are often highly vivid, shifting images that tend to appear during the period of falling asleep—quite regularly in many people—and may persist for a time even after the eyes are opened. Maury, who was deeply influenced by them, devoted a detailed study to them and asserted their connection—or rather, their identity—with dream images (a view also held, incidentally, by Johannes Müller). According to Maury, their emergence requires a certain mental passivity, a relaxation of attentional tension (pp. 59 et seq.). Yet it suffices to lapse into such a state of lethargy for even a second—given the appropriate predisposition—to experience a hypnagogic hallucination, from which one may wake up again, until this interplay of drifting off to sleep, repeated several times, finally concludes. If one wakes up after a relatively short time, as Maury notes, it is often possible to identify the very same images in the dream that had appeared as hypnagogic hallucinations before falling asleep (p. 134). That is what happened to Maury once with a series of grotesque figures—featuring distorted expressions and peculiar hairstyles—that pestered him with incredible persistence as he drifted off to sleep, and which he recalled dreaming about upon waking. On another occasion, while suffering from hunger due to a strict diet he had imposed on himself, he saw—hypnagogically—a bowl and a hand armed with a fork, taking some food from the bowl. In his dream, he found himself at a lavishly spread table and heard the sounds the diners made with their forks. Yet another time, as he fell asleep with irritated, aching eyes, he experienced a hypnagogic hallucination of microscopic characters that he had to decipher one by one with great effort; upon being woken after an hour, he recalled a dream featuring an open book printed in tiny type, which he had been obliged to read through laboriously.

Much like these images, auditory hallucinations of words, names, and similar sounds can also occur hypnagogically and then repeat themselves in the dream—acting, as it were, like an overture announcing the leitmotifs of the opera that begins with it. G. Trumbull Ladd, a more recent observer of hypnagogic hallucinations, follows the same path as Joh. Müller and Maury. Through practice, he managed to rouse himself abruptly from sleep—without opening his eyes—two to five minutes after drifting off; this allowed him to compare the retinal sensations, which were just fading, with the dream images persisting in his memory.
He asserts that a close relationship between the two was evident in every instance: the luminous points and lines of the retina’s intrinsic light provided, as it were, the outline or schematic framework for the dream figures perceived by the mind. For example, a dream in which he saw lines of clear print—which he proceeded to read and study—corresponded to an arrangement of luminous retinal points in parallel lines. To use his words: the clearly printed page he had read in his dream dissolved into an object that, to his waking perception, resembled a fragment of an actual printed sheet viewed—from too far away to discern details—through a tiny hole in a piece of paper. Ladd—without, incidentally, underestimating the central role of the phenomenon—suggests that hardly any visual dream occurs within us that does not draw upon the material of the retina’s internal states of excitation. This applies particularly to dreams occurring shortly after falling asleep in a dark room.

A sequel will continue, though I can’t say when I’ll be able to do this or any other post! Thank you all. 💖🙏