sleep

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.🙏✌

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. 💖🙏