Note 188 — Chapter VIII

This type of dream—in which the emotion of the day is inverted in sleep, depressing emotions giving place to exalting emotions, and so on—is by some (Griesinger, Lombroso, Sante de Sanctis, etc.), termed the contrast-dream. The dream is in such a case, Sante de Sanctis remarks, complementary, having the same significance as a complementary after-image and indicating a phase of anabolic repair. Thus A. Wiggam (Pedagogical Seminary, June 1909), gives the case of a girl of twenty, who when tired and restless always has good dreams, while her dreams are bad when she is well and free from care. It should be added that, as understood by Näcke ('Ueber Kontrast-Träume' Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1907), a contrast-dream is one that is in striking contrast to the dreamer's ordinary character. In this type of contrast-dream it is not quite clear that the mechanism is the same, and the contrast may sometimes be accidental. Thus a dream of being a soldier on a battlefield, with shells bursting around me, was merely suggested by a passage of Nietzsche, read in the evening, which contained the words 'the thunders of the battle of Wörth,' and the question of contrast or resemblance to my character and habits was irrelevant.