stamped by the senses to the true complex hallucinations.[1] In Pick’s case, for instance, one sees that the patient, who persuades herself that she is the Empress Elizabeth, gradually loses herself in her dreams to such an extent that her condition must be regarded as a true “twilight” state: Later it passes over into hysterical delirium, when her dream phantasies become typical hallucinations. The pathological liar, who becomes involved through his phantasies, behaves exactly like a child who loses himself in his play, or like the actor who loses himself in his part.[2] There is here no fundamental distinction from somnambulic dissociation of personality, but only a difference of degree, which rests upon the intensity of the primary auto-suggestibility or disintegration of the psychic elements. The more consciousness becomes dissociated, the greater becomes the plasticity of the dream situation, the less becomes the amount of conscious lying, and of consciousness in general. This being carried away by interest in the object is what Freud calls hysterical identification. For instance, to Erler’s[3] acutely hysterical patient there appeared hypnagogically little riders made of paper, who so took possession of her imagination that she had the feeling of being herself one of them. Similar phenomena normally occur to us in dreams in general, in which we think like “hysterics.”[4]
The complete abandonment to the interesting image explains also the wonderful naturalness of pseudological or somnambulic representation—a degree unattainable in conscious acting. The less waking consciousness intervenes by reflection and reasoning, the more certain and convincing becomes the objectivation of the dream, e.g. the roof-climbing of somnambulists.
Our case has another analogy with pseudologia phantastica:
- ↑ Cf. Behr, Allg. Zeit. f. Psych., LVI., 918, and Ballet, l.c., p. 44.
- ↑ Cf. Redlich, Allg. Zeit. f. Psych.. LVII., 66.
- ↑ Erler, Allg. Zeit. f. Psych., XXXV., 21.
- ↑ Binet, “Les hystériques ne sont pas pour nous que des sujets d’élection agrandissant des phénomènes qu’on doit nécessairement retrouver à quelque degré chez une foule d’autres personnes qui ne sont ni atteintes ni même effleurées par la nêvrose hystérique” (“Les altérations,” p. 29).
