Toward footnote Xz.151

Added Jan. 19, 2023

Footnote Xz.151.

Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1914 translation by A.A. Brill) highlights the idea that the difference between waking reality and dream reality stems from "tests" applied by the awake-state's reality perceiver.

In fact, when such tests fail, the perceiver is deemed to be hallucinating and-or suffering from delusive notions. (Still, one must concede that it can occur that the "ailing" person perceives that our reality is faulty, being based on flawed tests -- as with the assumption that "our government officials would never collude to tell us a monstrous lie.")

It is a question now of attempting to explain the credulity of the mind in reference to the dream hallucinations, which can only appear after the suspension of a certain arbitrary activity. Strümpell asserts that the mind behaves in this respect correctly, and in conformity with its mechanism. The dream elements are by no means mere presentations, but true and real experiences of the mind, similar to those that appear in the waking state as a result of the senses (p. 34). Whereas in the waking state the mind represents and thinks in word pictures and language, in the dream it represents and thinks in real tangible pictures (p. 35). Besides, the dream manifests a consciousness of space by transferring the sensations and pictures, just as in the waking state, into an outer space (p. 36). It must therefore be admitted that the mind in the dream is in the same relation to its pictures and perceptions as in the waking state (p. 43). If, however, it is thereby led astray, this is due to the fact that it lacks in sleep the criticism which alone can distinguish between the sensory perceptions emanating from within or from without. It cannot subject its pictures to the tests which alone can prove their objective reality. It furthermore neglects to differentiate between pictures that are arbitrarily interchanged and others where there is no free choice. It errs because it cannot apply to its content the law of causality (p. 58). In brief, its alienation from the outer world contains also the reason for its belief in the subjective dream world.

But how important are such tests?

Delbœuf reaches the same conclusion through a somewhat different line of argument. We give to the dream pictures the credence of reality because in sleep we have no other impressions to compare them with, because we are cut off from the outer world. But it is not perhaps because we are unable to make tests in our sleep, that we believe in the truth of our hallucinations. The dream may delude us with 43all these tests, it may make us believe that we may touch the rose that we see in the dream, and still we only dream. According to Delbœuf there is no valid criterion to show whether something is a dream or a conscious reality, except—and that only in practical generality—the fact of awakening. “I declare delusional everything that is experienced between the period of falling asleep and awakening, if I notice on awakening that I lie in my bed undressed” (p. 84). “I have considered the dream pictures real during sleep in consequence of the mental habit, which cannot be put to sleep, of perceiving an outer world with which I can contrast my ego.”

The criterion for awake-state reality seems to be heightened alertness and cohesive sense of self. When self-cohesion is weak, the person is often perceived as "troubled" or perhaps "dreamy" and possibly in need of psychiatric attention.

What lies at the root of the awake sense of self? An old notion is that in a timeless noumenal realm a being exists, which is denominated as "the soul." Even if true, we would have here only a glimmering of the problems associated with reality construction.