Abstract
‘Dreams differ very much in character as well as in significance; probably in origin, too.’ This view expressed by Frederick Greenwood in 1894 foreshadows the insight shared by many dream researchers today: that there exists a ‘multiplicity of dreams’ which requires careful study and classification. While Freud narrowed down the range of dream types to the wish-fulfilment dream, grudgingly acknowledging the anxiety dream or nightmare as acts of censorship gone wrong, from the publication of his Traumdeutung onwards, there have always been critical voices advocating a more diverse and inclusive view on dreaming. A particularly interesting case is Mary Arnold-Forster (1861–1951), a well-read laywoman who, drawing on both her personal, often lucid, dream experience and her informed knowledge of the existing literature on dreams, couched her criticism of Freud’s theory in surprisingly outspoken terms. She maintained that ‘dreams are of such infinite variety that no theory of their mechanism, even when formulated by the greatest of teachers, will adequately account for the whole of this wide field of human experience’. In her book Studies in Dreams (1921), which is based on a careful recording of her own dreams over several years, she emphasizes the diversity of dreams:
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Notes
- 1.
Greenwood (1894), 39.
- 2.
See Hunt (1989).
- 3.
According to Freud (1962), ‘[a] dream without condensation, displacement, dramatization, and, above all, without wish-fulfilment, surely does not deserve the name’ (208).
- 4.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, n. pag.
- 5.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, 11. Compare also Havelock Ellis’ (1911) view: ‘[I]t is impossible to follow Freud when he declares that all dreams fall into the group of wish-dreams. The world of psychic life during sleep is, like the waking world, rich and varied; it cannot be covered by a single formula. Freud’s subtle and searching analytic genius has greatly contributed to enlarging our knowledge of this world of sleep. We may recognise the value of his contribution to the psychology of dreams while refusing to accept a premature and narrow generalisation’ (174–175).
- 6.
Prince, Foreword, n. pag.
- 7.
Mavromatis (2001), 96.
- 8.
Hunt (1989), 76.
- 9.
Hunt (1989), 90.
- 10.
Hunt (1989), 90.
- 11.
McNamara (2008), 83.
- 12.
See Hunt (1989), 97; Kuiken (1991a); and Nielsen (2010).
- 13.
For an overview of relevant studies, see Hunt 1989.
- 14.
Hartmann (2010), 211.
- 15.
Foulkes (1990), 39.
- 16.
Cavallero and Foulkes (1993b), 11.
- 17.
Hartmann (2010), 212.
- 18.
Barrett (2007), 145.
- 19.
Foulkes (1990), 40.
- 20.
Foulkes (1990), 39.
- 21.
Flanagan (2000), 148.
- 22.
For such an approach in the context of German-language literature, see Kreuzer (2014).
- 23.
Meier (1993), 64.
- 24.
See Haas et al. (1988), 239–240.
- 25.
See Hobson (1988), 271.
- 26.
See Nielsen (2010), 595.
- 27.
States (1993), 84.
- 28.
States (1993), 91.
- 29.
States (1993), 90.
- 30.
States (1993), 90.
- 31.
States (1993), 85.
- 32.
States (1993), 89.
- 33.
See Hartmann (2010), 212.
- 34.
See Kuiken (1995), 133.
- 35.
Kuiken (1995), 131.
- 36.
Kuiken (1995), 133.
- 37.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 98.
- 38.
Kuiken and Sikora (1993), 133.
- 39.
Kuiken (1995), 133.
- 40.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 100.
- 41.
Hunt (1989), 128.
- 42.
Hunt (1989), 127.
- 43.
Hunt (1989), 131.
- 44.
Hunt (1989), 129.
- 45.
States (1993), 88.
- 46.
States (1993), 89.
- 47.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 117.
- 48.
Hunt (1989), 120.
- 49.
Green and McCreery (1999), 49.
- 50.
Green and McCreery (1999), 49. It should be noted that, according to Kuiken and Busink (1996), neither spirituality nor dream lucidity are linked to any specific group of impactful dreams but can occur independent of dream type (117).
- 51.
Globus (1987), 93.
- 52.
Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’, 64–65.
- 53.
Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’, 72.
- 54.
Woolf, Between the Acts, 205.
- 55.
Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, 102.
- 56.
Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, 102.
- 57.
Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, 102.
- 58.
Mansfield, ‘Bliss’, 103.
- 59.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 100.
- 60.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 104–105.
- 61.
See Kuiken and Busink (1996), 103.
- 62.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 105.
- 63.
See Kuiken and Busink (1996), 103.
- 64.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 116.
- 65.
Kuiken (1995), 135–136.
- 66.
States (1993), 85.
- 67.
Joyce, ‘Araby’, 26.
- 68.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 100.
- 69.
Kuiken and Busin (1996), 107.
- 70.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 108.
- 71.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 107.
- 72.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 107.
- 73.
As Kuiken and Busink (1996) point out, the group of anxiety dreams shows strong resemblances to traditional nightmare reports, but since the term ‘nightmare’ is often confusingly used to describe ‘any distressing dream resulting in awakening, an approach that conflates anxiety dreams with the quite different attributes (and consequences) of existential dreams’ (115), it is useful to avoid the term for clarity’s sake.
- 74.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 112.
- 75.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 112.
- 76.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 113.
- 77.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 113.
- 78.
Kuiken and Busink (1996), 111.
- 79.
For the notable absence of a sense of guilt in both Kafka’s literary texts and his own dream reports, see Hall and Lind (1970), 86–88.
- 80.
Kuiken (1995), 134.
- 81.
Kuiken (1995), 134–135.
- 82.
Kuiken (1995), 137.
- 83.
Kuiken (1995), 137.
- 84.
Kuiken (1995), 141.
- 85.
As Engel (2004) rightly points out, the dream language metaphor is not only inadequate but often serves as a strategy to annihilate the potentially disturbing otherness of the dream (cf. 108). In a similar vein, States (1987) calls the dream a kind of thinking that employs ‘strategies of thought that if traced upward into language would eventuate in the master tropes. So dreams are a kind of proto-rhetoric, not yet a language’ (6). The term ‘dream language’ is further confusing because of its possible conflation with the occurrence of speech acts in dreams. For lack of a better term, I will therefore put the term ‘language’ in inverted commas and will strictly use it in the sense of dream phenomenology.
- 86.
Coleridge, Notebooks, vol. 3, 4409.
- 87.
Ullman (1969), n. pag.
- 88.
Ullman (1969), n. pag. Sophie Schwartz (2004) reviews several studies confirming the uneven representation of sensory modalities in dream reports. On the basis of these, she concludes that ‘dreaming is primarily a visual experience, but many dreams also have an auditory component. Tactile or motor sensations are less frequent, and dreams have almost no taste and no smell!’ (59).
- 89.
Nielsen (1991), 234.
- 90.
Craig (1987), 38.
- 91.
Cavallero and Foulkes (1993b), 6.
- 92.
Meier (1993), 63.
- 93.
States (1993), 98.
- 94.
Kuiken (1991b), 226.
- 95.
Hall (1953), n. pag.
- 96.
Hall (1953), n. pag.
- 97.
Alvarez, Night, 174.
- 98.
Brann (1991), 347.
- 99.
Cartwright (2010), 157.
- 100.
Hartmann (2010), 198.
- 101.
Hartmann (2010), 197.
- 102.
Hartmann (2010), 200.
- 103.
Hartmann (2010), 202.
- 104.
Hartmann (2010), 212.
- 105.
Domhoff (2003), 33.
- 106.
States (1993), 79.
- 107.
See Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff and Johnson (1998).
- 108.
Domhoff (2001b), n. pag.
- 109.
Lakoff (2001), 274.
- 110.
See Lakoff (2001), 284.
- 111.
Rycroft (1979), 39.
- 112.
Lakoff (2001), 272. In doing so, he clarifies the way the term ‘unconscious’ is used in cognitive science as opposed to Freudian usage: ‘Freud used the term to mean thoughts that were repressed but might in some cases be brought to consciousness. But the term “unconscious” is used very differently in the cognitive sciences. Most of the kinds of thought discussed in the cognitive sciences operate like the rules of grammar and phonology, below a level that we could possibly have conscious access or control over. […] The system of metaphors, although unconscious, is not “repressed”—just as the system of grammatical and phonological rules that structure one’s language is unconscious but not repressed. The unconscious discovered by cognitive science is just not like the Freudian unconscious’ (8–9).
- 113.
Lakoff (2001), 268.
- 114.
Lakoff (2001), 266.
- 115.
See Lakoff (2001), 266.
- 116.
Lakoff (2001), 273.
- 117.
Lakoff (2001), 275.
- 118.
Cobbe (1871), 338. For an in-depth discussion of Francis Power Cobbes’ influential theory, see Groth and Lusty (2013), 43–49.
- 119.
Lakoff (2001), 275.
- 120.
Domhoff (2001b), n. pag.
- 121.
Domhoff (2001b), n. pag. As Domhoff (2001b) points out, a focus on metaphorical implications of dreams without thematic content analysis could easily be misleading because ‘many resemblance metaphors and most conceptual blends are likely to be unique to the dreamer. In addition, several different primary metaphors use the same source domain, such as “vertical orientation”, so contextual analysis would be necessary to decide among such possibilities as “Happy is Up”, “More is Up”, and “Control is Up” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, pp. 50–53)’ (n. pag.).
- 122.
Domhoff (2003), 145.
- 123.
Domhoff (2003), 147.
- 124.
Kuiken (1991b), 227.
- 125.
Hunt (1989), 165.
- 126.
Epel, Writers Dreaming, 52–53.
- 127.
Kuiken (1991b), 228.
- 128.
Kuiken (1991b), 229.
- 129.
Kuiken (1991b), 232.
- 130.
Kuiken (1991b), 230. As Kuiken suggests, the processes presumably at work here bear strong resemblances to the dream work mechanisms Freud called condensation and displacement.
- 131.
Kuiken (1991b), 240–241.
- 132.
Hunt (1989), 100.
- 133.
Hunt (1989), 177.
- 134.
Hunt (1989), 177.
- 135.
Hunt (1989), 166. The predominance of the visual element in many dreams is further evidenced by the fact that children have visual dreams before the narrative element is introduced. Also, as Hunt (1989) points out, ‘the early development of dreams in childhood (and good dream recall among adults) is correlated with visual-spatial, not verbal, abilities’ (166).
- 136.
Hunt (1989), 166.
- 137.
Hunt (1989), 167.
- 138.
Hunt (1989), 167.
- 139.
Hunt (1989), 100. In this context, Hunt (1989) refers to Kekulé’s famous dream of snakes biting their tails, which made him discover the structure of benzene rings, as well as to Howe’s dream of native warriors carrying spears with holes in them, which suggested to him the correct position for thread placement in the first sewing machine (see 108).
- 140.
Hunt (1989), 13. Hunt (1989) cites several studies all of which document the connection between high levels of dream bizarreness and creative abilities (12–13).
- 141.
Hunt (1989), 168.
- 142.
Hunt (1989), 168.
- 143.
Hunt (1989), 168.
- 144.
Hunt (1989), 172. This model is corroborated by neurophysiological findings suggesting that both the left and the right hemispheres are equally involved in generating dreams (cf. 170).
- 145.
Hunt (1989), 160.
- 146.
States (1993), 39.
- 147.
Kuiken (1995), 137.
- 148.
States (1993), 102.
- 149.
States (1993), 25.
- 150.
States (1988), 134.
- 151.
States (1993), 29.
- 152.
Oatley (2011), 18.
- 153.
States (1993), 99.
- 154.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, 41.
- 155.
States (1993), 24.
- 156.
States (1993), 27.
- 157.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 7.
- 158.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 7.
- 159.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 7.
- 160.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 7.
- 161.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 7.
- 162.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 8.
- 163.
Ellis, The World of Dreams, 46–47.
- 164.
States (1994), 241.
- 165.
Meier (1993), 65.
- 166.
Meier (1993) 64.
- 167.
States (1993), 14.
- 168.
States (1993), 29.
- 169.
Rechtschaffen (1978), 97.
- 170.
States (1993), 29.
- 171.
LaBerge and DeGracia (2000), 269–270.
- 172.
Walsh (2010), 148.
- 173.
Ellis, The World of Dreams, 61.
- 174.
Ellis, The World of Dreams, 62.
- 175.
Meier (1993), 63.
- 176.
Meier (1993), 63–64.
- 177.
Coleridge, Notebooks, vol. 1, 1252.
- 178.
Coleridge, Notebooks, vol. 1, 1252.
- 179.
Globus (1987), 82.
- 180.
Ellis, The World of Dreams, 61.
- 181.
Ellis, The World of Dreams, 64.
- 182.
States (1987), 71.
- 183.
See Levertov, ‘Interweavings’, 114.
- 184.
Levertov, ‘Interweavings’, 109.
- 185.
Levertov, ‘Interweavings’, 119.
- 186.
According to Freud, ‘[t]he dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions of the same subject-matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the dream-content seems like a transcript [Übertragung in the original] of the dream-thoughts into another mode of expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it is our business to discover by comparing the original and the translation. The dream-thoughts are immediately comprehensible, as soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other hand, is expressed as it were in a pictographic script [Brill says hieroglyphics], the characters of which have to be transposed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts’ (Freud quoted in Rupprecht [1999], 76).
- 187.
Almansi and Béguin (1986b), 6.
- 188.
Almansi and Béguin (1986b), 7.
- 189.
Hacking (2001), 246.
- 190.
Greenfield (1998), 336.
- 191.
States (1987), 2. In a similar vein, Engel (2004) points out: ‘Schon unmittelbar nach dem Erwachen ist unsere Erinnerung höchst flüchtig, und je mehr wir sie durch bewußtes Memorieren, Erzählen oder Aufzeichnen zu stabilisieren suchen, desto mehr verfälschen wir den Traum, da Operationen wie Reflexion, Versprachlichung, Nach-Erzählung unsere Träume den Ordnungs- und Eindeutigkeitsregeln der Wachwelt unterwerfen. [From the very moment of awakening our recollection is highly elusive and the more we seek to stabilize it by means of conscious memorizing, narrating or recording, the more we distort the dream, since operations such as reflection, verbalization and retelling submit our dreams to the waking world’s rules of order and disambiguation]’ (108, my translation). And Barbara Tedlock (1991) notes: ‘While dreams are private mental acts, which have never been recorded during their actual occurrence, dream accounts are public social performances taking place after the experience of dreaming’ (249).
- 192.
Almansi and Béguin (1986b), 9.
- 193.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, 38.
- 194.
Hawthorne, ‘The Haunted Mind’, 186.
- 195.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, 39.
- 196.
States (1993), 53.
- 197.
Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, 46.
- 198.
Rupprecht (1999), n. pag.
- 199.
Brann (1991), 342.
- 200.
See Schmidt-Hannisa (1998).
- 201.
Almansi and Béguin (1986b), 8.
- 202.
Alvarez, Night, 112–113.
- 203.
Banville, ‘Fiction and the Dream’, 21.
- 204.
Banville, ‘Fiction and the Dream’, 22.
- 205.
Banville, ‘Fiction and the Dream’, 23, original italics.
- 206.
Kilroe (2000), 130.
- 207.
States (1994), 238.
- 208.
See Turner (1996).
- 209.
Schwenger (2012), 88.
- 210.
Royle, The Tiger Garden, 139.
- 211.
Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, 219.
- 212.
Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, 230.
- 213.
Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, 219.
- 214.
Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, 230.
- 215.
States (1993), 34.
- 216.
States (1993), 33.
- 217.
States (1993), 37.
- 218.
Meier (1993), 65.
- 219.
States (1993), 36, my italics.
- 220.
Poe, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, 199.
- 221.
States (1993), 35.
- 222.
See States (1993), 35.
- 223.
States (1993), 35.
- 224.
States (1993), 36.
- 225.
See States (1993), 36.
- 226.
States (1993), 34.
- 227.
Fraiberg (1956), 54.
- 228.
Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, 73–74.
- 229.
Porter (1993), 43.
- 230.
See Goumegou (2011), 216.
- 231.
Todorov (1975), 41.
- 232.
See Goumegou (2011), 222. For a detailed analysis of the dreamlikeness of Kafka’s ‘Die Verwandlung’, see Kreuzer (2014), 409–437.
- 233.
Todorov (1975), 41.
- 234.
Freud (1919), 1–2.
- 235.
Freud (1919), 15.
- 236.
Freud (1919), 18.
- 237.
Freud (1919), 18.
- 238.
Freud (1919), 18.
- 239.
Freud (1919), 18–19.
- 240.
Hartmann (1991b), 4.
- 241.
Hartmann (1991b), 4.
- 242.
Hartmann (2011), 89–90.
- 243.
See Hartmann (1991a), 120.
- 244.
Margolin (2003), 291.
- 245.
Wolf (2012), 236.
- 246.
Duncan (2010), 16.
- 247.
Hawthorne, ‘Young Goodman Brown’, 199.
- 248.
Hawthorne, ‘Young Goodman Brown’, 95. In this context, it is important to note that during the early modern period, in which Hawthorne’s story is set, sleep was considered to be ‘a state in which people’s moral defenses were at their weakest and the mind most vulnerable to diabolic interference and deception’ (Davies [2007], 144).
- 249.
Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 57.
- 250.
Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 136.
- 251.
Borges, ‘The Circular Ruins’, 100.
- 252.
Amis, ‘Mason’s Life’, 4.
- 253.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. 2, 6.
- 254.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. 2, 217–218.
- 255.
Coleridge, Lectures on Literature, vol. 2, 425.
- 256.
Massey (2009), 74.
- 257.
Stevens (1995), 155.
- 258.
Adair (1967), 52.
- 259.
D. Robinson (1997), 121.
- 260.
D. Robinson (1997), 129.
- 261.
D. Robinson (1997), 132.
- 262.
D. Robinson (1997), 130.
- 263.
Leadbetter (2011), 166.
- 264.
Leadbetter (2011), 166.
- 265.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. 2, 134.
- 266.
Ford (1998), 127.
- 267.
Coleridge, Collected Letters, vol. 6, 716.
- 268.
Bostetter (1975), 111.
- 269.
Lamb quoted in Fulford (1997), 87.
- 270.
Fulford (1997), 87.
- 271.
Kuiken (1995), 131.
- 272.
See Coleridge (1974d), 184.
- 273.
Coleridge, Table Talk, 149.
- 274.
Twitchell (1985), 16.
- 275.
Twitchell (1985), 18.
- 276.
Twitchell (1985), 23–24.
- 277.
Twitchell (1985), 24.
- 278.
McNamara (2008), 46.
- 279.
Freud (1919), 1–2.
- 280.
Freud (1919), 13.
- 281.
Solomonova et al. (2011), 171.
- 282.
Solomonova et al. (2011), 171.
- 283.
Royle (2003), 1–2.
- 284.
Brennan (1998), 6.
- 285.
McAndrew (1979), 8.
- 286.
McAndrew (1979), 3.
- 287.
DeLamotte (1990), 21.
- 288.
McNamara (2008), 86.
- 289.
McNamara (2008), 84.
- 290.
See McNamara (2008), 47.
- 291.
See McNamara (2008), 137.
- 292.
Schleifer (1980), 301.
- 293.
Day (1985), 45.
- 294.
Count Dracula, too, repeatedly appears to the female characters Lucy and Mina as such a Felt Presence precisely at those transitional times when the characters are asleep or in the hypnagogic stages bordering on sleep.
- 295.
For an analysis of Dracula in terms of mesmerism and fascination, see Baumbach (2015), 168–189.
- 296.
Baumbach (2015), 170.
- 297.
Mitchell (2008), 436.
- 298.
Hanson (1989), 23.
- 299.
Hunter 2.
- 300.
Hanson (1989), 24.
- 301.
Hanson (1989), 25.
- 302.
Gordimer (1969), 459, quoted in Hunter (2007), 2.
- 303.
Mansfield, Letters, 161, original italics.
- 304.
Meier (1993), 64.
- 305.
Bardolph (1994), 166.
- 306.
States (1993), 25.
- 307.
The ‘little grey man’ is a popular character in various fairy tales, e.g. in the Grimm Brothers’ ‘The Golden Goose’, where he functions as disguised helper. An even earlier story by Sophie Albrecht, titled ‘Graumännchen oder die Burg Rabenbühl’ [‘The Little Grey Man or the Castle Rabenbühl’] (1799), can be considered as one of the predecessors of the more famous Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale ‘Rumpelstilskin’.
- 308.
Dunbar (1997), 150.
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Schrage-Früh, M. (2016). Dreaming Fictions, Writing Dreams. In: Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40724-1_4
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