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It is interesting that the Black Death or plague in the fourteen hundreds had the typical mythical effect of influencing people’s interaction with the unknown. The renewal of classical learning and enthusiasm about rational scholarship that had appeared in the twelfth century lessened dramatically, as the plague was seen by many as divine punishment – retribution for unbelief and worldliness. However the subsequent Southern Renaissance soon brought optimism again about a natural reality in the world, and humans’ ability to be inherently rational.

Some form of dualism seems to have been essential for conscious development since hunter-gatherer times. Without the luxury of projecting one side of the dualism onto a divine force that is separate from earthly life, in the last few centuries people havehad to find the source for both wonder and reason inside the human mind. From Descartes to Freud, Kant to Heidegger, Newton to Einstein we see a deep desperation in people’s attempts to define and explain the relationship between these two qualities of conscious experience.

THE LIGHT OF REASON

The few centuries after medieval times in Europe presented us with a dramatic transition from god-centred

interaction with the natural world, where belief or religion absorbed both wonder and reason, to a

scientifically explained world where human reasoning or rationality takes on a role of opposition to wonder.

As mentioned in the essay on the medieval mind, the ability to imagine a universal principle of knowledge

and reason that is beyond human consciousness brought humans to a mental duality based on the division

between a divine intelligence and the earthly rhythms of matter – a conscious awareness in which spiritual

judgement had to counter emotional drive.

Overall people did not really take individual

responsibility for what happened in their own

mind and thus in their dreams, but the duality

already led people to ask, “can we do wrong

and be immoral in our dreams?” In Europe,

this kind of thinking increased during the

twelve century, when the Crusades created an

opportunity for the works of ancient

philosophers and Muslim scholars to bleed into

the dense organs of the Christian Church.

From then on, we see clear signs of personal responsibility for interaction with the unknown, preparing the

way for a world where an individual reasoning mind would take central stage in understanding and

controlling nature’s unpredictability.

In a way, we could say that a fresh Aristotle-Plato division emerged. On the one hand, we see a strong

acceptance of Aristotle’s unified matter and mind as a product of the organisation in an individual body. On

the other hand, Plato’s view of a perfect form or idea that originates in an independent mind made sense

to many of the foremost thinkers during the next few hundred years. In this case the mind itself was a

spiritual substance that is not necessarily

within space and time, while the body was

merely of matter existing in the here and now.

It was the mind that was connected to an

essential truth beyond the natural world, and

as such instructed the body and its senses.

Although conscious development was sheathed

in this new pattern of symbolic expression,

allowing for a greater degree of individual

diversity, it was again driven by this dualism

between mind and matter. However, instead of divine ruling, reasoning and artistic wonder about the

natural world became dominant in shaping conscious awareness. Dreams and their content now became

interpreted as the products of an unconscious imagination during sleep.

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To explore how the relationship between wonder and reason changed during this era in human history, I have mainly concentrated on the European age of Enlightenment because it relates to the Western view of science and medicine, which to a certain degree dominates modern ideas on health and healing. However, when viewed in a broader sense, we have to remember that the East did not need such a clear-cut ‘enlightenment,’ because there the development of reason and its relationship with wonder were more steadily and

consistently dealt with throughout medieval times.

To the end of the nineteenth century a psychodynamic theory about the human psyche complemented

earlier theories about a hidden consciousness in the physical world. This brought us closer to the point

where a science of dreams and dreaming could create the opportunity to combine reason and wonder. It

therefore makes sense to end this journey through time with the early years of the twentieth century.

After this we enter the present world with a neuro-scientific view of the human mind against the modern

background of a quantum mechanical

understanding of matter.

from wonder to reason...

“There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of

physic. A man's own observation, what he finds

good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic

to preserve health”. Francis Bacon.

The European Enlightenment brought people

face to face with an individual and personal

understanding of their world through the use

of reason. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher

who was central to this youthful age of

rational thought, defined the Enlightenment as ”man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another”. It is barely

possible to discuss a fraction of all the philosophical and psychological material written about dreams and

their role in defining consciousness and shaping our

understanding of the unknown in this historical phase.

However, it will be worthwhile to at least search for a

thin thread that could bind our present view of dreams

to the insight of earlier ancestors.

By the fifteenth century, in Europe especially, there

was a growing need to free medicine from religion and

philosophy and place it – like physics, astronomy and

mathematics – in the growing domain of science.

Scholars reached back beyond the dark ages towards

Greco-Roman times, where wonder and reason had found a relatively sophisticated and harmonious

rhythm. Copernicus, for example, found help in Ptolemy's Almagest when writing his De revolutionibus

orbium in 1543, and in medicine more accurately translated medical texts of Aristotle, Galen, Hipprocates

and Dioscorides strengthened a fresh naturalistic view. In 1620 the Novum Organum Scientiarum of

Francis Bacon introduced science as the only instrument for understanding and influencing nature and the

unknown. This included the science of medicine, and the human body became seen as an anatomical

mechanism influenced by chemical substances. Illness and health were now explained according to natural

laws that could be understood and influenced through the logic of human reasoning.

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According to the metaphysical view of many philosophers and scientists from the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, natural forces were different from what we can only know through our senses. Although they were caused by indivisible objects such as corpuscles (Descartes, Newton, Boyle) or atoms (Huygens) that followed the rules of nature, there seemed to be a universal mind substance that influenced these natural processes. In other words, the expanding popularity of atomism was inherent to the dualism. Scientists like Boyle had to make atomism acceptable to the religious thought of his time by separating the matter in chemistry and mechanical experimentation from its eternal nature. The atoms and their motions in space and time were therefore determined by continual divine intervention and not by chance or human necessity.

However, especially up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, a strong sense of wonder always

lingered in the background. People still felt awe for the human soul and its bodily counterpart in the form

of the medieval ‘astral body’. To fit a more naturalistic worldview, this aspect of the soul was gradually

adapted to become a ‘separate natural entity’, one which communicated with the unknown, but which was,

as such, no longer immortal; it ended when the body died – an early version of the nineteenth century

unconscious mind. In other words, it was an aspect of the natural world, but one which handled the more

subtle processes of an individual’s identity as well as its adaptation to the unknown and outer world. This

meant that, although independent of the body, the soul was still important to the physician because it

could directly influence the health of the body. The soul also was the source of dreams and as such could

affect illness and wellbeing. It therefore did not matter that the soul’s messages appeared in dreams via

the ordinary faculty of individual imagination, they still originated from a ‘mind force’ able to overshadow

and dominate the material world. For this reason dream material had to be treated with great respect

because it could change material reality and could make one sick if used in a misguided way.

It was only towards the end of the seventeenth century that the materialistic view of medicine fully took

precedence and initiated the modern approach of disease, where anatomy and chemistry instead of

patients’ natural destiny became the central aspect of illness. This meant that the model based on the idea

of a complete human constitution that

falls ill, as we saw in the ‘humoral’

theories of Galen and Hippocrates, was

discarded and replaced by a disease

model based upon the mechanical and

chemical activity of specific organs.

Medicine moved into the realm of

experiment and reason.

This, however, did not put an end to

mind-body dualism, although the

tension shifted towards the inner world

of an individual person. Rational understanding was thought to belong to a personal mind that is

autonomous, and yet it seemed that the mind was also the product of an individual body, which was seen

merely as reactive matter. This budding materialistic view worked well for the new scientific explanations

and treatment of most diseases. However, because dream interpretation depended on an intuitive and

subjective sense of wonder, and reported on a patient’s overall, but hidden constitution, its place in

medicine became tenuous.

Amongst the foremost philosophers, however, dreaming still gave rise to passionate arguments, and

although medicine had chosen to sever itself from philosophy, these arguments nevertheless influenced

theories about how dreams originate in an independent mind as well as their effect on well-being. In fact,

their ideas paved the way for psychoanalysis, which, in the late nineteenth century, became the

foundation of two new fields in medicine, namely psychiatry and psychology. For a while, dreams emerged

again as a subjective, but useful medical tool, until, during the twentieth century, most medical scholars

finally discarded the role of an inner unconscious mind in health and healing. The body-mind dichotomy

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The spirit of medieval times and repeated translations of Galen’s works allowed for a situation where Galen’s own emphasis on direct observation was often replaced by reliance on the authority of passive knowledge.

was now exclusively transferred to the science of the brain and nervous system.

So, generally we could say that during this historical era the understanding of dreams evolved

from being a mythical revelation of the wishes of outer

gods to personal interaction with a hidden inner mind

through the use of logic and reason.

the shadow of wisdom...

“That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in

man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about It ….

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward

and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within

ourselves.” - Paracelsus

As mentioned, the renewed interest in Aristotle changed the

relationship between a universal divine mind and the well-being

of ordinary human beings. Aristotle’s conception of a finite

spherical universe and its predictable movement following strictly

natural rules fitted well with the mechanical worldview that developed in other sciences. This strengthened

the close relationship between astrology with its uniform regularity and the practice of medicine.

In the sixteenth century Paracelsian thought furthermore started to oppose the reliance on Galen and

Avicenna by emphasizing observation and experience. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von

Hohenheim or Paracelsus (1493–1541) was a Swiss physician and philosopher who revolutionised

medicine with the demand that the observation of nature rather than ancient texts should decide medical

practice. In fact, he theatrically burned the texts of Galen to make his point. Although mystical association

and astrology were still an important part of his practical diagnosis and treatment, he was opposed to

ritualistic divinity in medicine. To him the universe was one coherent organism infused with life-giving

energy. Everything was interrelated and the human being a microcosm of this universe. Therefore

beneficial medical substances had their effect according to a rule of

similarity. He popularised the blending of alchemy with

pharmaceutical medicine as well as the use of minerals together

with herbal substances. Because it was important to him to apply

scientific principles to his observations and interpretations, he

valued experimental research above passive knowledge. This was a

radical change in medicine and therefore he is often seen as the

initiator of the science of medicine.

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Paracelsus was not the only important figure in the transformation of medicine towards observational science in the sixteenth century. Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), a leading Paracelsian, who was in direct conflict with the church and Spanish Inquisition concentrated on the theory that all matter was reducible to water rather than the humours of Galen. He established the specific weight of urine as well as the fact that ferments or enzymes were fundamental mechanisms in the physiology of the body. Others such as Vesalius, Marcello Malpighi and Franciscus Sylvius were also important, to a lesser degree, in relation to dream interpretation, as they concentrated on establishing the anatomical understanding of the biological body,

especially once the Church no longer had such a control over the use of dead bodies and the enthusiastic microscopic exploration that followed on the production of the first microscopes. Vesalius (1514-1564) noticed that Galen concentrated on animal dissections to gain his anatomical knowledge for understanding diseases and, by instead dissecting human bodies, Vesalius was able to write and illustrate the most famous and beautiful book on human anatomy. In Italy Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) later shared the ‘father of modern anatomy’ status with Vesalius, although he mainly studied the microscopic anatomy of cells in the body. Franciscus Sylvius (1614-72) also no longer used the humours of Galen, but based his ideas on the developing science of the chemistry of bodily acids, bases and neutralisations.

In fact, although he used mainly symbolic images to explain his principles, and many regarded his ideas as

magical or esoteric, he influenced the more mechanistic views of seventeenth century scholars such as

Newton. He also shaped a pragmatic and clinical definition of an unconscious self which later inspired

modern theories about the human psyche in medicine. For example, he recognized that different types of

energy such as emotional forces could affect passive matter. He was the first to notice that some diseases

relate to psychological problems and he

rejected the notion that mentally ill people

are possessed by evil spirits. This

influenced his understanding of dreams,

which he regarded as part of an “inner

sight” that could indicate the cause of

diseases as well as “...elements in

medicinal substances in which the healing

powers reside”. He advised on how

dreams should be remembered, and on

what he called the ‘art’ of dream

interpretation, because “...a man is as

much able to use his reason during the

sleep of his body as when the latter is

awake”. Dreams, in his words, were gifts

of inspiration from nature and had to be

respected as such. "Anyone who wants to

take his dream seriously, interpret it, and

be guided by it, must be endowed with

‘sidereal knowledge’ and the light of nature, and must not engage in absurd fantasies, nor look upon his

dreams from the heights of his arrogance; for in this way nothing can be done with them. Dreams must be

heeded and accepted, for a great many of them come true.”

During this century there also appeared a book by Robert Burton (1577-1640): ‘The Anatomy of

Melancholy’. He himself presumably suffered from it: “I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid

melancholy.” Burton believed that for understanding the essence of life and the relationship with the

unknown, the study of the human mind was more important than the study of natural science. He studied

a wide range of the sciences of his day, including astrology and the humoural system used in medicine. He

then presented an exhaustive medical analysis of the disease of melancholy based on the theory that a

healthy body needed a balance of the four ‘humours’, namely phlegm, blood, choler, and black bile.

Melancholy, he said, was caused by an excess of ‘black bile’. However, he already warned about an even

greater curse: “Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is actually

melancholy, that he read not the symptoms or prognostics in the following tract, lest by applying that

which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken to his own person (as

melancholy men for the most part do), he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm than

good.” He was thus one of the first to warn that reason should not be seen as pure thinking that didn’t

also have an effect on the body. “For as the distraction of the mind, amongst other outward causes and

perturbations, alters the temperature of the body, so the distraction and distemper of the body will cause

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a distemperature of the soul, and ’tis hard to decide which of these two do more harm to the other”. As to

be expected, Burton would spend a lot of time on the value and qualities of dreams. He recognized that

imbalance in the humours could bring fearful and troublesome dreams. But he also explained that three

inner senses of the brain (reason, imagination and memory) could affect dreams. He defined natural

dreams – that stemmed from diet or daytime concerns – and divine or demonical dreams, which could

easily be falsely interpreted. Memory was important because dreams could include memories long

forgotten, although imagination was usually unrestrained in dreaming and thus could create “...dreams

which mock us with fleeting shadows sent neither from the shrines of the gods nor by the gods

themselves, but each of us make his own.”

In other words, we already see how, in this early Copernican era, medical theories and ideas,

although still rooted in a mystical sense of wonder, initiated a scientific and rational view of a

personal inner soul from where dreams may

originate.

reason in each of us...

“Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and

distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that

it exists, in its entirety, in each of us...” René Descartes

It was therefore no wonder that from the seventeenth

century onwards, scholars in philosophy, medicine, and

physical science intensified the struggle to free human

consciousness from the rule of divine forces. This did not

mean that the tension of the wonder-reason duality was

less passionate. It was merely that there was no longer a universal divine force that opposed human

nature, but rather a creative human mind in opposition to a passive, all-containing material world.

The essential idea now was to understand and take control over nature by way of a human reasoning

mind. This worked well in medicine, and physicians like Sydenham started to classify diseases in the same

way as plants and animals were classified. However, they were less sure how to deal with mood

disturbances, mental abnormalities and the imaginary activity in dreams, which were still associated with

some form of undefined imbalance between a divided body and mind or were seen as the outcome of

activities in an ‘animal spirit’. Therefore, in relation to dreaming, it is best to consider the perspective of a

few leading thinkers during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, to whom dreaming and its place in

understanding the human mind had great significance. Let’s see if dreams could help to reconcile Jeanne-

Jacques Rousseau's world, where reason is governed by a natural morality, with the more mechanistic

cosmos of Newtonian science.

The obvious place to start is with René Descartes (1596-1670) and his famous statement: “I think;

therefore I am”. This originated from his notion of clearing his mind of all the illusions based on senses

and preconceived beliefs. He asked what he truly could know, and suspended all belief in anything he

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René Descartes recorded three important dreams from his mid-twenties which guided him during his recovery from a time of mental disintegration and furthered his future intellectual development. In the first dream he was trying to escape from unknown phantoms in a strong whirlwind. He tried to find refuge in a college church but he found it difficult to walk because weakness and pain in his right side caused him to reel to the left. Before he could enter the church he was thrown against the chapel wall by the wind. A man called his name and told him to carry something like a melon to friends. This man was surrounded by people who could stand upright in the wind, while he, René, could only stand while leaning to the left. He woke up with a sharp pain in the left side. After a few stressful hours he fell asleep again until a hard expolsive noise in a dream woke him up. Soon however he slept again and dreamed as if analysing his previous dreams. He saw a dictionary on a table in front of him, which he opened. He then saw an anthology of poetry where he saw the sentence “Quod vitae sectabor iter?” (which path in life will I choose?). An unknown man handed him a poem that started with “est et non” (what is and what is not). After he woke up, he continued to interpret his dreams in the manner that had already started in his dream state. In a typical psychoanalytic framework, he saw it all as a warning not to consider only his rational side and neglect the irrational side. He decided that these dreams indicated a more balanced path towards his intellectual enlightenment. In fact, dreaming became so important to him that he spent his mornings in bed to allow time for incorporating the night dreams into his waking thoughts. This habit of spending his mornings in bed indirectly led to his early death at 53 when he developed pneumonia after the queen summoned him at five in the morning.

could not know without doubt. To be alive was to be conscious and able to think – a genuine beginning for

the age of reason in the Western mind. He also secured the method of analysing complexity into

elementary units through the use of scientific thought. To solve the mind-body problem, he separated

mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa). The mind, as substance, was kept in existence by the action

of a universal mind, and, in the same way as a stone is unable to think, so the material body in its entirely

physical state could not have mental properties like knowledge and reason. Although mind had to be

distinguished from body, he imagined a point of contact between body and mind where both are part of

the same substance. For this he chose the peculiar pineal gland at the bottom of the brain. However, with

dreaming, it was not that easy for Descartes to use reason to explain the idea of mind in relation to the

idea of body, and his understanding of his own dreams often forced a somewhat confusing mind-body

division upon him. Thinking, for Descartes, referred to all conscious states and as long as the mind exists,

even during a fainting

fit, or in the deepest

sleep. The fact that

dreams seemed to be

as real as waking life

proved this argument –

dreams were true

thinking illusions

produced by the

sleeping dreamer. In

other words, during

dreaming, people also

had to have thoughts;

had to be thinking.

When dreams were not

remembered, it was a

case of memory

processes that were different during sleep. So, somewhat paradoxically, Descartes accepted that the

‘illusionary thoughts’ he had during his own dreaming somehow had the power to change his life and he

faithfully recorded all his dreams in a journal.

Other scholars also took on the difficult task of explaining the relationship between a seemingly

independent mind and a passive, material body.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), stressed the importance of sensation. He said that, although the senses

were numbed by sleep and although dream content was "Imaginations of them that sleep", the source of

the dreams was still sensory experiences moved into action by agitation of the inner parts of the body.

Hobbes therefore acknowledged physiological causes of dreams; a "distemper of some of the inward parts

of the Body". Cold could, for example lead to fear in dreams and heat could cause anger. Like Freud a few

centuries later, he also noticed that dreams could fulfil suppressed wakeful desires, especially in terms of

sexual experiences. His mechanical outlook therefore already anticipated the modern view that the

imaginative activity of dreams does not provide any insight and that belief in the images of dreams is

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Although Spinosa conceived mind and body independently, he felt that they did not exist separately, but as ‘one substance with infinite attributes’. Because infinite substance is unknowable to our finite mind, the multiplicity we experience is a product of our limited mind and its perception.

nothing but superstition.

John Locke (1632-1704) believed in clear and straightforward thinking, and that all knowledge originated

from experience and reflection on experiences. In other words, that through the consideration and

understanding of our individual experiences, our reason leads us to knowledge and truth. He denied the

existence of divine revelation or innate ideas and accepted that the mind started as a 'blank slate' (tabula

rasa). He demonstrated, however, that certain matters, such as the existence of God and the immortality

of the soul, were beyond rational experience. He acknowledged that there was also an eternal, all-knowing

state of being, irrespective of what it was called. And, as to be expected, again it was sleep and dreaming

that added to the uneasy sense of dualism in his world view. “I grant that the soul, in a waking man, is

never without thought. But whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind

as well as body, may be worth a waking man's consideration”. Although he wondered how to fit the soul

that sleeps and dreams as well as those actions and sensations that the waking man was unaware of into

a personal identity, he questioned: “... of what use is all this fine knowledge of men's own imaginations, to

a man that inquires after the reality of things? It matters not what men's fancies are, it is the knowledge

of things that is only to be prized: it is this alone gives a value to our reasonings, and preference to one

man's knowledge over another's, that it is of things as they really are, and not of dreams and fancies."

Benedict Spinosa (1632-1677) assumed that the lives of human beings, like everything else, followed

the laws of nature and that the rational understanding of these universal laws could provide knowledge

about human existence. In his own words: “The laws and rules of nature, according to which all things

happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of

understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind,

must also be the same”. The human mind was not an

exception although consciousness was able to make

intentional decisions about good and evil. As such the

intellect and its logical understanding of the subjective and

emotional could independently improve self-experience and

health. This was especially applicable in his understanding

of dreams, and his ideas on dreaming had a great influence

on Freud two centuries later although, paradoxically, his work also paved the way for some aspects of

modern cognitive psychology.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) had his own reasons for denying the idea of Locke’s tabula rasa.

He upheld the idea of a metaphysically pure intellect that has effect on the body. Unique to him was his

monad theory which explained natural phenomena in terms of ‘simple substances’ that were mind-like

entities which represented the universe but did not, strictly speaking, exist in space. A monad had an

individual identity and internal principle of being; it had qualities, but no form. This perspective of mind

and matter created an interesting mixture of Aristotle and Plato’s views. Leibnitz said that essential and

permanent truths could be known by reason, although a rational soul would think of itself as limited while

seeing God as unlimited. About the body he said “I don't really eliminate body, but reduce [revoco] it to

what it is. For I show that corporeal mass [massa], which is thought to have something over and above

simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone

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Leibnitz’s monads could translate well into the modern quantum representation of our world. In his Principles of Nature and Grace, he said the universe consists of an infinite number of these monads. Every monad is different and continuously changing and “is surrounded by a mass composed of an infinity of other monads”. He also said that “there are infinite degrees of life in the monads” and that matter, motion, and everything else resulted from these simple substances, their perceptual states and their ability to network with surrounding monads.

have unity and absolute reality.” In other words, by using rational thought he undertook to demonstrate

that the basic constituents of the universe were self-sufficient, soul-like entities. The body as well as the

soul was part of this pre-established

harmony between all substances, because

everything was a representation of the

same universe. The smallest particle of

matter contained the possibility of all

creatures, living beings, animals and souls.

In a dreamless sleep, our soul did not

perceptibly differ from a monad, and

dreams were merely part of a flow

between focussed and unfocussed thoughts. However, dreams could sometimes present us with

inspirational images, a view that foreshadows psycho-analysis two decades later.

From these scholars and thinkers of the seventeenth century we see a strong movement towards the

rational side of the wonder-reason spectrum in terms of the mind-body dichotomy. Although human will

and understanding were no longer guided by a belief in divine decree, the individual thinking mind with its

preference for reason was still beyond and above the workings of the passive body. Therefore, although

rational thought started to become the chosen way of understanding the world, it was still difficult to deal

with the role of imaginary activity, especially dreams, during interaction with the unknown, as it did not

follow the mechanical theories that were available. One way around this difficulty was to re-define the

concept of a soul to depict a natural, vital force or energy that is active in the background, also inside the

body. Although such a vital force reached beyond the passive matter of a body, it could affect the growth

and health of the body. It also influenced and was sensitive to the reasoning mind, including in dreams. In

other words, there was no longer belief in a transcendental or eternal soul in command of both mind and

body, and no irrational mysticism about the origin of the human mind, but philosophers and scientists

started to agree on a reasoning mind’s ability to explain both sides of the mind-matter dualism.

Dreaming and the content of dreams therefore, although they still lingered in the subjective

realm of an inner soul that extended beyond passive physical matter, could find some

explanation in deep-seated inner representations of the unknown through metaphysical

reasoning.

outside the human heart...

“Among the forces that move the human heart

the most powerful appear to lie outside of it”

Immanuel Kant

By the eighteenth century, most scholars

who wrote and taught about the conscious

mind, and thus also directly or indirectly

about dreaming, were convinced that the

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Swedenborg, being an exceptional rationalist, had to find a substantive explanation for his sense of wonder. On the one hand he could see all life as a chemical phenomenon, on the other hand he described his interaction with the unknown in the symbolism of his time, namely communication with a transcendental human-like god in its heavenly realm. Because he wrote in neo-Latin - the accepted language of scholarly works in his time - it is however difficult to be certain what his concepts, such as voluntas and intellectus, truly meant. His idea of ‘divine love’ concerned the sense of wonder felt when faced with the energy of life, the innate desire to live and to let live (see also Arthur Schopenhauer’s concept of will later). This universal divine love came to light in human consciousness as will and understanding. Without real understanding there was no truth, only information. Without true will, there was merely craving without goodness. Interestingly, Swedenborg equated understanding with the lungs and will with the heart. The greatest challenge for a conscious individual was for will and understanding to form a coherent reality and identity. To him the body was merely following the order of these universal principles.

rational mind was central to all interaction between a personal identity and the unknown. This didn’t mean

that the overall strong, collective belief in divine intervention did not cause ongoing uncertainty about the

source of such a rational mind. However, medicine itself started to take a purely mechanical outlook in the

form of anatomical and early chemical research, when researchers tried to define the human mind and its

conscious relationship with the unknown. In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century the foremost

medical schools had completely replaced the concept of an independent ‘soul’ with that of the electrical

processes that happen in an individual nervous system.

To draw a clear picture of the movement away from wonder and simple belief towards an idealisation of

pure reason, let us first look at two philosophers from the eighteenth century. Although seemingly at odds

about reason’s ability to verify the qualities of the greater unknown, they both placed a highly developed

or a pure sense of mind at the centre of all communication with the unknown.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish scientist and philosopher who influenced many

scholars of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially CG Jung, who eventually wrote more

about dreams against the background of medicine and healing than any other person. Already two

centuries before Jung, Swedenborg described his own version of what could be called the ‘supra-

conscious’, a level of mind that is more comprehensive than ordinary awareness and which could direct

both our subconscious and our conscious reasoning. Similarly to the story of Descartes, it was the dreams

that Swedenborg had in the middle of his

life that forced him to change his interest

from observational science and mechanical

design to a quest for the understanding of

the subjective mind and its consciousness.

He became desperate to find an integrative

field between nature and a realm beyond

the physical and natural world. He divided

the mind into an external mind, which was

used in everyday conscious living, and an

internal mind, which related to an inner

world. The external mind was only a small

part of a person’s identity, although it was

that part which was consciously defined as

the ‘self’. In other words, the actual

phenomena available to the senses were

expressions of a much larger intelligible world that was hidden in the background. This internal mind he

associated with a transpersonal world. To describe this transpersonal world Swedenborg used the mythical

symbolism available during his lifetime such as Christian images of the Lord, heaven and hell, making it

easy for some to discard his writings as mere Christian mysticism. However, close scrutiny reveals his

masterful definition of reason, especially that aspect which, according to him, brings perspective and truth

to a mind that is embedded in the spiritual substance of a greater consciousness or ‘soul’. Important to the

understanding of dreams was his clear differentiation between brain and mind – brain as pure matter and

mind as much more – and especially his extraordinary detailed descriptions of his own dreams and how

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Eventually, Kant felt that the dogmatic metaphysicians that preceded him were too certain that mathematical reasoning could demonstrate the essential truth about the natural world as well as the human mind. Under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) he reconceived the notion of a subjective but moral wisdom that is more than theoretical reason or instrumental rationality. He defined this, however, in terms of the civilized human condition, in contrast to Rousseau’s view of primitive innocence.

La Mettrie’s work nevertheless caused an outcry and his books were even burned at one stage because he discarded the concept of a soul all together. His views that humans were just complicated animals who learned through imitation, and that all virtue was essentially self-love, were unacceptable to the church and to most ordinary people.

they affected his life and philosophical theories.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) then wrote a passionate critique, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, on the views

that Swedenborg had about the unknown and the symbolic revelations in dreams. He felt that Swedenborg

spun “...extravagant metaphysical theories out of their own substance rather than basing them on

empirical observations” and that “...Swedenborg discredits the rationalist project by showing just how far

from common sense we can stray when we do not have to square our theories." Although there seems to

be a complete dismissal of Swedenborg’s views in this work – and this was accepted by most scholars

afterwards – one picks up a sense of unexpected

emotionality that indicates a different subtext in this lesser

known book of Kant. Before 1760, Kant was a model of

theoretical rational thinking and Swedenborg’s mystical

dream world did not fit Kant’s view at all. However, it is of

particular relevance to this discussion of Swedenborg’s

dream world that Kant became convincingly aware of the

allure that lies in evaluating some parts of reality with a

sense of untested wonder – to search for wisdom that

could stretch beyond the limitations of everyday

reasoning. He also became concerned with the

increasingly mechanical view of the physical world: for him it created fundamental questions about

freedom and morality. Wasn’t there, in essence, a source of innate knowledge? Was it not only reason,

rather than the complete human mind, which was the tabula rasa? Nonetheless, Kant never doubted that

it was reason that translated these innate or transcendental ideas into the symbolic mental

representations and their corresponding language. Therefore he still passionately objected to

Swedenborg’s “mystical intuition”. For Kant the soul was “of the body” and the concepts of morality

belonged to pure reason. In his own words:”All apparitions of spirits and ghosts, all dream

interpretations, precognitions of the future, presentiments and the like are most objectionable because

they cannot be brought under any rule.”

Further south, in France, there was even less tolerance for

mystical thinking about the irrationality of dreams. The

French materialistic scholars rejected all notions about an

immortal soul and only upheld mechanistic theories of the

human body and its mind. Experience and its translation

through reason alone completely replaced the dualism of

Descartes and others of the previous few centuries. Julien

Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751), a French philosopher and physician, used, instead of dreams, his own

hallucinations during a fever attack to conclude that the psyche and its content simply originated in the

chemical changes inside the body and brain. In his book, ‘Natural History of the Soul’, he concluded in

1745 that psychical phenomena resulted from physiological processes in the brain, and later in ‘Man a

Machine’, he explained physiology in terms of pure mechanistic processes, laying the groundwork for

modern medicine’s materialism as well as for present-day neuroscience. He saw conscious activities as

similar to, only more complex than, involuntary processes because matter was essentially active and

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sensitive and any living machine was an autonomous and dynamic system.

So, by the end of the eighteenth century most philosophers seemed to agree that the reasoning mind was

central to all interaction with the unknown, irrespective of where and how such reasoning ability

originated. Also, in most sciences such as medicine, botany and physics there was a new emphasis on the

mechanical accumulation and classification of information, which diminished the value of all emotional and

spiritual interaction between human consciousness and nature.

In essence, this consolidated the idea that dreams were merely a specific kind of thinking that

was able to describe a subjective side of nature, and which could easily be translated into

intellectual constructs.

nothing in the outer world is stirred...

“Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god

lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his

word, though he can move my every inmost part – yet

nothing in the outer world is stirred.” (Johann Wolfgang

von Goethe, Faust, Part One)

Although the rational approach at the beginning

of the nineteenth century was wide-ranging, it

couldn’t solve all the problems in medicine.

Having severed itself from philosophical theory

about illness and death, medicine struggled to

become a pure science without detailed knowledge about the source and progress of most diseases. At the

same time a large part of medicine still consisted of unsubstantiated healing practices by informally

trained healers.

In other words, to define life itself according to the new materialistic laws with their Newtonian optimism

was not as easy as it seemed. Medicine was the one science which constantly landed in trouble unless it

accepted the existence of some form of vital, non-mechanical aspect, something that had usually been

defined in the past by philosophy or religion. This did not necessarily mean that there was a need for

reaching back to mystical idealism, but rather that there was a growing need for a fundamental, but still

rational explanation for the concept of life with its inherent polarities. In Britain, for example, the surgeon

John Hunter and the philosopher Thomas Reid were instrumental in strengthening the idea that life could

be seen as a vital force that was not reducible to matter, without sacrificing scientific observation and

method.

This attitude set a stage where the creative events of the mind, and thus also art, could become valid

instruments in explaining the essence of life and therefore also human interaction with the unknown,

especially as experienced through dreaming. In other words, while science had excluded dream content

from the realm of reason, it was often the artists who could extract rational knowledge from the hidden

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world of wonder in dreams. Similarly to previous times in human history, the dreams of writers and

painters became a passionate exploration of the relationship with the unknown and thus also with illness

and even death. Whether in Goethe’s Faust or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it was the content of dreams

that would build new bridges between the self-assurance of the rational mind and the vulnerability of living

matter in the face of its own mortality.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), was a formidable scientist but also a poet who was inspired

by both Swedenborg and Kant. As scientist, he attempted to define a method of science that stretched

beyond simple reasoning and mathematical equations and which included the full spectrum of human

experience. He tried to observe and identify the essence of nature just as it is by using direct and

empathic experience. To him the new tools of science such as telescopes and microscopes could interfere

with intimate knowledge when used in an overly rational or one-dimensional way. In other words, the true

nature of observation could be lost when the rational mind imposed a specific arrangement onto nature.

He said, for example, that we should use our senses optimally to “...bring our intellect into line with what

they tell” because it is usually our judgement which could deceive us. “If we want to approach a living

perception (Anschauung) of nature, we must become as mobile and flexible as nature herself”. This, he

stated, did not happen naturally, and the true scientist had to train his or her senses and intellect, not only

in relation to the outer world, but also to see more deeply into the inner world, which, of course, included

the art of dreaming. He was adamant that “...the eyes of the spirit have to work in perpetual living

connexion with those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing past a thing."

Goethe also defined an ‘ur-phenomenon’ (“Ur-Phänomen”), which was an original, archetypal pattern that

formed the basis or essential identity of any structure, especially that of a living system. This ‘ur-

phenomenon’ was beyond rational understanding but was available to human consciousness and could

make the world intelligible. It involved a special kind of creative and imaginative thinking, but was

different from the divine inspiration of previous times. Goethe argued for an experiential observation of

the ur-phenomenon – a wide-ranging exploration that should be the basis of all physical sciences. For

example, to him a main quality of essential nature was the polarity of light and dark. This he investigated

in a objective and pragmatic way, exploring the science of colour, however he also had a metaphoric

conceptualisation of colour in the natural world. He searched for a formula that would not merely define

the world as linear causality organized as distinctive manifestations, but also enable us to observe it as a

living ongoing pattern of interaction within an ever changing nature. To him science and art could never be

truly separated.

In contrast to Goethe, a scientist who thought in poetry, we have Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-

1834), who was a poet who thought a lot about science. To him knowledge was also about association, not

only separation. Life wasn’t a thing, but a process. He could also not accept that life was merely the

outcome of “the chance whirlings of unproductive particles”. His ideas were inspired by Kant's critical

approach to rational knowledge, but he felt that the limits Kant set to knowledge would still restrict the

science of vital nature to the materialist approach. Art, and in particular poetry, could supply the breadth

of observation and understanding that was needed for the exploration of living matter and its creative

mind. Although he did not theorise specifically about dreaming, the use of imagination as seen in dreams

was central to his philosophy. In fact, he called poetry a “rationalized dream” and wrote that it is “a fusing

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power that fixing unfixes, and while it melts and bedims the Image, still leaves in the Soul its living

meaning...” He therefore initiated the idea that dreams may carry images from the unconscious mind to

compensate for whatever conscious reasoning neglects – an idea that would become central to the science

of psycho-analysis a century later.

John Keats (1795-1821) was an example of a medical scientist who completely turned his back on

science to become a poet, yet spent his poetic life trying to rationally understand the mystery of dreaming.

Keats started off his career in medicine during the time of surgical operations without anaesthesia.

Experiencing the intensity of suffering in patients during such operations was just too much for him. He

exchanged his scalpel for a poetry notebook, sincerely believing that imagination was the better healer.

Like Coleridge, he confirmed that although it was his dreams that supplied the essence of his imagination,

it needed the waking mind of the poet to translate it: “For poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine

spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment”. However, he

was also remarkably effective in illustrating the tension between everyday material consciousness and the

state of wonder in dreams, using his poetry to show that the wonder in dreams stems from the “heart’s

ability to remember what the conscious mind cannot”.

As seen in these few examples, many writers during this era of Romanticism in Europe still believed in the

authenticity and value of dream content. However, now this belief was centred in the ability of an

independent and knowing inner mind to communicate with the conscious, reasoning mind via dreams.

We have therefore reached a point where philosophers and artists guided scientists towards

research in conscious and unconscious states of mind in such a way that dreaming could

become a rational source of knowledge.

until you make the unconscious conscious…

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your

life and you will call it fate.” C.G. Jung

Could this have meant that the mind-body division

had also softened? After all, it was now accepted that

it was the reasoning mind that was in charge of both

the understanding of the materialistic body as well the

spiritualistic exploration of the hidden inner world of

individual people. The meticulous reasoning of

scientific method as well as the creative wonder of romantic naturalism now claimed freedom from

religious belief.

On close scrutiny, however, it seems that the spiritual-materialistic dualism had merely shifted position. In

the nineteenth century world of science, all forms of intuition and vision became insignificant in

comparison to experiment and measurement. In medicine, too, natural philosophy shaped itself

confidently around the principles of science with its empirical observation. Medical science became a broad

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An interesting example of bridging the controversy in medicine during the 1800s was the fascination with mesmerism, named after the Austrian physician Franz Mesmer. Although he described it as a paranormal force in living bodies (animal magnetism), later physicians such as the Scott James Braid in 1842 coined the term hypnotism, indicating a kind ‘sleeping’ process in the nervous system due to ordinary physiological processes. Until the 1880s hypnosis was mainly used by surgical doctors. However, when mental health professionals like Jean-Martin Charcot and Pierre Janet began to explore the concept of a subconscious, they started to use hypnosis in the treatment of conditions such as hysteria.

spectrum of subdivided fields of knowledge, and separate subjects such as anatomy, physiology,

microbiology, chemistry, surgery and physical medicine appeared. Each had its own distinct practical

relevance for medicine, and medical scholars started to train in different departments in appropriate

academic institutions. This meant fewer holistic healers and more scientifically instructed doctors working

in everyday practice. On the other hand, the human mind was still tormented with glimpses of a hidden

reality that did not want to fit into the fixed laws of medical science. Dreams, hypnosis, hysteria and faith

healing still happened and kept on demanding a place in medical practice. It is no wonder that by the

middle of nineteenth century the materialism controversy became central to discussions in medicine. If the

body was a simple material machine run by observable physiologic processes, where did the inner world of

dreams, visions and ideas of life after death fit in?

The general solution was to keep reason and wonder completely separate so that the one could not

interfere with the other. For example, according to Rudolph Wagner of the Physiological Institute in

Gottingen, faith, and thus also wonder, explored knowledge about the supernatural while reason supplied

knowledge about the natural world, and the two could not be part of the same experimental science.

However, such strict dualism would only work if medicine could find a way to accommodate dreams as well

as the many medical conditions that did not show a quantifiable physical abnormality. For our brief journey

through Europe’s awakening to the

power of reason, we can only choose

a few of the ever increasing number

of scholars who, during this century

also, were sensitive to the wonder-

reason dichotomy and who tried to

unify science and philosophy,

especially in terms of dream analysis.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

was influenced by Kant and Goethe, but expanded on their views to find an even more abstract answer for

this new dualism that evolved out of the reason-wonder dilemma, namely, the tension between an inner

coherent, unified sense of being and the everyday experience of fragmentation or plurality of phenomena.

He accepted that all we knew arrived via known faculties such as senses and reason but he asked: was

there an underlying universal reality?

Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that there was another reality beyond the ordinary phenomenal

world, beyond and outside time and space, a single undifferentiated entity. This reality could be

experienced as ‘will’ inside the mind; as a ‘sense of being’, even a ‘need or will to be’. This ‘will’ was the

metaphysical substance of life; an unconscious energy force striving for life as it is. In other words, apart

from a concrete life with its physical needs, emotional desires, rational planning and self-exploration,

people were able to live a life in an abstract form where they could reflect on the universe with calm, lucid

contemplation. This was as natural to humans as the need to stay alive. In this view, while it was possible

to analyse life as matter-in-motion, it would become more and more complex, always reaching a point

where it was beyond the conceptualisation of the rational mind. In fact, ultimately all could be

transmutable to this ‘will’ to be. This did not mean that analysing the world of phenomena was futile, but

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As in the case of many other scientists and scholars, Freud claimed that it was a dream he, himself, had in 1895 that shaped the true understanding of his theories. Few dreams have been more analysed and written about than this dream, and even Freud himself wrote at least thirteen pages on it. In the dream he had intense physical and sense responses - smell, choking, numbness, physical pain - while confronting a patient in a ballroom who did not respond to his treatment. In the dream, he also experienced diverse symbolic expressions of her physical condition, dealt with his and her interaction via known and unknown medical colleagues, saw chemical formulas of specific drugs, and coped with the outcome of his and her wrong and incomplete treatments. Much of this dream content corresponded to his personal situation at the time of the dream: his own health, his family problems, his disagreements with colleagues, mistakes he himself had made in the treatment of patients, and the possibility of conceiving a new science. From a purely rational analysis of the content it could be argued that the dream was merely a reaction to his situation, and even Freud understood it as essentially a process of wish-fulfilment. However, when also considering the deep subjectivity and sense of wonder, which must have been present for Freud to have given such importance to the dream, it is clear that the content of the dream expanded into a broader experience of the unknown.

only that it should be done in a way that always included a subjective experience of essential reality, even

in science. Although Schopenhauer himself experienced this ultimate reality as nightmarish and awful, he

accepted that, in its metaphysical sense, it gave the assurance that everything was essentially one – a

unified and reliable basis for truth and compassion. As in Eastern philosophy, he also conceived that

eventually the aim was to embrace nothingness and non-being. In other words, even the body was beyond

object-subject duality and it was impossible to know the full self.

However, he allowed for the fact that sometimes dreams could go beyond time and space, beyond the

‘suffering of daily life’ and could become an impersonal reflection on the ‘will’ to live. In a way,

Schopenhauer thus preceded Freud’s and especially Jung’s ideas of an inner unconscious that could reach

into the hidden domains of universal knowledge.

This then brings us to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the well-known Austrian neurologist, who was

probably the most important medical scientist to propose a theory that brought a relationship with the

unknown back into medical practice. Along with this theory he developed a clinical method for managing

illnesses that had their origin in unconscious processes, and, as to be expected, dreams and their

interpretation were central to his therapeutic procedure. Firstly, Freud supplied a rational structure for the

human mind, where the conscious level was only like the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Then there were also a

preconscious, easily retrievable memory and a much larger unconscious mind that contained structures

and content which, although hidden from conscious awareness, had a profound effect on reasoning,

everyday experiences, and health.

Within these fields of

consciousness he also defined

three functional constructs, the id,

ego and superego, which were

kept in motion by a dynamic

energy or libido together with two

instinctual forces, a life instinct or

eros and a death instinct or

thanatos. Where the id was body

centred, instinctual and mostly

unconscious, the ego was rational,

objective and mostly conscious.

The superego, on the other hand,

contained values and ideas of

perfection and had its effect on

both conscious values as well as

the unconscious need for fulfilment. Childhood development determined the content of the unconscious as

well as the energy balance and interaction between the id, ego and superego. Because the ego was in

control of waking consciousness it concentrated on that which the personal self focussed upon, often using

specific defence mechanisms to protect the identity from events and desires that were too painful or

frightening. The id was a cluster of drives based upon the pleasure principle while the superego was based

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upon a morality principle.

In Freud’s time, psycho-somatic illness played a dominant role in medicine. The aim of therapy was to

increase consciousness by exploring the content of the unconscious mind in a safe and controlled manner.

In this process Freud considered dreams to be the “royal road to the unconscious”. During dreaming the

rational defences of the ego were at their lowest and this allowed hidden material in the unconscious to

surface. Freud divided dream content into the manifest, which was consciously experienced, and the latent

content, which stayed hidden and could only be indirectly remembered through a technique of free-

association. Although Freud explored the possibility of universal symbols in dreams in his later work, he

always stated that symbols were personal and depended on a person’s own circumstances. In his view it

was impossible to interpret what the manifest content of a dream symbolized without knowing the

personal circumstances. Although he disregarded the collective history of humanity in his therapy and

early theories, he later also addressed some form of universal unconscious when he wrote Totem and

Taboo. In spite of Freud’s highly rational attitude towards his work, medical science still struggled with the

fact that his theories could not be measured objectively and thus empirically proved – they could explain,

but not predict outcome of treatment.

Where Freud will always be the seen as an innovator in this new subjective field in medicine, it was Carl

Gustav Jung (1875-1961), with his expansion of the unconscious to include a collective unconscious, who

brought rational medicine back in contact with a universal thread of wonder. Freud was concerned with a

personal identity that wanted a normal life free of misery; Jung, however, wanted to understand life, and

saw a need for transformation and wholeness as the dominant drive in humans. In other words, in Jung’s

view people preferred the pain of growth and change to a meaningless life. To Jung the child was not a

tabula rasa but born into a pattern of inherited complexity based upon a given biological order. Therefore

the psyche, as interpreter of the world, could not stand to be divorced from its universal nature. The

persona and ego, which were experienced as a conscious self, could not form a complete identity without

the content of the unconscious. The ego brought the inner and outer world together by ordering memory,

feelings, thoughts and senses into an identity that made conscious sense. This process was selective,

however, and the ego therefore formed only a small part of our whole identity. Jung defined the Self, as

the sum total of our identity, which included all the psyche’s potential and thus also contained a drive

towards fulfilment and wholeness. Most inner-outer interaction became part of a personal unconscious

which contained the material that eventually showed up in dreams. To him this personal unconscious

carried not only ‘known’ but ‘suppressed’ knowledge, it also contained unfulfilled potential and

undeveloped aspects of the identity. This could include elements from a collective unconscious, which,

although loosely defined by other scholars in the past, now became a distinctive concept of the human

psyche and a possible influence in well-being and illness. With the existence of a collective unconscious it

made sense that all aspects of an individual’s identity were potentially inborn and that the environment

selected and brought about whatever became necessary. However, inborn information could also affect an

individual’s life in the form of archetypal patterns. To Jung an archetype was an inherited mode of

functioning or a pattern of behaviour triggered by specific circumstances corresponding to the archetypal

situation. In other words, archetypes might influence an individual’s response to meaningful inner and

outer events such as dreams. This influence takes the form of symbols, which he saw as products of the

unconscious rather than of conscious rational thought.

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It is interesting that during this era, many of the great thinkers later in life started to search for an explanation for their sense of wonder, often in relation to their personal dreams. Although it was sometimes seen as a regression after an earlier phase of critical thinking, it was probably really a natural evolution towards greater intellectual insight into the subjective dimensions of life. Maybe wonder did bring an actualization of truth while reason was the manifestation of that which was actualized.

These theories about the existence of a large unconscious element inside the individual human mind,

which could influence conscious reasoning as well as mental and bodily health, brought about a final break

with the idea that humans are guided by a universal outer intelligence or god.

So, ironically, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the significance of an individual

unconscious from which reason could extract symbolic information about the unknown brought

dreams to the forefront of medicine again, in the

relatively new field of psychiatry.

and become acquainted with the night..?

“One luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was

neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the

night.” Robert Frost

We could say that during the centuries since the

European enlightenment, the hidden hand of an

external universal principle was exchanged for an

inherent natural evolving process in nature. Although

scholars used reason to unify science and philosophy during this time, a rift between natural science and

mechanistic science created a new form of dualism. In spite of the rise of medicine as science and an end

to metaphysical views in medicine, we still saw a strong materialism-spiritualism controversy until the

nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century there still were compelling voices who

wanted a natural, but functional medical science to

soften the rigidity of a pure materialistic view.

This had a profound effect on the understanding of

dreams. Although dreams became a mere fragmentary

expression of brain activity to most medical scientists,

in the background there still loomed problems with

dream content and its explanation. Reason came up

against the essential principle of medical science,

namely that of finding the source of biological and

mental transformation. Many accepted the concept of

an unconscious mind which could influence reason, suggesting that there always was an element of belief

in reason itself. In the search for true knowledge, reason and wonder could therefore not strictly be

separated.

The question now was whether the exploration of dreams supplied one of the platforms where

wonder and reason could be brought together in a scientific way. Could dreaming be explained

in the language of reasoning without including the element of wonder that is created by the

content of dreams?

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Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/

A Doctor’s office. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Painting;_%27A_mother%27s_worry%27_by_Von_Habermann,_1886._Wellcome_L0010136.jpg

Paracelsus. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paracelsus.jpg Rene Descartes with Queen Christina of Sweden.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ren%C3%A9_Descartes_i_samtal_med_Sveriges_drottning,_Kristina.jpg

Kant with friends. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kant_doerstling2.jpg Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Tischbein.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johann_Heinrich_Wilhelm_Tischbein_-_Goethe_in_the_Roman_Campagna_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Hall, Freud and Jung in front of Clark. https://commons.wikimedia.org Sleep soundly - 2016 - acrylic - oil on canvas - 90cm x 90cm -André Schmuck.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sleep_soundly_2016_andr%C3%A9_schmucki.jpg

Also see:

Do we dare to dream

Do we dream to live

Dreamt into Existence

The Goddess Speaketh

Between Wonder and Reason

Daemons and Dragons