Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/93

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LITERATURE OF THE DREAM
75

character (based on delusions, obsessive impulses) had their origin in dreams. Guislain describes a case in which sleep was replaced by an intermittent insanity.

There is hardly any doubt that along with the psychology of the dream, the physician will one day occupy himself with the psychopathology of the dream.

In cases of convalescence from insanity, it is often especially obvious that, while the functions of the day are normal, the dream life may still belong to the psychosis. Gregory is said first to have called attention to such cases (cited by Krauss39). Macario (reported by Tissié) gives account of a maniac who, a week after his complete recovery again experienced in dreams the flight of ideas and the passionate impulses of his disease.

Concerning the changes to which the dream life is subjected in chronic psychotic persons, very few investigations have so far been made. On the other hand, timely attention has been called to the inner relationship between the dream and mental disturbance, which shows itself in an extensive agreement of the manifestations occurring to both. According to Maury,47 Cubanis, in his Rapports du physique et du moral, first called attention to this; following him came Lelut, J. Moreau, and more particularly the philosopher Maine de Biran. To be sure, the comparison is still older. Radestock54 begins the chapter dealing with this comparison, by giving a collection of expressions showing the analogy between the dream and insanity. Kant somewhere says: "The lunatic is a dreamer in the waking state." According to Krauss "Insanity is a dream with the senses awake." Schopenhauer terms the dream a short insanity, and insanity a long dream. Hagen describes the delirium as dream life which has not been caused by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in the Physiological Psychology, declares: "As a matter of fact we may in the dream ourselves live through almost all symptoms which we meet in the insane asylums."

The specific agreements, on the basis of which such an identification commends itself to the understanding, are enumerated by Spitta.64 And indeed, very similarly, by Maury in the following grouping: "(1) Suspension or at least retardation, of self-consciousness, consequent ignorance of the