To sleep does not mean "perchance to dream," but to dream from the very
second when we close our eyes to the time when we open them again.
"But I never dream," some one will surely say.
To which I will answer: Make experiments on yourself or some one else.
Have some one wake you up fifty times or a hundred times in one night.
Repeat the experiment as many nights as your constitution will allow and
every time you wake up, you will wake up with the clear or confused memory
of some dream.
Most people forget their dreams as they forget their waking thoughts.
Unless some very striking idea came to my mind yesterday afternoon, I am
likely to be embarrassed if some one asks me: "What were you thinking of
yesterday afternoon?"
We shall see in another chapter that our dream thoughts are not in any way
different from our waking thoughts, and that unless they have a special
meaning there is no reason why they should obsess us more than our waking
thoughts do.
In fact, a remembered dream is as important as an obsessive idea and has
the same meaning. Thousands of futile dreams dreamt in one night may not
leave a deeper impression on our "mind" than thousands of futile thoughts
which flit through our consciousness in one day.
Before considering the origin of dreams I must restate briefly a
proposition which I have discussed at length in _Psychoanalysis and
Behaviour_, the indivisibility of the human organism.
The words physical and mental are lacking in any real meaning and there is
no physical manifestation which it not inseparably linked with some
psychic phenomenon. Emotions, secretions and attitudes may be studied
separately for the sake of convenience, but in reality there cannot be any
emotion which is not unavoidably accompanied by a secretion and betrayed
by some attitude, nor can there be any attitude which is not accompanied
by a secretion and interpreted by some emotion.
This must be constantly borne in mind when we attempt to answer the
question: Where do dreams come from?
If dreams "come from the stomach" why should distressed minds seek refuge
in them? If they are purely psychic phenomena, what relief can they afford
to our dissatisfied body?
We shall not deny that a full bladder may at times induce urination
dreams, that a full stomach may at times conjure up anxiety visions in
which heavy masses oppress us, or that long continence and the consequent
accumulation of sexual products may be at times responsible for sexual
dreams.
What the physical theory of dreams, most scientifically and
conscientiously expounded by the Scandinavian Mourly Vold, will not
explain, however, is that, in one subject, a urination dream may be a
pleasurable visualization of relief, leading to continued sleep and, in
another, an anxiety episode, picturing frustrated gratification and ending
in an unpleasant awakening. A heavy dinner may people one sleeper's
visions with large animals treading his stomach, and cause another to
dream of vomiting fits which relieve the pressure of food.
In one sleeper, sexual desire evokes libidinous visions, in another,
terrifying scenes of violence.
On the other hand, the very close relation observed in thousands of cases
between the sleeper's dreams and his physical condition, invalidates any
theory which would revert more or less literally to the belief held in
ancient times that dreams were purely psychic phenomena, visions sent by
the gods.
Maury whose book, "Sleep and Dreams," published in 1865, was probably the
first serious attempt at deciphering the enigma of dream thoughts, had
various experiments performed on himself to determine what dreams would be
brought forth by physical stimuli.
He was tickled with a feather on the lips and nostrils. He dreamt that a
mask of pitch was applied to his face and then pulled off, tearing the
skin.
A pair of tweezers was held close to his ear and struck with a metallic
object. He heard the tolling of bells and thought of the revolutionary
days of 1848.
A bottle of perfume was held to his nose. He dreamt of the East and of a
trip to Egypt.
A lighted match was held close to his nostrils. He dreamt that he was on a
ship whose magazine had exploded.
A pinch on the back of the neck suggested the application of a blister and
evoked the memory of a family physician.
A sensation of heat made him dream that robbers had entered the house and
were compelling the inmates to reveal where their money was hidden by
scorching the soles of their feet.
Words were pronounced aloud. He attributed them to some people with whom
he had been talking in his dreams.
A drop of water was allowed to fall on his forehead. He dreamt that he was
in Italy, feeling very hot and drinking wine.
A red light suggested to him a storm at sea.
Struck on the neck, he dreamt that he was a revolutionist, arrested,
tried, sentenced to death and guillotined.
I have had some of Maury's experiments repeated on myself and the
connection between the physical stimulus and the content of the dream
leaves no doubt as to the direct relation between the two. On the other
hand, the reader will notice that the same stimuli applied to Maury and to
me produced absolutely different results. Compare my first and second
experiments with his first and third.
1. I was tickled on the nose with a feather. I dreamt that I was entering
a forest and that branches and leaves were brushing against my face. I
made an effort to push them away with my hand. (I had taken a ride through
Central Park that very day).
2. A bottle of perfume was held open under my nose.
I dreamt of a landscape with thick clouds and mist to the left. Two dark
figures carrying grips were hurrying toward the right where there seemed
to be open fields, flowers, and sunlight. (The day preceding the dream had
been cloudy.)
3. My nose was stroked with a piece of paper.
I dreamt I met a certain writer who asked me whether another writer had
seen a certain lady and her daughter. I answered rather indifferently and
went on my way. Then I saw either the other writer or myself seated before
a window and showing a tall gaunt woman and another indistinct figure,
either Japanese prints or some manuscript, and I woke up.
(The day preceding the dream I had revised a manuscript for a woman and
also spoken of one of the two writers.)
4. Cold steel was applied to my throat.
I dreamt that a cold wind was blowing; I tried to turn up my overcoat
collar and woke myself up.
Carl Dreher has devised an apparatus which can be set to throw flashes of
light at a given time during the night and then wakes him up by means of a
buzzer. The flashes have translated themselves in many cases into
interesting visions: In one dream the last picture seen before the alarm
went off was that of a building in front of which stood very white marble
columns standing on a background of intense black. On another occasion
extremely bright green snakes hung from trees, the space between the
snakes being very dark. On another occasion he was talking to a girl who
declares herself to be "intermittently in love." In another dream, he saw
himself operating a moving picture machine which threw flashes on the
screen regardless of whether he opened or closed the switch. After many
such experiments, he saw his apparatus in a dream and woke up without
having been directly affected by the light.
In this last dream we have a case of dream insight, the dreamer refusing
to pay any attention to a stimulus which has become familiar. This
explains the phenomenon of adaptation to stimuli. People whose bedroom is
near some source of regular constant noise can sleep in spite of that
stimulus for their nervous system no longer translates it into fear; nor
has it to interpret it lest it might create fear.
Every one of the dreams thus produced artificially were closely related to
experiences of the day before and to some of the dreamer's memories and
complexes.
The dreamer's unconscious was merely stimulated by the light flashes to
express itself through images including an allusion to those flashes.
In other words, the physical stimulus, be it an impression made upon one
of the sense organs or an inner secretion, is interpreted by the sleeper
according to the ideas which dominate the sleeper's mind at the time,
memories of recent experiences or obsessive ideas.
Which means that the personality of the dreamer expresses itself through
his dreams. We need not heed Pythagoras' warning against eating beans. It
is not the stimulus that counts; it is the end result. And the end result
seems to depend from the memories which have accumulated in our autonomic
nerves.
Freud compares the dream work to a promoter who could never carry out his
brilliant ideas if he could not draw upon funds accumulated elsewhere (in
the unconscious).
Silberer says that the appearance of a dream is like the outbreak of a
war. There is a popular tendency among the ignorant to attribute a war to
some superficial, visible cause, disagreement, insult, invasion. The real
causes, however, are much deeper and lie not only in the present but in
the past as well.