The realisation of this dream recalls vividly the psychology of the pathological cheat. Delbruck[70] and Forel[71] have indicated the importance of auto-suggestion in the formation of pathological cheating and reverie. Pick[72] regards intense auto-suggestibility as the first symptom of the hysterical dreamer, making possible the realisation of the "day-dream." One of Pick's patients dreamt that she was in a morally dangerous situation, and finally carried out an attempt at rape on herself; she lay on the floor naked and fastened herself to a table and chairs. Or some dramatic person will be created with whom the patient enters into correspondence by letter, as in Bohn's case.[73] The patient dreamt herself into an engagement with a totally imaginary lawyer in Nice, from whom she received letters which she had herself written in disguised handwriting. This pathological dreaming, with auto-suggestive deceptions of memory amounting to real delusions and hallucinations, is pre-eminently to be found in the lives of many saints.[74]
It is only a step from the dreamlike images strongly stamped by the senses to the true complex hallucinations.[75] In Pick's case, for instance, one sees that the patient, who persuades herself that she is the Empress Elizabeth, gradually loses herself in her dreams to such an extent that her condition must be regarded as a true "twilight" state. Later it passes over into hysterical delirium, when her dream-phantasies become typical hallucinations. The pathological liar, who becomes involved through his phantasies, behaves exactly like a child who loses himself in his play, or like the actor who loses himself in his part.[76] There is here no fundamental distinction from somnambulic dissociation of personality, but only a difference of degree, which rests upon the intensity of the primary auto-suggestibility or disintegration of the psychic elements. _The more consciousness becomes dissociated, the greater becomes the plasticity of the dream situation, the less becomes the amount of conscious lying and of consciousness in general._ This being carried away by interest in the object is what Freud calls _hysterical identification_. For instance, to Erler's[77] acutely hysterical patient there appeared hypnagogically little riders made of paper, who so took possession of her imagination that she had the feeling of being herself one of them. Similar phenomena normally occur to us in dreams in general, in which we think like "hysterics."[78]