THE LOGIC OF DREAMS

The World of Dreams by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE LOGIC OF DREAMS

III. THE LOGIC OF DREAMS

All Dreaming is a Process of Reasoning—The Fundamental Character of Reasoning—Reasoning as a Synthesis of Images—Dream Reasoning Instinctive and Automatic—It is also Consciously carried on—This a result of the Fundamental Split in Intelligence—Dissociation—Dreaming as a Disturbance of Apperception.

IN dreams we are always reasoning. That is a general characteristic of dreams which is worth noting, because its significance is not usually recognised. It is sometimes imagined that reason is in abeyance during sleep. So far from this being the case, we may almost be said to reason much more during sleep than when we are awake. That our reasoning is bad, often even preposterous, that it constantly ignores the most elementary facts of waking life, scarcely affects the question. All dreaming is a process of reasoning. That artful confusion of ideas and images which, at the outset, I referred to as the most constant feature of dream mechanism is nothing but a process of reasoning, a perpetual effort to argue out harmoniously the absurdly limited and incongruous data present to sleeping consciousness. Binet, grounding his conclusions on hypnotic experiments, finds that reasoning is the fundamental part of all thinking, the very texture of thought. It is founded on perception itself, which already contains all the elements of the ancient syllogism. For in all perception, as Binet plausibly argues, there is a succession of three images, of which the first fuses with the second, which, in its turn, suggests the third. Now this establishment of new associations, this construction of images, which, as we may easily convince ourselves, is precisely what takes place in dreaming, is reasoning itself.

Reasoning may thus be regarded as a synthesis of images suggested by resemblance and contiguity, indeed a sort of logical vision, more intense even than actual vision, since it is capable of producing hallucinations. To reasoning all forms of mental activity may finally be reduced; mind, as Wundt has said, is a thing that reasons. Or, as H. R. Marshall puts it, 'reason is a mode of instinct.'[44] When we apply these general statements to dreaming, we may see that the whole phenomenon of dreaming is really the same process of image formation, based on resemblance and contiguity. Every dream is the outcome of this strenuous, wide-ranging instinct to reason. The supposed 'imaginative faculty,' regarded as so highly active during sleep, is the inevitable play of this automatic logic.

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The syllogistic arrangement of dream imagery is carried on in an absolutely automatic manner; it is spontaneous, involuntary, without effort. Sleeping consciousness, though all the time it is weaving the data that reach it into some pattern of reason with immense ingenuity, is quite unaware that it is itself responsible for the arguments thus presented. In the evening, before going to bed, I glance casually through a newspaper; I see the usual kind of news, revolutionists in Russia, Irish affairs, crimes, etc.; I see also a caricature of the Liberal Party as a headless horseman on a barren plain. During sleep these unconnected impressions revive, float into dream consciousness, and spontaneously fall into as reasonable a whole as could be expected. I dream that by some chemical or mechanical device a man has succeeded in conveying the impression that he is headless, and is preparing to gallop across some district in Russia, with the idea of making so mysterious an impression upon the credulous population that he will be accepted as a great religious prophet. I distinctly see him careering across sands like those of the seashore, but I avoid going near him. Then I see figures approaching him in the far distance, and his progress ceases. I learn subsequently that he has been arrested and found to be an Irish criminal. A coherent story is thus formed out of a few random impressions.

All such typical dreams are syllogistic. There is, that is to say, as Binet expresses it, the establishment of an association between two states of consciousness[59] by means of an intermediate state which resembles the first, is associated with the second, and by fusing with the first associates it with the second. In this dream, for instance, we have the three terms of (1) headless horseman, (2) revolutionary crime, and (3) Russia and Ireland. The intermediate term, by the fact that it resembles the first, and is contiguous in the mind with the third, seems to fuse the first and the third terms, so that the headless horseman becomes an Irish criminal in Russia. In dreaming life, as in waking life, our minds are always moving by the construction of similar syllogisms, marked by more or less freedom and audacity.

It is unnecessary to multiply examples of the instinctive and persistent efforts on the part of the sleeping mind to construct a coherent whole out of the incongruous elements that come before it; nearly every dream furnishes some proof of this profoundly rooted impulse.[45] It is instructive, however, to consider the nature and the limitations of dreaming reason.

This rationalisation and logical construction of imagery, it is necessary to realise, occurs at the very threshold of sleeping consciousness. The dreamer makes no effort to arrange isolated imagery; the arrangement has already occurred when the imagery comes to the focus of sleeping consciousness; so that this reasoning and arranging process is so fundamental and instinctive that it occurs in a region which may be[60] said to be subconscious to dreaming consciousness. If it were not so our dreams would never be real to us, for even dreaming consciousness could not accept as real a hallucination which it had itself arranged. In this sense it is true that, to some extent, our dreams are often based on an ultimate personal and emotional foundation.[46]

But this ingeniously guided and rationalised confusion of imagery by no means covers the whole of the reasoning process in dreams. This is a double process. It is first manifested subconsciously in the formation of dream imagery, and then it is manifested consciously in the dreamer's reaction to the imagery presented to him. Every dream is made up of action and reaction between a pseudo-universe and a freely responding individual. On the one side there is the irresistibly imposed imagery—really, though we know it not, conditioned and instinctively moulded by our own organism—which stands for what in our waking hours we may term God and Nature; on the other side is the Soul struggling with all its might, and very inefficient means, against the awful powers that oppose it. The problem of the waking world is presented over again[61] in this battle between the dreaming protagonist and his dreamed fate. Both of these elements are instinctively reasoned out, consciously or subconsciously; both are imperfect fragments from the rich reservoir of human personality.

The things that happen to us in dreams, the pseudo-external world that is presented to sleeping consciousness—the imagery, that is, that floats before the mental eye of sleep—are a perpetual source of astonishment and argument to the dreamer. A large part of dreaming activity is concerned with the attempt to explain and reason out the phenomena we thus encounter, to construct a theory of them, or to determine the attitude which we ought to take up with regard to them. Most dreams will furnish evidence of this reasoning process.

Thus a lady dreamed that an acquaintance wished to send a small sum of money to a person in Ireland. She rashly offered to take it over to Ireland. On arriving home she began to repent of her promise, as the weather was extremely wild and cold. She proceeded, however, to make preparations for dressing warmly, and went to consult an Irish friend, who said she would have to be floated over to Ireland tightly jammed in a crab basket. On returning home she fully discussed the matter with her husband, who thought it would be folly to undertake such a journey, and she finally relinquished it, with great relief. In this dream—the elements of which could all be accounted for—the association between sending money and the post-office, which would at once occur to waking consciousness, was closed; consciousness[62] was a prey to such suggestions as reached it, but on the basis of those suggestions it reasoned and concluded quite sagaciously.

Again (after looking at photographs of paintings and statuary, and also reading about the theatre), I dreamed that I was at the theatre, and that the performers were acting and dancing in a more or less, in some cases completely, nude state, but with admirable propriety and grace, and very charming effect. At first I was extremely surprised at so remarkable an innovation; but then I reflected that the beginnings of such a movement must have long been in progress on the stage unknown to me; and I proceeded to rehearse the reasons which made such a movement desirable. On another occasion, I dreamed that I was in the large plaza of a Spanish city (Pamplona possibly furnishing the elements of the picture), and that the governor emerged from his residence facing the square and began talking in English to the subordinate officials who were waiting to receive him. The real reason why he talked English was, of course, the simple one that he spoke the language native to the dreamer. But in my dream I was extremely puzzled why he should speak English. I looked carefully into his face to assure myself that he was not really English, and I finally concluded that he was speaking English in order not to be understood by the bystanders. Once more, I dreamed that I was looking at an architectural drawing of a steeple, of quite original design, somewhat in the shape of a cross, but very elongated. I attempted in[63] my dream to account for this elongation, and concluded that it was intended to neutralise the foreshortening caused when the steeple would be looked at from below.

There is, we here see afresh, a fundamental split in dreaming intelligence. On the one side there is the subconscious, yet often highly intelligent, combination of imagery along rational although often bizarre lines. On the other side is concentrated the conscious intelligence of the dreamer, struggling to comprehend and explain the problems offered by the pseudo-external imagery thus presented to it. One might almost say that in dreams subconscious intelligence is playing a game with conscious intelligence. In a dream previously narrated (p. 43) subconscious intelligence offered to my dreaming consciousness the mysterious substance selvdrolla, and bid me guess what it was; I could not guess. And subconscious intelligence presented the drawing of the elongated steeple, and I was able to offer an explanation which seems fairly satisfactory. So that, in the world of dreams, it may be said, we see over again the process which, James Hinton was accustomed to say, we see in the universe of our waking life; God or Nature playing with man, compelling him to join in a game of hide-and-seek, and setting him problems which he must solve as best he can. It may well be, one may add, that the dream process furnishes the key to the metaphysical and even, indeed, the physical problems of our waking thoughts, and that the puzzles of the universe are questions that we ourselves unconsciously invent for ourselves to solve.

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We can never go behind the fantastic universe of our dreams. The validity of that universe is for dreaming consciousness unassailable. We may try to understand it and explain it, but we can never deny it, any more than we can deny the universe of our waking life, however we may attempt to analyse it. Dreaming consciousness never realises that the universe that confronts it springs from the same source as itself springs. I dreamed that a man was looking at his own house from a distance, and on the balcony he saw his daughter and a man by her side. 'Who is that man flirting with my daughter?' he asked. He produced a field-glass, and, on looking through it, he exclaimed: 'Good Heavens, it's myself!' Dreaming consciousness accepted this situation with perfect equanimity and solemnity. In the dream world there is, indeed, nothing else to do. We may puzzle over the facts presented to us; we may try to explain them; but it would be futile to deny them, even when they involve the possibility of a man being in two places at the same time.[47]

Only to a few people there comes occasionally in dreams a dim realisation of the unreality of the experience:[65] 'After all, it does not matter,' they are able to say to themselves with more or less conviction, 'this is only a dream.' Thus one lady, dreaming that she is trying to kill three large snakes by stamping on them, wonders, while still dreaming, what it signifies to dream of snakes,[48] and another lady, when she dreams that she is in any unpleasant position—about to be shot, for instance—often says to herself: 'Never mind, I shall wake before it happens.'

I have never detected in my own dreams any recognition that they are dreams. I may say, indeed, that I do not consider that such a thing is really possible, though it has been borne witness to by many philosophers and others from Aristotle and Synesius and Gassendi onwards. The phenomenon occurs; the person who says to himself that he is dreaming believes that he is still dreaming, but one may be permitted to doubt that he is. It seems far more probable that he has for a moment, without realising it, emerged at the waking surface of consciousness.[49] The only approach to a recognition of dreaming as dreaming that I have[66] experienced, is connected with the reduplication that may sometimes occur, and the sense of a fatalistic predetermination. Thus I dreamed (with nothing that could suggest the dream) that I was one of a group of people who, as I realised, were carrying out a drama in which by force of circumstance I was destined to be the villain, having, by bad treatment, been driven to revenge. I knew at the outset how events would turn out, and yet, though it seemed real life, I felt vaguely that it was all a play that was merely being rehearsed. I had attained in the world of dreams to the Shakespearian feeling that it was all a stage, and I merely a player. So we may become the Prosperos of the life of dreams.[50]

This quality of dreaming consciousness is a manifestation, and the chief one, of what is called dissociation.[51] In dissociation we have a phenomenon which runs through the whole of the dreaming life, and is scarcely less fundamental than the process of fusion by which the imagery is built up. The fact that the[67] reasoning of dreams is usually bad, is due partly to the absence of memory elements that would be present to waking consciousness, and partly to the absence of sensory elements to check the false reasoning which, without them, appears to us conclusive. That is to say, that there is a process of dissociation by which ordinary channels of association are temporarily blocked, perhaps by exhaustion of their conductive elements, and the conditions are prepared for the formation of the hallucination. It is, as Parish has argued, in sleep and in those sleep-resembling states called hypnagogic that a condition of dissociation leading to hallucination is most apt to occur.[52]

Thus it is that though the psychic frontier of the sleeping state is more extended than that of the normal waking state, the focus of sleeping consciousness is more contracted than that of waking consciousness. In other words, while facts are liable to drift from a very wide psychic distance under our dreaming attention, we cannot direct the searchlight of that attention at will over so wide a field as when we are awake. We deal with fewer psychic elements, though those elements are drawn from a wider field.

The psychology of 'attention' is, indeed, a very[68] disputed matter.[53] There is no agreement as to whether it is central or peripheral, motor or sensory. As we have seen in the previous chapter, it seems reasonable to conclude, according to a convenient distinction established by Ribot, that spontaneous attention is persistent during sleep, but voluntary attention is at a minimum. In some such way, it seems, whatever theory of attention we adopt, we have to recognise that in dreams the attention is limited.

Such a position is fortified by the conclusion of those who look at the problem, not so much in terms of attention as in terms of apperception. Apperception, according to Wundt, differs from perception in that while the latter is the appearance of a content in consciousness, the former is its reception into the state of attention. Or, as Stout defines it, apperception is 'the process by which a mental system appropriates a new element, or otherwise receives a fresh determination.'[54] Apperception is, therefore, the final stage of attention, and ultimately, as Wundt remarks, it is one with will. Apperception and will, as most psychologists consider, like attention, are enfeebled and diminished, if not abolished, in sleep.

In dreams, it thus comes about, we accept the facts[69] presented to us—that is the fundamental assumption of dream life—and we argue about those 'facts' with the help of all the mental resources which are at our disposal, only those resources are frequently inadequate. Sometimes they are startlingly inadequate, to such an extent, indeed, that we are unaware of possibilities which would be the very first to suggest themselves to waking consciousness. Thus the lady who wished to send a small sum of money to Ireland is not aware of the existence of postal orders, and when she decides to convey the money herself, she is not aware of the existence of boat-trains, or even of boats; she might have been living in palaeolithic times. She discusses the question in a clear and logical manner with the resources at her disposal, and reaches a rational conclusion, but considerations which would be the first to occur to waking consciousness are at the moment absent from sleeping consciousness; whole mental tracts have been dissociated, switched off from communication with consciousness; they are 'asleep,' even to sleeping consciousness.[55]

The result is that we are not only dominated by the suggestion of our visions, but we are unable adequately to appreciate and criticise the situations which are presented to us. We instinctively continue to reason, and to reason clearly and logically with the material at[70] our disposal, but our reasoning is hopelessly absurd. We perceive in dreams, but we do not apperceive; we cannot, that is to say, test and sift the new experience, and co-ordinate it adequately with the whole body of our acquired mental possessions. The phenomena of dreaming furnish a delightful illustration of the fact that reasoning, in its rough form, is only the crudest and most elementary form of intellectual operation, and that the finer forms of thinking involve much more than logic. 'All the thinking in the world,' as Goethe puts it, 'will not lead us to thought.'

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