Carl Jung | Psychogenesis of Mental Disease

“Dreams can produce similar pictures of great catastrophes. They can manifest all stages of personal disintegration, so it is no exaggeration to say that the dreamer is normally insane, or that insanity is a dream which has replaced normal consciousness. To say that insanity is a dream which has become real is no metaphor. The phenomenology of the dream and of schizophrenia are almost identical, with a certain difference, of course; for the one occurs normally under the condition of sleep, while the other upsets the waking or conscious state. Sleep, too, is an abaissement du niveau mental which leads to more or less complete oblivion of the ego. The psychic mechanism that brings about the normal extinction and disintegration of consciousness in sleep is therefore a normal function which almost obeys our will. In schizophrenia it seems as if this function were set in motion in order to bring about that sleep-like condition in which consciousness is reduced to the level of dreams, or in which dreams are intensified to a degree equalling that of consciousness.” Carl Jung