IT is an easy matter to accept upon authority a given scientific theory and
bring to its support certain selected evidence, but quite another to
carefully observe and report phenomena, inspired, influenced and guided
indeed by the scientific-theory but drawing conclusions no wider or deeper
than individual insight warrants. Scientific knowledge advances not by ready
acceptance of theories but by original observation and experiment and the
following study of dreams is offered as fulfilling in some degree the latter
requirement. While there is a certain familiarity on the part of the writer
with the general theory advanced by Freud and with his principles of
interpretation, there is no acquaintance at first hand with his Die
Traumdeutung, the reading of which has been postponed lest there be excess
of influence.
No apology is offered for this invasion of the domain of psychology by a
layman. The laboratory of the mind is open to all and he who has missed
conventional training may yet chance upon valuable facts and their
interpretation. Neither is apology offered for the intimate nature of the
data reported. Belonging as dreams do to the most personal and private life
of the individual it is nevertheless true that continued and careful study
of this form of mentation insensibly alters one's attitude so that at length
the dream appears as a fact of nature, impersonal and objective.
It is a common remark that if one tells his dreams their number will
increase but this increase is probably only apparent. With attention the
products of the dream-self become more accessible until one who is practiced
in introspection can raise the number of his remembered dreams from one in
two or three nights to five, ten, or even fourteen in a single night. Even
at this maximum of remembrance one feels that but a fraction of the mind's
nocturnal activity is recalled. Images emerge in consciousness and fall back
into obscurity before the waking thought can grasp them. Or it may be more
accurate to say that upon awakening consciousness rises from level to level.
It sometimes happens that when first awake I recall several dreams which
vanish utterly as a sudden shifting of consciousness occurs. Then, upon this
new level, a new set of dreams appears. There is reason to believe that in
thinking again of a dream which has once been recalled it is not the
original dream experience which comes to mind but the copy made in the
waking consciousness when it first emerged. On the other hand visions
recognized as dreams belonging to a long past time occasionally float into
the mind giving rise to the suspicion that they have not before reached the
waking consciousness. It is possible that all dreams are recorded in the
depths of the mind, themselves influencing and merging with later dreams.
The number of my dreams recalled and written out during three years closely
approaches five thousand and without doubt the total number far exceeds
this. I am inclined to the belief that constantly, by day as well as by
night, we are dreaming; that unnoticed and independent trains of thought are
carried on. At times when resting if I fall into an abstracted state--not
of set purpose--I find myself in the midst of a stream of thought appearing,
for the moment, perfectly natural, familiar and intelligible, as if I knew
the beginning and end of the matter. But only for a moment will
consciousness remain at this lower level. There is a sudden return to the
normal plane, the passage fades from memory and I wonder what on earth it
was all about. These phases of subconscious activity differ from dreams
proper in the absence of visual images. The ideas are embodied in words,
heard with the mind one might say. The source may be the same as that of the
night visions but it is evident that during the day the incessant
stimulation of the eye from without leaves no opportunity for the emergence
of the secondary visual images pertaining to subconscious ideas, which, we
are told by Dr. Morton Prince, furnish the perceptual elements of the dream.
The other senses are sometimes represented. Often we are performing, or
trying to perform, some action. But dreams are predominantly visual. Goethe
has said, "I believe men only dream that they may not cease to see."
An account of the probable genesis of the memory images not only furnishes a
clue to the mechanism of dreaming but to the underlying conditions as well.
The lowest forms of life possess no image-forming power. They have no sense
organs; sensation is diffused over the entire form and undifferentiated.
Gradually, as the scale of life is ascended, certain parts of the organisms
become specially sensitive to certain stimuli and eventually individual
organs give separate and distinct reports of phenomena. A substance
hitherto merely felt, is seen, heard, smelled, tasted. The passage from
sensation to perception occurs when but one or two of the sense organs are
stimulated by an object, yet, because of nervous connections established
during former more close and complete experience of the object the remaining
sense organs are faintly roused, sending into consciousness copies of former
sensations. Thus the whole is present to mind while but a part to sense. In
the developing brain the store of memory images of various kinds would
rapidly increase and these images would come at length to have a more or
less independent existence. It is probable that the next step in the making
of mind was the synthesis of one set of sense impressions to form an idea of
the object, the first abstraction, and thenceforth a sensation gave rise to
an idea. There is at this stage no impulse to explain sensations, but
involuntarily, from the store of memory images, and from the reservoir of
ideas above, emerges a representation of the exciting object. If this is one
to which the organism is accustomed the resulting complex in the highest
nerve centers fits the subject, but as evolution proceeds and environment
and capacity for sensation grow more complex, new stimulations occur. In the
absence of the capacity for knowledge and understanding of the object the
developing mind, true to its law, brings forward mental images most nearly
related--those which fit in one or two respects,--and thus we have the birth
of analogy, "the inference of a further degree of resemblance from an
observed degree of resemblance."
To look at one's self is a late endowment. The kitten pursues its own tail
but would chase that of its mother with equal ardor. I once saw a monkey
searching industriously with eyes and hands upon its own body. The sight
was startling. I had never before seen an animal look intelligently at
itself. It was long before man distinguished his self from the world
without, and longer still before he began to understand himself. Physical
and mental phenomena, pain and pleasure, could not be tracked to their
sources and so came to be expressed in terms of the world of nature, and for
a reason precisely similar that portion of the self functioning in sleep
makes use of symbolism. Occasionally the higher thought centers are involved
but the typical dream is the product of a restricted, primitive self,
lacking the resources of the complete personality and limited in power of
expression. In dreams we are deficient in self-consciousness because it is
only a partial self that dreams. Our wishes are rarely given clear and
definite expression for the reason that the section of the mind then active
is incapable of clear, definite and adequate concepts. Symbolism and
reasoning by analogy are the resources of the mind until the power of
knowledge dawns.
Predicating then a dream-self by its nature largely restricted to the use of
symbolism and having at its disposal a vast store of images endlessly
susceptible to influences which combine and alter their form, we reach the
crucial question, what initiates the dream? This is by no means a mere
purposeless thronging of visual images as occasionally happens in the period
preceding sleep when faces, forms and scenes flit aimlessly before the
mind's eye, some bare replicas of stimulations of the eye from without,
others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and
their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise
of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a
body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when
recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated
bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's
threshold. In the last example we come definitely upon a vision induced from
within, an idea working downward upon the visual centers. Still nearer
dreams, indeed if occurring in sleep they would be classed with them, are
the purely imaginative pictures whose cause is as mysterious as that of the
actual dream. Fire in the wall near the pantry door, a garden with a woman
rising from a clump of bushes, high, rocky mountain tops, a perpendicular
wall of rock and against it a man on a ladder reaching for a flower, a long
vista ending with a pillared temple on a hill,--these are a few of my
visions before sleep. But to return,--why the dream? Are all or most dreams
sexual? Can we say with Freud that they express the fulfillment of repressed
desires?
It is not my purpose to attempt a complete answer to this question as I am
far from understanding even the majority of my own dreams. Broadly speaking
I should say that considering the amount and complexity of the material on
hand which the mind may use and the probable inconceivable number of dreams
it is unlikely that all are concerned with this matter. This question may
well be allowed to rest for the present. But certain convictions have arisen
in my mind as the result of the study of hundreds of personal dreams,
convictions which do not rest upon the arbitrary interpretation of accepted
symbolism, though I am far from questioning the validity of this procedure.
I venture little beyond the region illuminated by individual insight though
examples are cited far exceeding my power of interpretation.
The sexual theory of dreams has by some authorities been characterized as
greatly over-emphasized, as failing to take account of other factors and
interests of human personality. To those critics let me present the matter
briefly and simply. The very fact of a person's being alive today
presupposes an ancestry stretching backward through uncounted ages, an
ancestry whose chief function, up to very recent times, was sexual and
reproductive. Modern interests, business, social, intellectual, religious,
artistic and philanthropic, which today loom so large, are a recent
innovation, occupying in comparison with the period when they were not but a
moment of time. In a vertical section of man--both racial and individual,
they are seen to constitute but a superficial layer, from a contemporary
standpoint predominant and paramount but in the light of the ages secondary
and unstable. Biologically a woman is only an agent for the reproduction of
her kind; more than this, with mind, all save the conscious, socially and
ethically restricted sections, set toward the same end and toward the means
for its accomplishment. There is no gainsaying this fact and in my dreams
which yielded to analysis it stands paramount. I am inclined to disregard
the theory of a "censor" for the reason that after I had admitted to my
thought and frankly considered certain facts, by a thousand devious hints,
by a thousand subterfuges, my subconsciousness continued to express these
same facts by means of obscure symbolism. As the savage seizes upon one link
in a chain of events expecting thereby to repossess the whole, as the native
of Borneo makes a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image
melts, the enemy's body will waste away, as the women of Sumatra when sowing
rice let the hair hang loose down their backs in order that the rice may
grow luxuriantly and have long stalks, so this woman, this under-self,
ignorant of the true law of cause and effect, and unable to form definite
concepts, instinctively selects from the innumerable memories and visual
images at her disposal those having relation to her unfulfilled function and
forms a picture or weaves a tale, expecting through the performance of some
remotely associated act the complete result.
To the events of an hour or so, supremely significant from a biological
standpoint, are related a very large number of my dreams. Again and again
events of that day and of the preceding days form the basis of dreams;
trivial circumstances are revived one by one and fragments of the experience
itself are seized, distorted and each woven into what I can no longer term
"the baseless fabric of a vision." For instance the day preceding I broke
my umbrella and found a shop where it was mended. In dream after dream
appears that broken umbrella under various circumstances and when I ask the
reason for its apparent importance I can not escape the conclusion that the
article in question stands for a period of time, a series of events, in
which the dream-self would again be placed. Apparently on that road
opportunity lay in waiting, therefore by any means at her disposal must that
path be regained. Involuntarily the language of metaphor is assumed in
attempting to describe a process so far removed from actual knowledge. Still
are we driven to avail ourselves of the expedient of primitive man.
Of the dreams presently to be cited only a part fall within the category of
analogical reasoning. In none of the examples is a complete analysis
attempted. The mind of each reader may carry the solution of the problem as
far as it will. I am content merely to furnish a clue. That each dream is
of great significance must not be assumed. But that each one, even though it
appear a mere fanciful reverie, means SOMETHING can hardly be doubted. At
the outset it is acknowledged that the dreams recorded followed a period of
intense emotion when, through the exigencies of life the strongest instinct
of humanity required control and repression. Further the writer is a
musician and a botanist, and especially interested in biological and social
problems. Study of the latter subjects was continued throughout the period
in question. It must be confessed also that though loth to accept the
sexual theory of dreams, once convinced of its at least partial truth I was
on the watch for confirmation. I expected sexual symbolism. On the other
hand each dream was absolutely spontaneous, an utter surprise, having no
slightest likeness to any creation of my waking mind and seeming to rise
from a region so remote as to be not myself. It should be noted also that
the greater number of the nearly five thousand remembered dreams, all but
very few in fact, would have remained in the limbo of the unconscious but
for the persistent and trained effort which rescued them from oblivion.
Neither by, nor apparently for my waking self were they formed.
Each individual mind, besides sharing in the symbolism common to mankind,
has doubtless its own particular and special forms. For instance during the
period covered by my study no less than ninety different varieties of plant
life figured in my dreams, not including indefinite ferns, moss, grass,
weeds and trees, and several plants noted somewhat in detail yet unlike any
form known to me. Of the recognizable plants a number were used somewhat
cleverly for their analogical significance. Of these may be mentioned the
snowball and hydrangea whose flowers as every botanist knows are sterile,
the size of the individual blossom being gained at the expense of loss of
stamens and pistils. These plants were plainly used to indicate barrenness
and the predominance of traits other than sexual. The keen critic will here
interpose an objection. How is the primitive, unreasoning dream-self able
to make use of symbolism whose import is known only to higher and developed
states of mind? The force of the objection is granted and without attempting
fully to answer it I will say that the likeness of the primitive mind of the
race to that surviving in the highly evolved individual is only partial.
Like tendencies exist but the influence of a great body of knowledge above
inevitably alters the action of the latter. Maidenhair fern stood
indubitably in several instances for the pubic hair, once surrounding a
cluster of trailing arbutus when talcum powder of that fragrance had been
used on the body. I dreamed of Linnaea borealis, the little twin-flower, in
connection with a woman who a few days before when told of the birth of
twins to a friend, said, "That is the way to have them come." Lettuce, for
its milky juice obviously, appeared in two bunches on the front of the waist
of a woman into whose house I had broken by leaning against a screen door,
and a lawn bordered by cowslips, our common name for Caltha palustris,
certainly represented a certain lawn that a friend told me had been kept
mown by the cows feeding upon it when driven from pasture.
In each of the above instances the floral symbolism was part of an elaborate
dream having wider significance leaving no doubt as to the accuracy of my
conclusions. A particularly interesting and devious use of flowers occurs
in the following dream--I am in front of a certain house over which, in the
dream, is growing a vine having white, star-like, fragrant blossoms. I want
one flower and the woman living there says I may have it. The name of the
vine seems to be "Dyak." There is no plant having that name but a few
months before I was reading of the Dyak girls of Borneo who "are very
careful of their clothing, and often very vain, but when they are married
they frequently become exceedingly untidy." I quoted the passage in an
article thus fixing it in my mind. The link with the dream consists in the
fact that the woman living in the vine-decorated house is, in reality,
notoriously untidy. Her two daughters as they approached womanhood greatly
improved in the daintiness of their garb, and one had become pregnant--
outside marriage. Another dream:--I see a friend, by name Anna, stoop and
pull from the ground a tiny lily-of-the-valley plant. It has no roots. I
say, "What a pity." This dream had no meaning until into my mind came the
thought of another Anna, a young girl who was led astray and who, I had just
been told, had taken medicine to terminate her pregnancy. When I learned of
this I had thought of the loss of the incipient life. The same night I
dreamed of going upstairs in a shed or barn. At the top of the stairs
something--a door--is in the way. I go by it. A child is there. Again:--I
am crossing a level field and come upon little star-like flowers which I try
to analyse. I find many with pistils but no stamens,--the pollen bearing
organs which effect fertilization. I wonder if they will keep fresh until I
reach home. Once more:--I approach a city. I see woods and two gardens,
either flower or vegetable, from which comes music. On a mound wild flowers
are growing, some white, some small and dark. I gather them. Then very
remote and vague,--my brother is there. I see a long snake which my brother
puts on(?) and covers my flowers. Still another vision was of a branch of
beautiful; fragrant apple blossoms growing through the wall of a room. Some
of the flowers were pistillate, some staminate,--a condition false to nature
as regards the apple.
A dream, which in common with many others, seems not the fulfillment of a
wish but the symbolical expression of a bodily and mental state, is the
following:--After a day of very great physical restlessness I dream that I
am walking in a path by a river. I can not see the water for the
over-hanging trees beneath whose branches grow quantities of Impatiens
fulva, the spotted touch-me-not,--named from the sudden bursting of the pod
when touched. The plant in question I had not seen for some time and the
fitness of the symbolism to the bodily state was too close to be accidental.
After a walk in the spring when the ground was white with the cotton-tufted
seeds of the poplar and I thought if all germinated how overwhelmed we
should be with poplars, I dream that I am sweeping a floor upon which cotton
is scattered, some of which flies and is caught in my hair. I dream of
walking under pine trees whose pollen falls on me, and finally--though
examples of the significant use of plants are by no means exhausted--I have
upon awakening the vision of a pine tree growing from my nose. This strange
anomaly becomes intelligible when I recall that a friend told me that the
pores of her nose were enlarged, and I said mine were also; we had been
talking of a quotation from Emerson relating to nature's fecundity; my
friend was soon to be married; and a line from Emerson often in my thought
is that in regard to pines "throwing out pollen for the benefit of the next
century."
For a musician to dream of playing, or of trying to play, upon an organ or
piano is apparently the most natural thing in the world and an attempt at
interpretation is, to uninstructed common sense, a journey far afield. Yet
the strange and striking variations introduced and the hindrances to my
accomplishment of the act invest the dream with marked significance. For
instance:--It is after church service and I want to play upon the pipe
organ. I find my music. The stool is a kettle of water with a board over
it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which
kicks or bites me. Again:--I play on the piano to a friend who is a German
scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend
tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me
like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis
of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is
nonsense or otherwise according to the observer's point of view. Another
dream:--Some children want me to play and I go to the piano and try to play
the Spring Song. But the piano stops sounding; only a few bass notes
respond. I dream that a table of sheet music is on fire. Sometimes the
music is too far away or too high for me to see: the notes are flowers, or
books, or animals, or "hanging objects," or queer figures; in the book from
which I play are pictures of the sea, a ship, a person, and birds--sea
gulls, among them. The bed becomes an organ upon which I try to play. I
begin to play the Witches' Dance and there are not enough keys to the piano.
Again the keys are covered by a cloth or there are no keys. An organ behind
me is played and I see no organist, or I move the pedals of an organ and
music begins before the instrument is open. I try to play and the stops are
wrong. Often I search frantically for the hymn given out by the minister
and can not find it. Once I picked flowers in its place, drooping racemes of
sweet alyssum, which I gave to a woman. Oddest of all on the keys of a
piano I see a small boy who salutes me. Lastly, I play for children to
sing. At the top of the page of music are whole notes--easy to play; below
there are whole notes in groups of two, joined like confluent living cells.
There are several examples of punning to record--not brilliant, even
somewhat vulgar yet interesting as exhibiting varieties of mental action. I
dream that I am at a barn yard trying to hold the gate shut. In the yard are
two men, each with an animal, a kid, one light, one dark. The light kid is
unmanageable, pawing and shaking its head. Some days elapsed before the
interpretation dawned upon me but once noted could not be doubted. Several
weeks previously I had a business engagement and of two pairs of
gloves--kids--I hesitated which to wear. I was to do some writing
necessitating their removal and as one fastening of a light glove was
difficult I fixed upon the dark pair, as to ask help would under the
circumstances, have proved exceedingly embarrassing.
A friend had informed me of her approaching marriage. I dream of eating at
a table with her. I take meat but she wants me to do she does. So I return
the meat I had chosen and take spare-rib. This variety of meat I had neither
eaten nor thought of for months and the conclusion that the reference is to
the story of Adam and Eve is inevitable. I dream of eating at the table of
a friend. I am a little sick and cannot eat all that is given me. My friend
points smilingly to a package of stuffed dates on my plate. One date is
apart from the package. This dream relates unmistakably to a day when I had
a pressure of engagements and had not time to eat; when I did feel slightly
ill, and when one very significant engagement was made unexpectedly--a date
apart from the others. A kiss of her lover upon the lips of a young girl
becomes in my dream a piece of court plaster on her upper lip, and a woman
about whose prospective marriage some one asked, returns, in my night vision
to a university to obtain the degree of B. Ed., which in sleep I took to
indicate Bachelor of Education but which is open to a different
interpretation.
Visions of natural scenery are most remote, strange, beautiful and
delightful. They are doubtless composites of actual localities but in their
construction and use fine powers of imagination are at work and real life
seems left far behind. In my dreams of this type the ocean stands as a
symbol of Life itself, of the mighty and profound procreative force the
entrance into whose domination is the crisis of existence. For this
experience is demanded the mightiest symbol. It is evening. I am on the
seashore with my father and mother. Greatwaves are rolling in. I look
backward and see one wave break where we have passed. My mother is afraid
but we cannot turn back. I am calm. Then--this immediately follows--I am
in a kind of tunnel and fear that I shall suffocate. This and the following
might be construed as symbolising my own birth. I am in a boat on the ocean
with my mother. The waves are tremendous and as she goes out on deck to
close a great door I fear she will be washed away. But she is safe. Next
there is a violent jar and the boat is aground. Then I see down a city
street. In a particularly impressive dream I approach the sea at early
morning. I think I shall see the sun rise from the water. I go over a hill
to reach the ocean which is frozen near the shore. I go into a little house
and when I come out I can not close the door. The wind is high and the
waves enormous. Then there is calm and I see a man on horseback in the
water. Next a fog rises and out of the mist a little boat comes toward me,
the oars flashing like silver. Then a little boy comes ashore. There are
strange dreams of a frozen ocean, and of being out in a small boat with a
friend, soon to be married, with ships passing and we afraid. I am near the
ocean and longing to see it, and once trying to go with some one to see the
foundation of the sea but am hindered.
Among visions of mountains is the following.--I see high and beautiful
mountains as I stand on a bridge. I hear the squeal of a horse. Then stones
fall from a mountain-top into the stream and spirals of bright water rise to
meet them. After receiving from a man of vigorous, vital personality an
atomizer for a slight hay fever, I dream of high mountains and at the foot
of one is an irregular patch of red sunlight. Above are two houses, not
side by side. In front of them is a fine, slanting veil of rain. A dream in
which indications of the reputed "father complex" may be found is one of my
father and myself in a team at the top of a high mountain, at the end of the
road. My father wants to drive off among the peaks but I fear that we shall
be lost. I dread the night there but think I can call for help. Somewhat
similar is the following.--I am in a high, steep place with my father. I
fear. He moves a stone and in the hollow of a rock I see moss or fungus.
There are often brief, passing dreams in which no person figures. I see a
bridge across a chasm; it is long and extends beyond where a bridge is
necessary. I see two rivers join and wonder what the resulting stream is
called. I see a river from the side of which emerges a spring of water and a
new stream. A small, steep hill, snow-capped. A river with water above the
banks.
To dream of moving to an old house--what signifies this? Apparently
nothing. If one is to dream it must be of something--houses or people or
scenery. But to dream often of going to live in an ancient house,--of trying
to find in it my room; mosquito netting at the window, not quite tight; from
my room into a smaller one a door which I try to fasten but can not because
at the bottom it is a swaying curtain, the wall paper loose and a mouse hole
near the floor; a long, sunshiny room where I see what appears to be a rat
but which becomes a little kitten, weak from long confinement, that follows
me from room to room and at last through a door leading to a porch;--why all
these accessories? Once I go through many rooms--furnished but
uninhabited--and come to an upper bed chamber where, upon a couch, lies a
woman, quite dead I think; but presently she moves one hand. Again I go
through room after room until I reach one where still another woman--or is
it the same--lies dead on the bed. As I look she becomes a beautiful child
who has lain there forty years. The child stirs and opens its eyes; I think
something should be done to keep it alive but the eyes close, and sleep, or
death, reigns again. After calling upon an expectant mother who showed me
her layette, all white and blue, I dream that I go in an old house to a room
with blue papered walls, a blue and white spread on the bed and a case of
books, one of which is Dickens' Great Expectations. In one old house I find
the bulbs of some plant sprouting on a shelf; in another I open the stove
and find to my surprise that fire is still there. In still another house I
see behind the stove a closed door which I long to open. I go about the
house, up steep, worn stairs, down again and out into a garden where there
is a single strawberry and I think staminate and pistillate plants should be
set out to insure fertilization. Always I think of the closed door and
presently I return to the house and enter the room behind the stove. On the
floor is a green veil of firm texture. And at last there are cobwebs on the
ceiling of my old house and I still search for my room.
After the presentation of this array of symbolism quite spontaneously the
interpretation arose in my mind. The old house is the recurring abode of
life. I would dwell there and take my place in the line of succession.
Quite in line with this symbolism was the very beautiful dream of a young
woman not many months before her bridal which I give in her words--"With a
crowd of unknown people I was to visit and go over a haunted house. The
living room was nicely furnished in antique furniture and the whole house
was very still. We went upstairs, and it passed through my mind that people
who were dead and gone had moved through the rooms. I was coming down the
stairs when suddenly a pipe organ burst forth. That was the haunted
part--music in the air, no organ at all. We were awestricken and I awoke
with the same feeling." In dreams of this character we find it necessary to
predicate a creative, myth-making tendency in the structure of the mind by
means of which currents of life flowing beneath all thought become
articulate.
Coming now to examples of reasoning by analogy directly expressive of the
desire for maternity, I wish to make still more plain my view of the reason
for symbolism. Maternity is untold ages old; intelligent comprehension of
the function very recent. That portion of the mind functioning in
dreams--that is in the majority of dreams--is unable to picture the process
and its necessary antecedents. (Frankly sexual dreams occurred to me very
rarely.) Instinctive acts are the last to be made objects of thought; a
relatively high degree of mental development is necessary before the
requisite detachment from the process can be obtained and as we have seen
this detachment is beyond the power of the self that dreams. Hence the
recourse to analogy and symbolism.
I call upon a woman who is pregnant and whose face is slightly bloated. In
that night's dream I look in a mirror and see that my face is plump. I think
I am too old. I see on the street a young girl in short skirts wheeling a
baby carriage. My friend tells me that the girl is a mother. That night I
dream of being in a shop to buy an article which I in reality intended to
purchase and in addition looking at a dress for a girl of twelve or
fourteen. I hear of a pregnant woman who ran away and worked for a time in
a mill and a night or two after I have a dream of a devious walk with many
details which finally ends at a kind of factory. An expectant mother tells
me of her trip to a neighboring town where a friend gave her a tiny
crocheted jacket. Soon after I start in a dream for that town, afoot, in
the dark, without lantern or money, and hampered and stumbling, make the
weary journey.
A dream which upon analysis proves extremely interesting is the following:--
I come out from a house and stand looking at other houses. I am waiting for
some one, and look toward the street. In the yard I see a large elm tree
nearly sawed off but at one side the wood is continuous,--to indicate that
the tree is still alive. I look up. A bough sways and I am dizzy. I think
the bough will fall. Beneath the tree is a sick woman on a couch. Until the
clue was found this appeared a mere aimless mixture of imagery but one
circumstance makes it very clear. Shortly before I was reading a book on
biology and in the section devoted to the influence of environment on
organisms a portion of the trunk of an elm tree was shown and the influence
of various factors noted as indicated by the annual rings of growth. One
considerable variation was due to the fact that children had swung from one
limb of the tree. At the time of reading the fact made so slight an
impression that after the dream some time elapsed before I recalled it and
then so faintly that I had to refer to the book for verification. Thus we
see upon what slight and obscure basis a dream may be constructed.
That all dreams do not originate in one section or at one level of the mind
is quite evident. The range extends from those which almost merge with
waking thought to creations strangely remote and primitive. When I dream
that Goethe is a guest at my home and I am trying to ask him in regard to
Faust, Wilhelm Meister and Mignon,--when after reading of x-rays, ether
waves and electrons wake with the thought, "To solve the problem of matter
would prove materialism,"--when I dream that I am conversing with a
conservative friend who says that he does not like new religions and I reply
that Moses and Jesus were new once, it is plain that a different stratum of
mind is operative than when I dream that I am in an old fort and chased by
three rats, or that a snake is on my bed and my father kills it with a
pitchfork, or strangest of all, that I throw an egg at the plug of a sap
bucket which it hits and then flies to the left; it is rotten. Again, a
very vague dream, I, see two eggs and then am climbing inside a kind of
tower. A dream which immediately preceded the menstrual period, is as
follows:--I pass a narrow, dark canal which seems to be under cover. On the
very brink is a child and I fear it will fall in. A man is there whose
business it is to save the child but be does not. That this indicates the
impending passage from the body of the ovum can hardly be doubted. Under
like conditions--this before sleep--I see a doorway filled with flowers.
It was natural that after a time I should wonder what event of the day would
be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering,
will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church
and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me
through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a
pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to
find. I see cows and am afraid.--This based on reality of a few days
before.--At length by a stone I find a fern coiled as in spring. This
becomes a squirrel, the male comes, and then they are lions. The male has a
sprig of leaves which he lays at the feet of the female and which she eats.
I want to know what the leaves are but fear to look closely because of the
lion. I found it difficult to deliberately influence dreams by suggestion.
The dream-self is not to be coerced and usually I over-did the matter. Most
of my examples deal with flowers and perhaps the most apposite is the
following:--I plucked a stem of blossoms of white everlasting and wore it
inside my waist on my bosom all day, asking as I fastened it in,--How will
this reappear in my dream? The following morning as consciousness returned,
I had a vision of a baby's bottle filled with milk and beyond it, more
faint, another similar bottle. It is fair to say that this outcome was
entirely unexpected. Another night after watching Venus, low in the
southwestern sky, I dream that I am molding a statue--strangely enough the
arms as the reference is to the Venus de' Melos--and the figure is that of a
young woman of immoral life.
My store of dreams is so great and varied that the forms of symbolism are by
no means exhausted. The reception of mail is a favorite subject and here
again one may say that this is the most natural of dreams and quite its own
excuse for being. But strange things come in the mail,--pieces of turf in
which are growing tiny plants, boxes of rice, jelly, breakfast food, cooked
fish still warm; and once a sack of mail is emptied upon my door-stone--not
by the postman but by a man who the day before drove past with a little
child. Other recurring motifs are strawberries, yeast, Bologna sausage, ice
cream-- once poured over slices of clear, transparent fruit which I eat,
this very plainly referring to the fertilization of the eggs of fish about
which I read the preceding evening:--"As soon as the female finishes
spawning the male will approach the eggs and eject a milky fluid over them
to effect fertilization. If this is successful the spawn will have a clear,
glassy appearance." The dream-self can turn anything to its use,--I read of
certain suffrage activities in England and forthwith dream that I attend a
suffrage meeting. But the house at which it is held is in reality the home
of a woman nearly my age, who is pregnant.
I pass over all the dreams obviously of an infantile character, and likewise
those of travelling and of packing for a journey. More unusual is the dream
of a flight of birds which twice occurred under conditions which left no
doubt as to its sexual character. A house having a wet sink and a dry one is
the verdict of my dream-self regarding a home in which the woman can bear no
more children because of physical disability; and a railway station where I
go down the steps, pick from the floor a flower--wondering if it is all
right,--reach a restaurant in which seventy have that night been served and
where I lose my flower, symbolizes a house of prostitution mentioned in
Chicago's famous report where one woman served sixty men in one night and
was said to have seven thousand dollars in the bank. Beneath convention
strange unconvention lurks. A young woman of irregular life appears in my
dream as one with soiled skirts, and, very vaguely, some one's else skirts
are soiled also. After seeing a print of Tompkins' painting, Hester Prynne,
heroine of The Scarlet Letter, I dream that I go to a shop, where I have
great difficulty because of darkness, to buy some dark green silk for
embroidering a letter somewhere on my dress. Not to pander to the base in
human nature are these details given but to make known life's realities to
those who are blinded by theories. The frank and honest truth is never foul
and monstrous. Society can be renovated only when all the facts are brought
to light.
In conclusion I give the dreams of a single night:--First, a drunken man and
girl in the same team; I think they should not be there. Then I am on a
porch looking off at a headland with ice at the foot. Farther up the hill
are quantities of ice--a sheet of it over the ground and in one place it is
as if water had been poured and allowed to freeze. In the midst of this
last, which is not on the hill, is a fine and shapely tree with the ice
about it very smooth and shining and slanting somewhat. I think it is a good
place for skating. In the morning as I recalled this dream, quite abruptly
into my mind came the remark of Philina in Wilhelm Meister, after seeing a
woman "great with child," "It were prettier if we could shake children from
the trees." Next I see far off high mountains with sunlight on the summits.
Then I am in a porch enclosed by a wire screen; by me is a woman. From the
window of a building outside, which seems to be a hospital without funds, a
woman looks at me. I want to see far off and shade my eyes with my hands.
I think I must cut the screen in order to see clearly. Then I see a rampart
and beyond it is the ocean. I hear a bird, a robin, on the rampart. Near
it is another bird, large, gray and strange. Then it is a rooster. The key
to this dream lies in the fact that the day before I received an appeal for
financial aid from a hospital and the printed request showed the picture of
a row of nurses each with a tiny baby in her lap. Finally I go into a
bed-room. On the bed is a baby. I uncover it and it moves and cries. It
wants its mother and I go to find her.
That the mind which dreams is not uncognizant of the hopelessness of its
aspirations is strangely indicated by the following for which at the time I
found no direct exciting cause:-- I see two long lines of seeds planted and
at the end of the rows tiny lettuce plants. Near by are apple trees in
blossom. But it is autumn.
Bergson at the close of his essay on dreams hints that the mind may
transcend its conjectured limits and be influenced in profound slumber by
telepathy. This is but an hypothesis which must long await verification. My
own dreams which apparently forecast the future are out-numbered by
erroneous forecasts and one vivid dream of the death of a friend though
coinciding as to the day, is not of great value as evidence as I had been
expecting the news for weeks, and further, beyond the surface portent the
dream is remotely allied in certain details with more personal and vital
memories.
Though the dream process may to a certain extent be made verbally
intelligible he who studies it most best realizes the attendant mystery.
Dream-self, subconscious ideas, visual images,--these are but terms which
bridge the abyss of our ignorance. Further exploration of the mystery is of
value not only from the standpoint of pure science, to whose domain there is
no limit, but also in the interest of education, health, sanity and
morality. It is neither necessary nor wise for all persons to study their
dreams, but for those who shape the growing thought and conduct of the world
a knowledge of even the remotest outposts of human mentality is supremely
important.