Toward Footnote GA156

Footnote GA156 (added Jan. 18, 2023):

Consider this passage from The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (A.A. Brill's 1914 translation):

If we read, e.g., three of Hildebrandt’s “Alarm Clock Dreams,” we will then have to inquire why the same stimulus evoked so many different results, and why just these results and no others.

 “I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning. I saunter through the green fields to a neighbouring village, where I see the natives going to church in great numbers, wearing their holiday attire and carrying their hymn-books under their arms. I remember that it is Sunday, and that the morning service will soon begin. I decide to attend it, but as I am somewhat overheated I also decide to cool off in the cemetery surrounding the church. While reading the various epitaphs, I hear the sexton ascend the tower and see the small village bell in the cupola which is about to give signal for the beginning of the devotions. For another short while it hangs motionless, then it begins to swing, and suddenly its notes resound so clearly and penetratingly that my sleep comes to an end. But the sound of bells comes from the alarm clock.”

“A second combination. It is a clear day, the streets are covered with deep snow. I have promised to take part in a sleigh-ride, but have had to wait for some time before it was announced that the sleigh is in front of my house. The preparations for getting into the sleigh are now made. I put on my furs and adjust my muff, and at last I am in my place. But the departure is still delayed, until the reins give the impatient horses the perceptible sign. They start, and the sleigh bells, now forcibly shaken, begin their familiar janizary music with a force that instantly tears the gossamer of my dream. Again it is only the shrill sound of my alarm clock.”

Still a third example. “I see the kitchen-maid walk along the corridor to the dining-room with several dozen plates piled up. The porcelain column in her arms seems to me to be in danger of losing its equilibrium. ‘Take care,’ I exclaim, ‘you will drop the whole pile.’ The usual retort is naturally not wanting—that she is used to such things. Meanwhile I continue to follow her with my worried glance, and behold! at the door-step the fragile dishes fall, tumble, and roll across the floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon notice that the noise continuing endlessly is not really a rattling but a true ringing, and with this ringing the dreamer now becomes aware that the alarm clock has done its duty.”

Here we note that the dream construction appears to extend time backward. That is, the stimulus of the external sound is seemingly "forgotten" long enough for the formation of a passage of dream time.

These dream reports demonstrate the principle of dream reality construction that includes a sense of presence and an "unfolding of history" or passage of time. That is, the dream self invents its own history and dwells within it as if it is within a flow of objective time. The "now" of the dream self is out of synchrony with the "now" of the waking self.

Of course, we must concede another possibility: that the dreamer's body is precisely clocking the passage of linear time (as with a computer clock) and is somehow anticipating the alarm and so signals the self to begin preparing to wake up. In that case, a part of the person's mind-body system is setting up a defense against too much of a wake-up shock. Further, that would appear to be a motive for the first case. By "forgetting" the noise and inventing a dream reality, the mind-body system avoids what it regards as too forceful a transition into the unforgiving world of "cold reality," where it is no longer free to easily express its impulse life.

In fact, there is reason to suspect that both forms of mentation occur, tho not usually simultaneously.

Freud goes on:

The following dream of Maury[48] has become celebrated. 21He was sick, and remained in bed; his mother sat beside him. He then dreamed of the reign of terror at the time of the Revolution. He took part in terrible scenes of murder, and finally he himself was summoned before the Tribunal. There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the sorry heroes of that cruel epoch; he had to give an account of himself, and, after all sort of incidents which did not fix themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an enormous crowd, he was led to the place of execution. He mounted the scaffold, the executioner tied him to the board, it tipped, and the knife of the guillotine fell. He felt his head severed from the trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety, only to find that the top piece of the bed had fallen down, and had actually struck his cervical vertebra in the same manner as the knife of a guillotine.

This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion introduced by Le Lorrain and Egger in the Revue Philosophique. The question was whether, and how, it was possible for the dreamer to crowd together an amount of dream content apparently so large in the short space of time elapsing between the perception of the waking stimulus and the awakening.

From the perspective of the awake state, the "internal clock" explanation will not do. The "crowding" surely implies that the dreamer invented a reality that projected "back in time" from the rude interruption from the external world. The dream self proceeded down an invented time stream. The dream's self's "now" was encased in a flow of time that was invented by the organism's psyche. The Maury dream's "crowding" idea, Freud adds, has been countered by "many arguments." We may suspect that the objection refers to the back formation of a time flow.

Yet, we must concede the possibility of a false memory of a dream sequence that was concocted after the intrusion of the external stimulus. But such an explanation is incomplete without accounting for the purported experiencing of the subjective passage of time.