The curve of sleep depth shows that our withdrawal from reality is not
sudden but gradual. The transition from wakefulness to sleep is
characterized at first by blurred visions, colours, shapes, moving objects
with a scarcely defined outline, and immediately after by curiously
symbolical visions, known as hypnogogic visions.
Those phenomena are difficult to study for they are forgotten by the end
of the night. The observer has to train himself to wake up after a few
minutes of unconsciousness, a result which is achieved without difficulty
after a few trials.
The first visions of the night are in every subject I have asked and in
myself, symbolical of the passage from one state to another. One
hypnogogic vision I have had many times is of wading slowly into a lake or
the sea, until the water reaches to the middle of my body after which I
start swimming.[2]
One night when I had a little difficulty in falling asleep my hypnogogic
vision represented a truckman looking like myself whipping a team of
horses hitched to a big load who were crossing a very high bridge leading
from the city into the open.
Another night, after seeing the "Follies," I dreamt that the police was
trying vainly to quell a disturbance and that the rioters succeeded in
placing their own police in charge of the disturbance. The newcomers were
attired like the front row girls of the Follies. No more symbolical
picture of the whole nervous situation could be found. The day's
repressions being gradually replaced by the "follies" of dreamland.
Not only is the passage from reality into dreamland thus symbolized by
appropriate representation but the mental work of reality gradually merges
with the mental work of the sleeping state.
Thoughts of the day merge directly with the dream thoughts. There is no
gap between waking thoughts and sleeping thoughts. This has been
demonstrated by Silberer's experiments.
"The very first dream," Silberer says, "visualizes, dramatises and
interprets the very last waking thought."
1st EXAMPLE: "I applied some boric ointment to the mucous of my nose
before retiring to relieve a painful dryness."
DREAM: "I see some one offering money to some one else. Only I notice that
it is my right hand which is putting money into my left hand."
INTERPRETATION: "I have often thought that this medication did not help my
nose trouble but simply concealed it. The action is therefore presented as
illusory help."
2nd EXAMPLE: "I am thinking of a dramatic scene in which a character would
intimate a certain fact to another character without putting the thought
into words."
DREAM: "One man is offering to another man a hot metallic cup."
INTERPRETATION: "The cup transmits an impression of heat which has not to
be expressed through spoken words."
3rd EXAMPLE: "I try to remember something which in my sleepy state eludes
me."
DREAM: "I apply for information to a grouchy clerk who refuses to impart
it to me. The interpretation is obvious."
4th EXAMPLE: "I think that many simple arguments could be brought forth to
prove some thesis of mine."
DREAM: "A drove of white horses moves downward through my field of vision.
Interpretation obvious."
Likewise sleeping thoughts gradually merge with waking thoughts in the
moments preceding awakening.
The last dreams of the night or hypnopompic visions generally dramatize
our awakening in picturesque, symbolical fashion.
Here are several examples collected by Silberer from observations on
himself:
"I return to my home with a party of people, take leave of them at the
door and enter."
"After visiting some place, I drive home along the same road which lead me
there."
"One morning I woke up and decided to doze off for another half hour: I
dreamt then that I was locked up in a house and I woke up saying: 'I must
have the lock broken open.'"
In hypnopompic visions we generally enter a house, a forest, a dark valley
or take a train or a boat, or we fall (see typical dreams).