 | The Journal of Abnormal Psychology |  |
OUTLINE OF THE RECONSTITUTION
Inasmuch as the dream is one of my own, I may be permitted to testify that it was unmistakably connected with a scratching sensation at my ear, as I distinctly perceived on awaking. This stimulation proceeded obviously
First, that the dream is an associative reaction to the sensation of scratching, in the form of evocations of imagery related in experience to this sensory element; and that the dream-process was a part of the perception, or recognition or apperception of the stimulus.
Second, that this reaction—let us name it apperception of the stimulus—took place slowly and imperfectly, owing to the state of sleep, so that the reaction was, to begin with, only remotely relevant to the stimulus, but improved in relevancy with successive evocations, until the mental representation closely approximated the character of the stimulus.
Third, that in and among the secondary images[27] so evoked, incidental processes of thought, tertiary compoundings of these images, were immediately set up; the selection and re-arrangement of these secondary and tertiary features, constituting the revelation of a significant state of mind which had preceded the dream.
Specifically, in addition to the mental response to the external stimulus, there was a phantasy representing an imaginary wish-fulfilment: namely the desire to forsake the study of histology, with the eye-straining search through the microscope, in favor of the study of reflex-action or reflexology.
My contention is that this blended response[28] to a physical and to a psychic cue arose very naturally and simply out of a single context, prepared by events of the night before; and I would show that by comparing the phantasy with this context, it is possible to reconstitute the dream in a way that amounts to a refutation of the two other interpretations, which I have essayed in accordance with the methods of Freud and of Jung, respectively.
| The Journal of Abnormal Psychology | |