Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psychic in the play of
its faculties finds expression with us in the non-interference with the
dream on the part of the foreconscious activity. The "return to the
embryonal state of psychic life in the dream" and the observation of
Havelock Ellis, "an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect
thoughts," appear to us as happy anticipations of our deductions to the
effect that _primitive_ modes of work suppressed during the day
participate in the formation of the dream; and with us, as with Delage,
the _suppressed_ material becomes the mainspring of the dreaming.
We have fully recognized the role which Scherner ascribes to the dream
phantasy, and even his interpretation; but we have been obliged, so to
speak, to conduct them to another department in the problem. It is not
the dream that produces the phantasy but the unconscious phantasy that
takes the greatest part in the formation of the dream thoughts. We are
indebted to Scherner for his clew to the source of the dream thoughts,
but almost everything that he ascribes to the dream-work is attributable
to the activity of the unconscious, which is at work during the day, and
which supplies incitements not only for dreams but for neurotic symptoms
as well. We have had to separate the dream-work from this activity as
being something entirely different and far more restricted. Finally, we
have by no means abandoned the relation of the dream to mental
disturbances, but, on the contrary, we have given it a more solid
foundation on new ground.
Thus held together by the new material of our theory as by a superior
unity, we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of the
authorities fitting into our structure; some of them are differently
disposed, only a few of them are entirely rejected. But our own
structure is still unfinished. For, disregarding the many obscurities
which we have necessarily encountered in our advance into the darkness
of psychology, we are now apparently embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have allowed the dream thoughts to proceed from
perfectly normal mental operations, while, on the other hand, we have
found among the dream thoughts a number of entirely abnormal mental
processes which extend likewise to the dream contents. These,
consequently, we have repeated in the interpretation of the dream. All
that we have termed the "dream-work" seems so remote from the psychic
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