Professor of Education, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va.
A FEW nights ago I experienced a very interesting nightmare, and,
immediately on awakening, I got up and recorded it, analyzing it as fully as
I was able. This is the first nightmare I have had for several years, and I
never was especially addicted to them. Two years ago I made an introductory
study of dreams,[1] and at that time dreamed profusely, but recently I have
been dreaming very rarely, and when I do dream the experiences are not at
all vivid. I use the term "nightmare" in a somewhat popular sense to mean a
painful or frightful dream accompanied by physical disturbances, such as
heart flutter and disturbances of breathing, and followed on awakening by a
certain amount of the painful emotion which was a part of the dream.
Accepting this definition, the experience which I have to relate was a
typical nightmare. A few words of explanation are necessary to give the
proper setting for the experience. At present I am teaching in the summer
school at this place and my wife is visiting her folks; during her absence,
in order to keep from getting too lonesome, I invited one of the young men
in the summer school to come and room with me and keep me company. With this
as an explanation, I shall copy the original account of the dream as nearly
as possible, making a few corrections of the barbarous language I used in
the half-asleep state.
[1] At Clark University, 1912-1913.
On the night of August 9, 1914, I went to bed at 11.40 o'clock and was soon
asleep. About 3.40 in the morning, the young man, F. K. S., roused me and I
awoke weak, scared, and with a fluttering heart; he said I had been making a
distressing sort of noise, but he could not distinguish any words.
Immediately, I judged that the dream was caused by my lying on my back, and
in an uncomfortable position. As a rule I do not sleep on my back, but for
some reason I had gone to sleep that way this time. Also, it had been
raining when I went to bed, and I had put the windows down, and the
ventilation was bad.
The dream, as nearly as it was remembered, was as follows: I was with
somebody in a buggy and we drove down a hill, across a little stream, and up
the other hill, where we arrived at our destination. I seemed to find
trouble in getting a place to hitch, and I had to take the horse out of the
buggy and I think take the harness off. I distinctly remember that in the
dream this was a hardship to me, as it would have been in waking life, for I
am not a good hand with horses, and do not like to work with them. All this
is very hazy to me, and I do not know with whom I was driving, but think it
was a lady, possibly my wife. There were other people at this place and
other horses and buggies. (Could it be called a case of reversion to
childhood, in that there were only horses and buggies and no automobiles?)
There is a break in the dream here, and we were within some kind of a
building where there was a crowd of people. As it seems now, we were around
some kind of a rotunda, but this is very vague. The important part seems to
be that there were two people, a man and a woman, who were talking very
stealthily and earnestly to each other, and they soon drew me into the
conversation. It runs in my head now that the man was my father (who has
been dead for some years), though I am not sure about this, while there is
no recollection of who the woman was. Now it appeared that there was some
woman in the crowd who had some peculiar evil influence over every one and
whom everybody feared. This man and woman were planning to slip off from
this wicked woman and meet me and the one with me on the road, and in some
way, which is not now clear, we were to circumvent this bad woman and break
her power. The man explained and explained to me that we were to meet at
certain springs which were at the side of the road, but it seemed that I
could not get it into my head where they were, and I was afraid I would not
stop at the right place. At last I thought I knew where he meant, and told
him that I would stop there and wait until he came up, but then I happened
to think that he might be ahead of me anyhow, and could stop and wait for
me; then I was sure he would be ahead, for I remembered that I had to
harness and hitch up the horse and his was all ready. And now we seemed to
be getting our horses, and I remarked to him that I was not a bit good hand
at working with horses, and he expressed his sympathy that I had this work
to do.
Here was a second break in the dream, and I was standing in a hallway,
looking through a window into a room. In this room sat my wife and the evil
woman whom everybody feared. She had learned our play (I was conscious of
this in the dream), and was determined to have her revenge, and prevent us
carrying out our plan. She had hypnotized my wife, and had her scared so
that she was in great mental agony. I heard her saying, "Now you are a big
black cat," or something much like this, at any rate making her think she
was a cat and at the same time leaving her partly conscious of who she was.
This woman looked exactly like a woman who lives in the neighborhood where
my wife is now visiting and of whom she has always been somewhat afraid
because of her sharp tongue and unpleasant ways. Immediately, I was filled
with a great fear for my wife and with a raging anger against the woman. I
broke out into calling her all kinds of names, especially saying, "You
devil, you devil," and trying to get through the window to her. I tore out
the screen, but had a great deal of difficulty in doing so. When I had
finally succeeded in tearing the screen out, I threw it at her head, but she
did not dodge, but sat boldly upright and seemed to defy me. Then I tried
to jump through the window to get to her, but was so weak that I could not
do so; this seems strange since the window was not more than three feet from
the floor. I was making unsuccessful attempts to get through, and was
railing at the woman when S. awoke me. I awoke weak, and for some time
continued to feel frightened, though not enough so to keep me from talking
and writing out the dream. I got up and put up the windows (since the rain
had stopped), and about this time a very fair explanation of parts of the
dream came to me. I immediately told it to S., in order to keep from
forgetting it, and then decided to write it down, which I proceeded to do.
Parts of the dream seem to analyze very nicely, but there are parts which
seem to resist analysis; I did not try to force the analysis but gave only
the part which came spontaneously. In the first part of the dream I was
driving in a buggy, I crossed a creek and had trouble with unharnessing a
horse. Several times recently, I have mentioned the fact that I never liked
to work with horses, even when on the farm at home. I do not remember of
having mentioned this fact on the day of the dream, but Mr. C. had stopped
in to call on me that evening and had mentioned that he drove in in a buggy.
I had not seen the buggy and had wondered what he did with it, and had not
remembered to ask him. He had also told me that he was going to a place
called Yellow Springs; I knew about where Yellow Springs are, but could not
quite place them and had tried to figure out what direction he would go.
This seemed to come out very clearly in the dream, when I was trying to find
out where these unknown springs by the side of the road were. I had related
during the evening how I recently fell into a creek with my clothes on and
this probably accounted for the creek over which I drove in the dream. In
the dim second part of the dream, the rotunda seems to have resembled the
chapel of the new college building which is being builded, and about which I
was talking that afternoon.
The last part of the dream seems to have been the important part, and in it
several of the Freudian mechanisms show up very plainly. Just before going
to bed, I had read an article about Vera Cheberiak, the Russian murderess of
the Mendel Beilis case, and how she is now engaged in suing different people
for slander. The article had described her as coolly and impudently sitting
up in court and seeming to realize her power over her enemies, and it had
also made a point of the great fear in which she is held. I had read another
article about the city of Salem, which has recently burned, and I had
remembered that it was the "witch" town of colonial days where people were
supposed to be turned into black cats. I had read still another article,
descriptive of country life, which described how a man had climbed a tree
after a cat which was eating young robins. I had just a day or two before
received a letter from my wife, which contained the news that she was going
to visit this woman whom she fears, but whom she must visit because of their
social relation As already mentioned, the woman in the dream looked just
like this one, and it will readily be recognized that the dream woman was a
condensation of Vera Cheberiak, a Salem "witch," and the woman whom my wife
fears. The fact that she was hypnotized into thinking she was a cat would
naturally accompany the Salem witch, and the cat in the apple tree,
concerning which I had read, might also have entered the dream. Aside from
these, there is another element which may have been instrumental in causing
my wife to be punished by thinking she was a cat. I once saw a woman who was
suffering from melancholia who thought she was a cat, and her mental
suffering seemed to me to be about the keenest of any that I have ever
observed, this possibly caused the dream-making factor to represent her as
thinking she was a cat. The hall, window and screen are also easy of
explanation. That evening I had examined a window which opens from our
bedroom into a hall, and had wondered whether we would continue to keep it
curtained this year or take the curtains away. When I put down the windows
to keep out the driving rain, I had had trouble with a screen much as I did
in the dream.
The heart of the dream seems to be in this last scene. That morning (it was
Sunday) I had very unwillingly, and from a sense of duty, gone to a tiresome
and long-drawn-out church service. I had become so fatigued during the
service, and so disagreed with some of the things the preacher said, that I
was conscious of a mild desire to swear and throw something. I had
humorously mentioned this fact after the service, but there was quite an
element of truth in the jest. The dream gave me the chance of my life to
fulfil this desire, and I seized the opportunity by breaking into a stream
of profanity (not very successful profanity, I fear, as I never use it when
awake and therefore was not in good practice) and throwing the screen at the
woman. But was there not a deeper meaning than this in the dream? I think
so decidedly; it seems that it would be a lot of trouble to construct such a
tremendous nightmare just to give me an opportunity to swear and throw
something, because a preacher had been somewhat tiresome. There was
evidently a deeper and more subtle wish which was also fulfilled. That
evening I had walked up the railroad track with a crowd of young people and
where the paths crossed we had all split up and gone different directions.
Two young ladies had gone back to their boarding places across the campus,
and I had suggested to the young fellow with me that we go along with them.
However, he objected, and we walked back down the railroad track. Now, it
had occurred to me that he probably thought I was not within my bounds as a
married man when I wanted to walk back with these young ladies; something of
the same idea had come to me that day when some one had said in a
conversation, "Professor B. is the most satisfied man on the campus whose
wife is away." I had wondered if they thought I did not care for my wife and
vaguely wished I had some way of showing my love for her, and, more than
that, these suggestions had very naturally made me wonder if I really care
for her as much as I should. I could not have asked for a better opportunity
to serve and show my love for my wife than the dream gave me, and at the
same time it assured me of my affection for her. There is still another
element of repression in this and that is that I have for some time been
wanting to forcibly express myself against the unpleasant ways of this lady
whom my wife so fears. In the dream, I very freely and fully followed this
desire.
This far I can go in the analysis and feel sure of my ground. It will be
noticed that I have not resorted to symbolism, and have made very little
technical use even of the Freudian mechanisms. I could very easily plunge
into symbolism and more elaborate analysis, but should I do so I fear I
would be in the same condition as a bright young scholar who made an
elaborate study of Freudian theories. He expressed himself by saying that it
was a "chaotic inferno." This analysis will seem very unfinished to many of
the well-trained readers of the JOURNAL, and so, in a way, it does to me,
but it may be interesting as the work of a layman rather than a trained
physician. I have not used the word "sexual" in this paper, but the reader
can judge for himself if the impulses would come under this heading, either
in the more narrow use of the term or in the broader meaning which Freud has
given it. For myself, I see no possible objection in employing the word
"sexual" in this connection.
The uncertain parts of the dream are as interesting in a way as the others.
Why did I not know with whom I was riding, and why were the persons with
whom I talked more certain in their identity? Here, of course, is the place
where it would be easy to find a repression if such existed and--I
believe--if it did not exist. Whether there is such a repression there or
not I do not know, but I see no necessity for considering that there is one
there just because there is a dim place in the dream. In the study which I
made of dreams a year or so ago, I became convinced that there is a
principle of dream-making which has not been noticed. I will throw out a
suggestion here in the hope that some one will study it further, but will
give no elaborate discussion in this paper. Briefly, it is that only those
things appear in a dream which are necessary to express the meaning of the
dream. A few illustrations may make this clear. Every one has noticed the
rarity with which colors and sunshine appear in dreams; I have found,
however, that colors and sunshine always appear if there is any necessity
for their doing so. Some one dreams of a melon and looks to see if it is
ripe; he sees the red color; he dreams of a stream which he thinks is a
sewer and smells it to see if it gives off an odor and finds that it does;
he dreams of pulling his fishing line to see if there is a fish on it and
senses the pull of the fish; I have examples in abundance which go to
indicate that taste, smell, tactual, kinaesthetic, color sensation or any
other kind will appear in a dream when they are called for to complete the
meaning of the dream, but they are not common because they are very rarely
needed. Even in waking life we rarely think in these terms. If this little
principle prove true, it would be easy to understand why certain parts of a
dream are dim without going to the doubtful process of positing a
repression. The persons in the dream were not recognized simply because
there was no need for them to be; the dream expressed the pertinent meaning
just as well without them as with them. They were observed just as many of
us would observe the occupants of a street car in waking life; we could
possibly not describe, even partly, any one of the occupants of the car
which we used on our way to the office or home.
Before leaving this nightmare, I want to call attention again to the somatic
elements. I was lying on my back and in a cramped position, the air was
closer than usual, and my circulation was naturally deranged. When I awoke I
was strongly inclined to give the physical elements a large amount of the
responsibility for the dream, and I have not found occasion to change my
mind in this matter. I think that even the inability to jump through the
window in the dream was caused by the weak and exhausted state of my body,
due to the poor circulation and cramped position.
ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE DREAM AS A MEANS OF UNEARTHING THE GENESIS OF
PSYCHOPATHIC AFFECTIONS