742 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



aggeration and repetition; the Cartesian flea-bite becomes a sword- 

 thrust, and a trifling weight seems an Etna upon the chest. The 

 same dream recurs countless times with wearying monotony. The 

 memory of experiences long since past is vivified; the instincts 

 and the habitual tendencies have free play and develop immoder- 

 ately; even the hereditaty tendencies may intervene in intense 

 degree. It is true that the dreamer may feel that it is all unreal 

 and fictitious, but he is carried along by the turbulence of his 

 imagery, and he frequently experiences the most violent emotions 

 from his images. 



Side by side with this exaggeration of certain mental functions 

 there occurs a diminution of other mental functions; and some 

 of the latter are most peculiar and extremely characteristic. It 

 is evident that the consciousness of personality is disordered, and 

 that a duality of personality tends to rise. Charma and Delboeuf 

 report dreams in which a school-master asks them a question; 

 they are unable to answer, but a school-mate rises at their side and 

 to their astonishment gives the correct answer. In another case 

 the dreamer says to a child, "Be careful that you do not tumble," 

 and he himself slips. Thereupon the child replies, "Why don't 

 you follow the advice which you give so freely to others ? " Again, 

 a dreamer who has a pain in his head meets a child who is also 

 suffering from headache, and asks the child to suggest a remedy. 

 Will and attention are wholly lacking in dreams. There is no real 

 adaptation either to internal, to external, or to future conditions. 

 There is no resistance, no control, no criticism. 



I should like to mention a particular form which the diminution 

 of attention assumes in dreams. Several authors (Egger in France, 

 Schneider in Germany) have pointed out that in dreams only the 

 centre of the mental picture is illuminated; the outlying parts 

 are invisible, or rather they are non-existent. The pictures appear 

 without any setting. And it is just this absence of surrounding ob- 

 jects, i. e., of environment of thought, which explains the absence of 

 comparison and criticism that is characteristic of dreams. 



The study of one's memory of dreams reveals other interesting 

 characteristics of the enfeeblement of attention. In the first place, 

 dream-experiences do not become firmly fixed upon the memory. 

 When we awake, we fail to remember what we have dreamed, and 

 dreams which do not recur are forgotten as soon as they take place. 

 This is the form of oblivescence which, in another connection, I have 

 called continuous amnesia, 1 and it is interesting to note that it is to 

 be found in dreams. But there is an even more peculiar feature; 

 Delage, de Sanctis, and Pilcz have observed that the striking events 

 and the intensive emotions of the day do not reappear in the dreams 

 1 Ntvroses et idtes fixes, 1898, i, p. 109. 



