DREAM. — Dreaming is the realm of the subconscious; in it, psychic activity elaborates material unfamiliar to the waking consciousness. Yet empirical reality also enters into dreams, though experienced differently than in the waking state, acquiring a different value or flavor. Thus, P. Janet considers dreaming as a different orientation of the psychic personality, as an altered state of consciousness.
Considering the two aspects of normal psychic activity—waking and dreaming—and wishing to designate as consciousness the specific mode of activity in waking, the specific mode of activity during dreaming may be termed "dream consciousness." The two forms of consciousness are connected by a tenuous bridge: memory. Yet they are different modes of psychic activity, so that one consciousness is not well-informed about the other, nor does one guarantee the other—precisely as occurs in cases of pathological splitting of the personality (S. De Sanctis).
I. THE ORIGIN OF DREAMS
The problem of dreams has interested humanity since antiquity. The dreams of Pharaoh, interpreted by Joseph, are well known (*Gen. 40:5ff.*; 41:1–37). However, the Bible (*Deut. 13:2ff.*; 18:10–12) warns the chosen people not to give credence to augurs, diviners, or interpreters of dreams. In more recent times, Descartes was led to his meditations precisely by the problem of dreams.Among authors who have dealt with the origin of dreams, Scherner should be remembered for his study of dreams of cenesthetic origin. Hildebrant, in 1875, drew attention to dreams prompted by auditory stimuli: the sound of waking, for example, which transforms into the tolling of a bell or the clatter of dishes falling to the floor. In such cases, the sensory stimulus provokes at least part of the dream, which to the dreamer seems to precede the moment when the stimulus enters into the dream episode.
Among experimental studies of dreams, those of Foucault (1906), Stepanow (1915), and more recently S. De Sanctis should be noted. They succeeded in inducing dreams by whispering words into the sleeper’s ear without waking him, by suddenly projecting beams of light onto his eyelids, by odors, by binding limbs, and so on. The conclusions that may be drawn are as follows: it remains clear that sensory stimuli of various kinds can prompt dreams connected to them; the same stimulus can evoke dreams with different themes.
In this way, dream equivalents of nervous attacks and premonitory dreams of illness are explained. Pascal, for example, dreamed he was strangled by a ribbon and two days later suffered a violent attack of angina pectoris; Arnaldo da Villanova dreamed he was shown a foot, and the next day an abscess developed there. The fact that visual representations greatly predominate in dreams has led to the belief that in dreaming, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, muscular, and visceral sensations are visualized. During sleep, the most important factor seems to be the spontaneous revival of memories of the most interesting events, whether recent or remote; sensory stimuli would have only secondary importance, introducing into the dream current a foreign idea that causes it to deviate. De Sanctis suggests the possibility that affective charge, linked to a representation, may in dreaming detach and shift to other representations: a true transference of emotion from one to another fantastic tableau.
Freud’s theory must be recalled: all dreams have meaning and reveal states of affective complexes and instincts that, hindered by censorship from emerging into waking consciousness, manifest themselves in masked form during sleep due to the weakening of inhibitory powers. According to the author, even when dream content seems indecipherable, it expresses latent ideas that surface in a different language, whose signs must be learned to understand the meaning. For example, if I look at a rebus: it depicts a house, on whose roof is a canoe, then an isolated letter, a headless figure running. I might declare that neither its parts nor the whole make sense, because a canoe does not belong on a roof, a headless person cannot run, and the figure is larger than the house; and if the whole is supposed to represent a landscape, isolated letters do not belong there. I would not judge the rebus correctly unless I abandoned this approach and instead substituted each image with a syllable or word that the image might represent for some reason. When the words are thus assembled, they may form a meaningful and profound phrase. The dream is a rebus. Freud notes that censorship operates in dreams as well, so that the scene breaks off just when the repressed tendency is about to express itself most intensely.
The laws by which latent ideas are translated in dreams are condensation, displacement, dramatization, and symbolization. By condensation, several latent ideas are summarized in a few images. Displacement consists in the fact that in dreams, affective charge is concentrated on an image that during waking was focused on another object. Dramatization consists in the fact that latent ideas are expressed in concrete, scenic figurations, as in language—for example, to indicate that a person is in doubt, one might say they are at a crossroads; well, in a dream, doubt may be expressed by two roads leading to different destinations. Symbolization: in dreams, one of the most constant symbols is the house, which signifies the human body, especially the female; wood symbolizes the mother; birth is symbolized by water, and so on. Freud’s theory of dreams has a basis in plausibility, but it does not, as it should, account for sensory stimuli that may guide the dream current; moreover, not all dreams can be traced to repressed complexes, nor can symbolization be accepted without reservation.
It has been debated whether sleep is always accompanied by dreams. It is known that alongside individuals who claim to dream every night, there are others who rarely dream. Perhaps those who say they do not dream forget what they have dreamed. The dreams most commonly remembered are those of the morning before waking, which are related to hypnopompic hallucinations, and those of the evening, as one falls asleep, related to hypnagogic hallucinations.
II. MORAL CONSIDERATIONS
From the foregoing, it follows that nearly all who have attempted natural interpretations of dreams conclude that dreams are often the effect of things actually existing within or outside the dreamer: there is thus a relation of causality. Now science can trace effects back to their causes; therefore, not every interpretation of dreams is condemnable, since human science is capable of deducing useful data from dreams—for example, for the treatment of certain neuroses—provided it is certain that it is dealing with human science and that it relies on a person who is serious even from a moral standpoint.Knowing the natural causes of dreams, one can reasonably draw some conclusions about the future: this is also morally permissible if it concerns dreams that have a natural origin. However, to take dreams as indicators of the future without any natural causal connection, but solely on the basis of divinatory interpretations—whether one’s own or another’s—constitutes the sin of superstition, unless one is certain that the dream comes from God, which is very rare. Regarding dreams with sinful content (the most frequent being erotic dreams), it must be noted that in themselves such dreams unfold without the intervention of the intellectual faculties (reason and will): therefore, there can be no imputability or responsibility, except in cases where one’s conduct during wakefulness has been insufficiently chaste.