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THE WORLD OF DREAMS
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE SOUL OF SPAIN.
AFFIRMATIONS. _Second Edition._
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS.
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS. _Second Series._
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE.
THE
WORLD OF DREAMS
BY
HAVELOCK ELLIS
'Sleep has its own world'
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1922
PREFACE
There are at least four different ways of writing a book on dreams. There
is, for instance, the _literary_ method. In this way one goes to books
or to the memories of other people for one's material, and so collects
a great number of more or less wonderful stories. I have rejected this
method, for it is entirely untrustworthy. Dreams are elusive at the
best; only a very careful observer can set down a dream faithfully, even
directly after it has occurred, and no one can safely entrust a dream to
memory.
There is, again, what I may call the _clinical_ method of studying dreams
by the personal observation and collection of facts, with summation
and analysis of the results. On a large scale, with the aid of the
_questionnaire_, this method has been especially carried on in the United
States, notably at Clark University under the inspiration of Dr. Stanley
Hall. A strict and scientific adherence to the clinical method of studying
dreams has resulted in Professor Sante de Sanctis's book _I Sogni_ (first
edition 1899), which is, on the whole, the best book on dreams published
in recent years.
Then there is the _experimental_ method, which, not content with mere
objective study of the phenomena, endeavours to interfere with them and
to find out the results of interference. This method may be combined
with other methods of studying dreams. In its pure form it has in recent
years been especially practised by the late Mourly Vold. Its results are
not without interest, but they do not cover a large part of the field,
and they are not altogether reliable. Dreaming activity is so fluid and
suggestible--and this is notably so when experimenter and subject are the
same person--that interference with the phenomena deforms them, and we
cannot be sure that by experiment we have really learned much about the
life of dreams.
There is, finally, the _introspective_ method. This may be said to be
the earliest of the more scientific methods of studying dreams. Maine de
Biran was here a pioneer, and Maury, in his famous book, _Le Sommeil et
les Rêves_ (1861), which inaugurated the modern study of dreams, adopted
a mainly introspective method, though he was not always quite successful
in avoiding the fallacies of that method. It is in France that this method
has been most frequently and most successfully cultivated.
Professor Sigmund Freud's _Die Traumdeutung_ (first edition, 1900), may be
said to belong to the introspective class, though to a special division
which Freud himself terms psycho-analytic. This is undoubtedly the most
original, the most daring, the most challenging of recent books on dreams,
and is now the text-book of a whole school of investigators. It is not
a book to be neglected, for it is written by one of the profoundest of
living investigators into the obscure depths of the human soul. Even if
one rejects Freud's methods as unsatisfactory and his facts as unproved,
the work of one so bold and so sincere cannot fail to be helpful and
stimulating in the highest degree. If it is not the truth it will at least
help us to reach the truth.
The little book now presented to the reader belongs mainly to the
introspective group of dream studies, though not to the psycho-analytic
variety. It is based on data which have accumulated beneath my hands
during more than twenty years, and some of the ideas developed in it
were put forward in a paper 'On Dreaming of the Dead,' _Psychological
Review_, Sept. 1895; in 'A Note on Hypnagogic Paramnesia,' _Mind_, No.
22, 1896; and in 'The Stuff that Dreams are made of,' _Popular Science
Monthly_, April 1899. The book is not the outcome of experiment or of
any deliberate concentration of thought on dreaming. I have simply noted
down dream experiences,--most often in myself, less often in immediate
friends,--directly they have occurred, usually on awakening in the
morning. The few unimportant exceptions to the rule are duly noted. By
maintaining this rule I have been able to satisfy myself that everything
I have set down is reasonably accurate. Such a method certainly tends
towards the exclusion of peculiar and exceptional dreams. This I do
not greatly regret. I am chiefly interested in the problems of normal
dreaming; they are sufficiently puzzling and mysterious and they properly
present themselves for explanation first. I do not wish it to be
understood that I question the existence of telepathic and other abnormal
dream experiences. That is not the case. But it so happens that under the
conditions I have laid down I have not met with any dreams that clearly
and decisively belong to this abnormal class. Such few possible examples
as have come under my immediate observation (in no case as personal
experiences) are slight, and, moreover, sometimes of too intimate a
character for full exposition.
Thus my contribution to the psychology of dreaming is simple and
unpretentious; it deals only with the fundamental elements of the subject.
I do not make this statement entirely in a spirit of humility. It seems to
me that in the past the literature of dreaming has often been overweighted
by bad observation and reckless theory. By learning to observe and to
understand the ordinary nightly experience of dream life we shall best be
laying the foundation of future superstructures. For, rightly understood,
dreams may furnish us with clues to the whole of life.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
The House of Dreams--Fallacies in the Study of Dreams--Is it
possible to Study Dreams?--How Fallacies may be Avoided--Do
we always Dream during Sleep?--The Two Main
Sources of Dreams with their Sub-divisions, 1
CHAPTER II
THE ELEMENTS OF DREAM LIFE
The Spontaneous Procession of Dream Imagery--Its Kaleidoscopic
Character--Attention in Dreams--Relation of Drug
Visions and Hypnagogic Imagery to Dreaming--Colour in
Dreams--The Fusion of Dream Imagery--Compared to
Dissolving Views--Sources of the Imagery--Various types
of Fusion--The Sub-Conscious Element in Dreaming--Verbal
Transformations as Links in Dream Imagery--The
Reduplication of Visual Imagery in Motor and other Terms, 20
CHAPTER III
THE LOGIC OF DREAMS
All Dreaming is a Process of Reasoning--The Fundamental
Character of Reasoning--Reasoning as a Synthesis of
Images--Dream Reasoning Instinctive and Automatic--It
is also Consciously carried on--This a result of the
Fundamental Split in Intelligence--Dissociation--Dreaming
as a Disturbance of Apperception, 56
CHAPTER IV
THE SENSES IN DREAMS
All Dreams probably contain both Presentative and Representative
Elements--The Influence of Tactile Sensations on
Dreams--Dreams excited by Auditory Stimuli--Dreams
aroused by Odours and Tastes--The Influence of Visual
Stimuli--Difficulty of distinguishing between Actual and
Imagined Sensory Excitations--The Influence of Internal
Visceral Stimuli on Dreaming--Erotic Dreams--Vesical
Dreams--Cardiac Dreams and their Symbolism--Prodromic
Dreams--Prophetic Dreams, 71
CHAPTER V
EMOTION IN DREAMS
Emotion and Imagination--How Stimuli are transformed into
Emotion--Somnambulism--The Failure of Movement in
Dreams--Nightmare--Influence of the approach of Awakening
on imagined Dream movements--The Magnification of
Imagery--Peripheral and Cerebral Conditions combine to
produce this Imaginative Heightening--Emotion in Sleep
also Heightened--Dreams formed to explain Heightened
Emotions of unknown origin--The fundamental Place of
Emotion in Dreams--Visceral and especially Gastric disturbance
as a source of Emotion--Symbolism in Dreams--The
Dreamer's Moral Attitude--Why Murder so often takes
place in Dreams--Moral Feeling not Abolished in Dreams
though sometimes Impaired, 94
CHAPTER VI
AVIATION IN DREAMS
Dreams of Flying and Falling--Their Peculiar Vividness--Dreams
of Flying an Alleged Survival of Primeval Experiences--Best
explained as based on Respiratory Sensations
combined with Cutaneous Anaesthesia--The Explanation
of Dreams of Falling--The Sensation of Levitation sometimes
experienced by Ecstatic Saints--Also experienced at
the Moment of Death, 129
CHAPTER VII
SYMBOLISM IN DREAMS
The Dramatisation of Subjective Feelings Based on
Dissociation--Analogies in Waking Life--The Synaesthesias and
Number-forms--Symbolism in Language--In Music--The Organic Basis
of Dream Symbolism--The Omnipotence of Symbolism--Oneiromancy--The
Scientific Interpretation of Dreams--Why Symbolism prevails
in Dreaming--Freud's Theory of Dreaming--Dreams as Fulfilled
Wishes--Why this Theory cannot be applied to all Dreaming--The
Complete Form of Symbolism in Dreams--Splitting up of
Personality--Self-objectivation in Imaginary Personalities--The
Dramatic Element in Dreams--Hallucinations--Multiple
Personality--Insanity--Self-objectivation a Primitive Tendency--Its
Survival in Civilisation, 148
CHAPTER VIII
DREAMS OF THE DEAD
Mental Dissociation during sleep--Illustrated by the Dream of
Returning to School Life--The Typical Dream of a Dead
Friend--Examples--Early Records of this Type of Dream--Analysis
of such Dreams--Atypical Forms--The Consolation
sometimes afforded by Dreams of the Dead--Ancient
Legends of this Dream Type--The Influence of Dreams on
the Belief of Primitive Man in the Survival of the Dead, 194
CHAPTER IX
MEMORY IN DREAMS
The Apparent Rapidity of Thought in Dreams--This Phenomenon largely
due to the Dream being a Description of a Picture--The Experience
of Drowning Persons--The Sense of Time in Dreams--The Crumpling
of Consciousness in Dreams--The Recovery of Lost Memories through
the Relaxation of Attention--The Emergence in Dreams of Memories
not known to Waking Life--The Recollection of Forgotten Languages
in Sleep--The Perversions of Memory in Dreams--Paramnesic False
Recollections--Hypnagogic Paramnesia--Dreams mistaken for Actual
Events--The Phenomenon of Pseudo-Reminiscence--Its Relationship
to Epilepsy--Its Prevalence especially among Imaginative and
Nervously Exhausted Persons--The Theories put forward to Explain
it--A Fatigue Product--Conditioned by Defective Attention and
Apperception--Pseudo-Reminiscence a reversed Hallucination, 212
CHAPTER X
CONCLUSION
The Fundamental Nature of Dreaming--Insanity and Dreaming--The
Child's Psychic State and the Dream State--Primitive
Thought and Dreams--Dreaming and Myth-Making--Genius
and Dreams--Dreaming as a Road into the Infinite, 261
INDEX, 283
THE WORLD OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The House of Dreams--Fallacies in the Study of Dreams--Is it
Possible to Study Dreams?--How Fallacies may be Avoided--Do we
always Dream during Sleep?--The Two Main Sources of Dreams with
their Sub-divisions.
When we fall asleep we enter a dim and ancient house of shadow,
unillumined by any direct ray from the outer world of waking life. We are
borne about through its chambers, without conscious volition of our own;
we fall down its mouldy and rotten staircases, we are haunted by strange
sounds and odours from its mysterious recesses; we move among phantoms
we cannot consciously control. As we emerge into the world of daily life
again, for an instant the sunlight seems to flash into the obscure house
before the door closes behind us; we catch one vivid glimpse of the
chambers we have been wandering in, and a few more or less fragmentary
memories come back to us of the life we have led there. But they soon
fade away in the light of common day, and if a few hours later we seek to
recall the strange experiences we have passed through, it usually happens
that the visions of the night have already dissolved in memory into a few
shreds of mist we can no longer reconstruct.
For most of us our whole knowledge ends here. Our dreams are real enough
while they last, but the interests of waking life absorb us so entirely
that we rarely have leisure, and still less inclination, to subject our
sleeping adventures, trivial and absurd as they must usually seem, to the
careful tests which waking intelligence is accustomed to subject more
obviously important matters to. The world of dreams and the mysterious
light which prevails there[1] are abandoned entirely to our sleeping
activities.
This leading characteristic of dream life--the fact that it takes
place in another and more shadowy world and in a different kind of
consciousness[2]--has led to the criticism of the study of dreams from
the scientific side. We cannot really study our dreams, these objectors
say, because we--that is to say, our waking consciousness--cannot come
sufficiently closely in contact with them. Dreams, it is argued, are
inevitably transformed in our hands; what we are studying is not our
dreams, but only our waking, and probably altogether false, impressions
of our dreams. There is a certain element of truth in this objection. It
is very difficult, indeed impossible, to recall exactly, and in their
proper order, even the details of a real adventure which has only just
happened to us. It is, obviously, incomparably more difficult to recall an
experience which took place, under such shadowy conditions, in a world so
remote from the world of waking life. There is, further, the very definite
difficulty that we only catch our dreams for a moment by the light, as
it were, of the open door as we are emerging from sleep. In other words,
our waking consciousness is for a moment observing and interpreting a
process in another kind of consciousness, or even if we assert that it is
the same consciousness it is still a consciousness that has been working
under quite different conditions from waking consciousness, and accepting
data which in the waking state it would not accept. For the student
of dreams it must ever be a serious question how far the facts become
inevitably distorted in this process. Sleeping or waking, it is probable,
our consciousness never embraces the whole of the possible psychic field
within us. There are, when we are dreaming as well as when we are
awake--as will become clearer in the sequel--subconscious, or imperfectly
conscious, states just below our consciousness, and exerting an influence
upon it.[3] Our latent psychic possessions, among which dreams move, would
seem to be by no means always at the same depth; the specific gravity of
consciousness, as it were, varies, and these latent elements rise or fall,
becoming nearer to the conscious surface or falling further away from it.
But the greatest change must take place when the waking surface is reached
and the outer world breaks on sleeping consciousness. In that change
there is doubtless a process of necessary and automatic transformation
and interpretation. We may picture it, perhaps, as somewhat the same
process as when a person skilled in both languages takes up a foreign book
and reads it out in his own tongue. With practice the reader may become
unconscious that he is transforming everything, that the words he utters
are different from the words he sees, and that he even transposes their
order, sometimes putting in the middle of a sentence the verb he sees at
the end.
Yet even if we admit that the passage from sleeping to waking
consciousness involves a change as complete as this--and it is probable,
as we shall see, that some such change sometimes takes place--for a
faithful interpreter the sense still remains the same. It is impossible
to believe that the witness of waking consciousness to the nature of the
visions it has caught at the threshold between sleeping and waking life is
false, and the most convincing evidence of this is the utter unlikeness of
these visions to the data of ordinary waking life.
But even this conclusion has been subjected to severe criticism which we
have to face before we proceed further. Foucault, an acute investigator of
dream psychology--carrying to its extreme point a position more partially
and tentatively stated by Delbœuf and Tannery--has denied that our dreams,
as they finally present themselves to waking consciousness, at all
correspond to the psychic process in sleep upon which they are founded,
and he especially insists that the logical connections are superadded.[4]
He considers that dreaming is an 'observation of memory' made under such
conditions that 'it would be very imprudent to regard the remembrance of
the dream as reproducing faithfully the mental state of sleep.' During
sleep, he believes, our dream ideas proceed, concurrently, it may be, but
separately and independently; at the moment when awakening begins, the
mind, as an act of immediate memory, grasps the plurality of separate
pictures and applies itself spontaneously to the task of organising them
according to the rules of logic and the laws of the real world, making
a drama of them as like as possible to the dramas of waking life.[5] He
agrees with Goblot that 'the dream we remember is a waking thought,'
and with Tannery that 'we do not remember our dreams, but only the
reconstructions of them we effected at the moment of waking.' It is after
awakening, Foucault concludes, that the dream develops, and its final
shape depends on the period at which it is noted down; 'the evolution
of the dream after awakening is a logical evolution, dominated and
directed by the instinctive need to give a reasonable appearance to the
_ensemble_ of images and sensations present to the mind, and to assimilate
the representation of the dream to the system of representations which
constitutes our knowledge of the real world.'[6]
In arguing his thesis, Foucault makes much of the modifications which can
be proved to take place if any one is asked to repeat a dream at intervals
of months. Under the influence of time and repetition a dream becomes more
coherent and more conformed to reality. In illustration Foucault presents
two versions of an insignificant dream in which a lady imagines that she
is out with her husband for a drive, and in the course of it experiences a
natural need which she seeks an opportunity to satisfy; the details of the
first version were highly improbable; some months later they had become
much more like what might have occurred in real life. Such a process,
Foucault thinks, is taking place from the first in the making of dreams as
we know them awake.
There are, undoubtedly, facts which may seem to support Foucault's
argument that the logic of the dream, as we know it, is not in the
original dream, but is introduced afterwards. Thus I once dreamed in the
morning that I asked my wife if she had been into a certain room, and
that she replied, 'Can't get in.' I immediately awoke and realised that
my wife had actually spoken these words, not to me, but to an approaching
servant, in anticipation of a message about entering a neighbouring room
of which the door was locked. It is thus evident that although it seemed
to me in my dream that the question came first and the answer followed in
the ordinary course, in reality the answer came first. The question was a
theory, supplied automatically by sleeping intelligence and prefixed to
the answer, in which order they both appeared to sleeping consciousness,
that is to say, in the only way in which sleeping consciousness can ever
be known, as translated into waking consciousness.[7]
It must be borne in mind that such a dream as I have recorded--in which an
actual sensory experience is introduced, untransformed, as a foreign body
into sleeping consciousness--is not a typical dream. Dreams are, however,
without doubt of various kinds, and we may well admit that there is a
class of dreams formed in this way. That supposition will, indeed, be
helpful in explaining several dreams I shall have to record. The process
is much the same as when a nervous person receives a telegram, and at once
assumes that some dreaded accident has occurred, and that the telegram is
the announcement of it. The craving for reasons is instinctive, and the
dreamer's sense of logic even dominates his sense of time.
But Foucault's argument is that waking consciousness effects this logical
construction of the dream. Here his position is weak and incapable of
proof. It is, indeed, contrary to all the tests we are able to apply
to it. If it is the object of the logic of our dreams to make them
conformable to our waking experience, that end, we must admit, is in most
cases very far from being attained. In their original form, as Foucault
views the matter, our dreams are simple dissociated images. In that shape
they would present nothing whatever to shock the consciousness of waking
life. The logic, hypothetically introduced solely to make them conformable
to real life, is frequently a preposterous logic such as the consciousness
of waking life could not accept or even conceive. This fact alone serves
to throw serious doubt upon the theory that it is waking consciousness
which impresses its logic upon our dreams.
Nor, again, is there any analogy, and still less identity, between the
process whereby we grasp a dream when we awake, and the process whereby
the memory of a dream is transformed during months of waking life.
The latter is part of a general process affecting all our memories in
greater or less degree. I visit, for instance, a foreign cathedral, and
take careful note of the character and arrangement of buttresses and
piers; a few months later, if I have failed to set the facts down, my
memory of them will become uncertain, confused, and incorrect. But I need
not, therefore, lose faith in the tolerable exactitude of my original
impressions. In the same way, we cannot argue that the shifting memory
of a dream during a long period of time throws the slightest doubt on
the accuracy of our original impression of it. We never catch a dream in
course of formation. As it presents itself to consciousness on awakening
there may be doubtful points and there may be missing links, but the dream
is, once for all, completed, and if there are doubtful points or missing
links we recognise them as such. We make no attempt to supply a logic that
is not there, and we never see any such process going on involuntarily. I
should, indeed, myself be inclined to say that there is always a kind of
gap between sleeping consciousness and waking consciousness; the change
from the one to the other kind of consciousness seems to be effected
by a slight shock, and the perception of the already completed dream
is the first effort of waking consciousness. The existence of such a
shock is indicated by the fact that, even at the first moment of waking
consciousness, we never realise that a moment ago we were asleep. As soon
as we realise that we are awake it seems to us that we have already been
awake for an uncertain but distinct period of time; some people, indeed,
especially old people, on awaking, feel this so strongly that they deny
they have been asleep. It once happened to me to be in the neighbourhood
of a dynamite factory at the moment when a very disastrous explosion
occurred; at the time my back was to the factory, and I am quite unable
to say how long an interval occurred between the shock of the explosion
and my own action in turning round to observe the straight shaft of smoke
and solid material high in the air; there was a gap in consciousness,
an interval of unknown and seemingly considerable length, caused by the
deafening shock of the explosion, although it is probable that my action
in turning round was almost or quite instantaneous. It seems to me that
the transition from sleeping consciousness to waking consciousness occurs
in a similar manner on a smaller scale.
Although the view of Foucault that the dream is logically organised
after sleep has ended seems, when we examine the evidence in its favour,
to be unacceptable, we may still admit that, in some cases at all
events, the dream only assumes final shape at the moment when sleeping
consciousness is breaking up, that the dream, as we know it, is a final
synthetic attempt of sleeping consciousness as it dissolves on the
approach of waking consciousness. Sleeping consciousness, we may even
imagine as saying to itself in effect: 'Here comes our master, Waking
Consciousness, who attaches such mighty importance to reason and logic
and so forth. Quick! gather things up, put them in order--any order will
do--before he enters to take possession.' That is to say, in other words,
that as sleeping consciousness comes nearer to the threshold of waking
consciousness it is possible that the need for the same kind of causation
or sequence which is manifested in waking consciousness may begin to make
itself felt even to sleeping consciousness. Even this assumption seems,
however, as regards most dreams, to be extravagant. In any case, and at
whatever stage the dream is finally constituted, we are not entitled, it
seems to me, to believe that any stage of its constitution falls outside
the frontiers of sleep. It is satisfactory to be able to feel justified in
reaching this conclusion. For if dreams were chiefly or mainly the product
of waking consciousness they would certainly lose a considerable part of
their significance and interest.
Even, however, when we have reached this conclusion the path of the
student is still far from easy. The undoubted fact that in any case the
difficulties of observing and recording dreams are very great cannot fail
to make us extremely careful. Although the dreams of some persons, who
may be regarded as themselves of vivid and dramatic temperament, seem to
be habitually vivid and dramatic to an extent which, in my own case, is
extremely rare, one is usually justified in feeling a certain amount of
suspicion in regard to dream-narratives which are at every point clear,
coherent, connected, and intelligible. Dreams, as I know them on awaking
from sleep, occasionally present episodes to which these epithets may be
applied, but on the whole they are full of obscurities, of uncertainties,
of inexplicable lacunae. The memory of dream events is lost so rapidly
that one is constantly obliged to leave the exact nature of a detail in
doubt. One seems to be recalling a landscape seen by a lightning flash. It
is for this reason that I have made it a rule only to admit dreams which
are noted very shortly, and if possible immediately, after the moment
of awakening. It is further of importance in recording one's dreams, to
note the emotional attitude experienced during the dream as well as any
physical sensations felt on awakening. The attitude of dream consciousness
towards dream visions usually varies from that of waking consciousness,
although the normal extent of the difference is a disputable point. When I
read dream narratives of landscapes which, as described, appear at every
point as beautiful and impressive to waking consciousness as they appeared
to dreaming consciousness, I usually suspect that, granting the good faith
and accuracy of the narrator, we are really concerned, not with dreams
in the proper sense, but with visions experienced under more abnormal
conditions, and especially with drug visions. In the present inquiry I
am only concerned to ascertain the most elementary and fundamental laws
of the dream world, as they occur in fairly ordinary and normal persons,
and therefore it becomes necessary to be very strict as to the conditions
under which they were recorded. It is the most ordinary dreams that are
most likely to reveal the ordinary laws of dream life, but for this end
it is necessary that they should be recorded with the greatest accuracy
attainable.
I am myself neither a constant nor, usually, a very vivid dreamer, and
in these respects I am probably a fairly ordinary and normal person; the
personal material which I have accumulated, though it spreads over twenty
years, is not notably copious. Nor have I ever directed my attention in
any systematic and concentrated manner to my dream life. To do so would
be, I believe, to distort the phenomena. I have merely recorded any
significant phenomena as they occurred.
To remark that one is not a constant dreamer is not to assert that
dreaming is rare, but merely that one's recollection of it is rare.
Though we may only catch a glimpse of our latest vision of the night
as we leave the house of sleep, it may well be that there were many
earlier adventures of the night which are beyond the reach of waking
consciousness. Sometimes, it is curious to note, we become vaguely
conscious, during the day, for the first time, of a dream we have had
during the night. Many psychologists, as well as metaphysicians--fearful
to admit that the activity of the soul could ever cease--believe that we
dream during the whole period of sleep; this has of recent years been
the opinion of Vaschide, Foucault, Näcke, and Sir Arthur Mitchell, as it
formerly was of Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir Henry Holland, and Schaaffhausen.
In earlier days Hippocrates, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Cabanis seem to
have been of the same opinion. On the other hand, Locke, Macnish, and
Carpenter held that deep sleep is dreamless; this is also the opinion
of Wundt, Beaunis, Strümpell, Weygandt, Hammond, and Jastrow. Moreover,
there are some people, like Lessing, who, so far as they know, never
dream at all. My own personal experience scarcely inclines me to accept
without qualification the belief that we are always dreaming during
sleep. I find that my remembered dreams tend to be correlated with some
slight mental or physical disturbance, and therefore it seems to me
probable that, if dreams are continuous during sleep, they must, during
completely undisturbed sleep, be of an extremely faint and shadowy
character. To return to a metaphor I have before used, we may say that
sleeping consciousness in its descent from the surface of the waking life
may fall to a point at which its specific gravity being practically the
same as that of its environment, a state approaching complete repose is
attained.[8] It cannot of course be said that the failure to remember
dreams is any argument against their occurrence. It is well known that
when the psychic activity of sleep assumes a definitely motor shape,
as in talking in sleep and in somnambulism, it is very rare for any
recollection to remain on awakening, though we cannot doubt that psychic
activity has been present. In the same way the dream that we remember
when awakened from sound sleep by another person is by no means always
due to that awakening. This is shown by the fact that if we were turning
round or making other movements just before being thus awakened, the
dream we remember--in one such case a dream of making one's way with
difficulty between a sofa and a chair--may have no relation to the
circumstance of the awakening, but clearly be suggested by the movements
made during sleep, though these movements themselves remain unknown to
waking consciousness. The movements of dogs during sound sleep--the
rhythmical lifting of the paws, the wagging of the tail--point in the same
direction.[9]
The fact that failure of memory by no means proves the absence of dreaming
may be illustrated, not only by the forgetfulness of what takes place
during hypnotic sleep, but by what we sometimes witness during partial
anaesthesia maintained by drugs. This was well shown in a case I was once
concerned with, where it was necessary to administer chloroform (preceded
by the alcohol-chloroform-ether mixture) for a prolonged period during
a difficult first confinement. The drug was not given to the point of
causing complete abolition of mental activity, and the patient talked,
and occasionally sang, throughout, referring to various events in her
life, from childhood onwards. The sensation and the expression of pain
were not altogether abolished, for slight cries and remarks about the
discomfort and constraint imposed upon her were sometimes mingled in the
same sentence with quite irrelevant remarks concerning, for instance,
trivial details of housekeeping. Confusions of incompatible ideas also
took place, as during ordinary dreaming. 'Where is the three-cornered
nurse,' she thus asked, 'who does not mind what she does?' There was
also the abnormal suggestibility of dream consciousness. The questions
of bystanders were answered but always with a tendency to agree with
everything that was said, this tendency even displaying itself with a
certain ingenuity as when in reply to the playful random query: 'Were
you drunk or sleeping last night?' she answered, with some hesitation:
'A little of both, I think.' To the casual observer, it might seem that
there was a state of full consciousness on the basis of which a partial
delirium had established itself. Yet on recovery from the drug there was
no recollection of anything whatever that had taken place during its
administration, and no sense of the lapse of time.
Fantastic and marvellous as our dreams may sometimes be, they are in
practically all cases made up of very simple elements. It is desirable
that we should at the outset have a provisional notion as to the sources
of these simple elements. Most writers on dreams hold that there are two
great sources from which these elements are drawn: the vast reservoir of
memories and the actual physical sensations experienced at the moment of
dreaming, and interpreted by sleeping consciousness. Various names have
been given to these two groups, the recognition of which is at least
as old as Aristotle.[10] Thus Sully calls them central and peripheral,
Tissié, psychic and sensorial, Foucault, imaginative and perceptive.
Fairly convenient names are those adopted by Miss Calkins, who calls the
first group representative, the second group presentative, meaning by
representative 'connected through the fact of association with the waking
life of the past,' and by presentative 'connected through sense excitation
with the immediate present.'[11]
The representative group falls into two subdivisions, according as the
memories are of old or of recent date; these subdivisions are often quite
distinct, recent dream memories belonging--probably with most people--to
the previous day, while old dream memories are usually drawn from the
experience of many years past, and frequently from early life. In the
same way presentative impressions fall into two subdivisions, according
as they refer to external stimuli present to the senses, or to internal
disturbances within the organism. It is scarcely necessary to observe that
any or all of these four sub-groups, into which the whole of our dream
life may be analysed, may become woven together in the same dream.
I have called the classification 'provisional' because, though it is
convenient to adopt it for the sake of orderly arrangement, when we come
to consider the matter it will be found that the material of dreams is
in reality all of the same order, and purely psychic, though it may be
differentiated in accordance with the character of the stimulus which
evokes the psychic material of which it is made. Strictly speaking,
the source of the dream as a dream can only be central, and a truly
presentative dream is impossible. If our senses receive an impression,
external or internal, and we recognise and accept that impression for
what we should recognise and accept it when awake, then we cannot be
said to be dreaming. The internal and external stimuli which act upon
sleeping consciousness are not a part of that consciousness, nor in any
real sense its source or its cause. The ray of sunlight that falls on the
dreamer, the falling off of his bedclothes, the indigestible supper he
ate last night--these things can no more 'account' for his dream than the
postman's knock can account for the contents of the letter he delivers.
Whatever the stimuli from the physical world that may knock at the door
of dreaming consciousness, that consciousness is apart from them, and
stimuli can only reach it by undergoing transformation. They must put off
the character which they wear as phenomena of the waking world; they must
put on the character of phenomena of another world, the world of dreams.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The subdued quality of the light in normal dreaming--the
usual absence of sunshine and generally even of colour--has long been
noted. 'We never dream of being in the sunshine,' says Henry Dircks
(_Lancet_, 11th June 1870, p. 863), though too absolutely; 'light and
shade form no requisite elements.... The liveliest and most impressive
dream is, in reality, a true night scene, very dubiously lighted up, and
in which the nearest objects are those which we principally observe and
which most interest us.']
[Footnote 2: As some writers give a rather special meaning to the word
'consciousness,' I may say that I simply mean by it (as defined by
Baldwin and Stout in the _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_)
'the distinctive character of whatever may be called mental life,' or,
as Professor Stratton puts it, in defence of this broad definition
(_Psychological Bulletin_, April 1906), 'consciousness designates the
common and generic feature of our psychic acts.' Dreaming then becomes,
as defined by Baldwin and Stout, 'conscious process during sleep.' It
should be added that there is much uncertainty about any definition
of consciousness. Bode ('Some Recent Definitions of Consciousness,'
_Psychological Review_, July 1908) thinks it 'a matter for legitimate
doubt' whether any definition of consciousness can be adequate, and
Mercier (art. 'Consciousness' in Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_) boldly proclaims--quite justly, I think--that 'consciousness is
not susceptible of definition,' for we can never go behind it or outside
it. That we have to admit various kinds, or at all events various degrees,
of consciousness will become clear in our discussion of dreaming.]
[Footnote 3: By 'subconscious' is meant, as defined by Baldwin and
Stout, 'not clearly recognised in a present state of consciousness, yet
entering into the development of subsequent states of consciousness.' Some
psychologists strongly dislike the word 'subconscious.' They are even
disposed to argue that there is no subconscious mind, and that before and
after the stage of 'awareness,' psychic facts only exist as 'dispositions
of brain cells.' The psychologist, however, as such, has no concern with
brain cells which belong to the histologist. When we occupy ourselves with
dreams we realise at every step that it is possible for psychic states to
exist and to affect our 'awareness,' while at the same time they are not
immediately within the sphere of that 'awareness.' Psychic states of this
kind seem most properly termed 'subconscious,' that is to say slightly,
partially, or imperfectly conscious. Any objection to so precise and
convenient a term for a real phenomenon seems, indeed, to belong to the
sphere of personal idiosyncrasy into which we have perhaps no right to
intrude.]
[Footnote 4: Foucault, _Le Rêve_, 1906.]
[Footnote 5: Foucault, _op. cit._, ch. iv.]
[Footnote 6: Foucault, _op. cit._, p. 49.]
[Footnote 7: This occasionally retrospective character of dreams has long
been known, and was referred to by the writer of an article on 'Dreams and
Dreaming' in the _Lancet_ for 24th November 1877.]
[Footnote 8: The old French case (quoted by Macnish) of a woman, with a
portion of her skull removed, whose brain bulged out during dreams but
was motionless in dreamless sleep, as well as the more recent similar
case known to Hammond (_Treatise on Insanity_, p. 233), supports the
belief that the psychic activity which is not manifested in rememberable
dreams is probably at the most of a very shadowy character. Even during
waking life psychic activity often falls to a very low ebb; Beaunis, who
has investigated this question ('Comment Fonctionne mon Cerveau,' _Revue
Philosophique_, January 1909), describes a condition which he names
'psychic twilight' and regards as frequently occurring.]
[Footnote 9: Lucretius long ago referred to the significance of this fact
(lib. iv. vv. 988-994), and he stated that the hallucination persisted
for a time even after the dog had awakened. I have never myself been able
to see any trace of such hypnagogic hallucination or delusion in dogs who
awake from dreams, though I have frequently looked for it; it always seems
to me that the dog who seemingly awakes from a dream of hunting grasps the
fireside facts of life around him immediately and easily.]
[Footnote 10: This classification of the sources of dreams has, however,
been generally accepted for little more than a century. At an earlier
period it was not usually believed to cover the whole ground. Thus Des
Laurens (A. Laurentius) in the sixteenth century, in his treatise on the
Disease of Melancholy (insanity), says that there are three kinds of
dreams: (1) of Nature (_i.e._ due to external causes); (2) of the mind
(_i.e._ based on memories); and, above both these classes, (3) dreams from
God and the devil.]
[Footnote 11: M. W. Calkins, 'Statistics of Dreams,' _American Journal of
Psychology_, April 1893.]