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.
At the outset I adopted provisionally the usual classification of dreams
into two classes: the peripheral or presentative group, excited by a
stimulus from without, and the central or representative group, having its
elements in memories. If, however, we look carefully at the matter, in the
light of the experiences which we have encountered, it will be found that
this classification, however superficially convenient it may be, fails
to correspond to any radical duality of dream phenomena. When we closely
question our dream experiences, it ceases to be clear that they really
fall into two groups at all.
On the one hand, it would appear that most, perhaps, indeed, all dreams
that are sufficiently vivid to be clearly remembered on awakening, have
received an initial stimulus from some external, or at all events,
peripheral source.[56] There is something unusual or uncomfortable in
the sleeper's position, or he has been subjected to some slight unusual
strain which has modified his nervous condition, or there has been some
deviation from his usual diet, or a physiological stress of some kind is
making itself felt within him--careful self-questioning constantly reveals
the actual or probable existence of some external or certainly peripheral
stimulus of this kind. So that we seem entitled to say that in all dreams
there is probably a presentative element.
On the other hand, an even more cursory investigation of our dream life
suffices to show that in every dream there is also a representative
element. No dream can be said to be strictly and literally presentative.
If, when I am seemingly asleep, a person speaks to me, and I become
conscious that he is present and speaking, I am not entitled to say
that I 'dream' it. A consciousness which perceives facts in the same
way as they may be perceived by waking consciousness is not a dreaming
consciousness. So that there are, in the literal sense, no presentative
dreams. What happens is that the stimulus, instead of being presented
directly to consciousness, and recognised for what it is to waking
consciousness, serves to arouse old memories and ideas which dream
consciousness accepts as a reasonable explanation of the external or
peripheral stimulus. The stimulus may be said to be, in a sense, the
cause of the dream, but the dream itself remains central, and as truly a
combined picture of mental images as though there were no known peripheral
stimulus at all.
Thus, while it is true that the division of dreams into two classes
corresponds to a recognisable distinction, it is yet a superficial and
unimportant distinction. It is likely that all dreams have a peripheral
or presentative element, and certain that they all have a central or
representative element. This will become clearer if we now proceed to
discuss those dreams which have, demonstrably, their exciting cause in
some external or internal organic stimulus.
The world which we enter through the portal of sleep presents such obvious
and serious limitations that we are apt to under-estimate its real
richness and variety. In some respects, indeed, we can accomplish in sleep
what is beyond our reach awake. Thus it sometimes happens that we reason
better in sleep than when awake, that we may find in dreams the solutions
of difficulties which escape us awake, and that we may remember things
which, when awake, we had forgotten. But even within the ordinary range
of experience, it is interesting to note that our dreams contain the same
elements as our waking life. The sensory activities which stir us during
the day are equally active, though in strange transformations, in the
world of dreams.
It is probable that all the senses may furnish the medium through which
stimuli may reach sleeping consciousness; though touch and hearing are
doubtless the main channels to dream life. The eyes are closed, so that
while the chief parts of our dream life are in terms of vision, direct
visual stimuli can only be a very dim and uncertain influence. But no
sense is absolutely excluded from activity in dreams.[57]
Heat or cold sensations and pressure sensations, as well as their
anaesthetic absence, undoubtedly play an important part in explaining
various kinds of dreams. They do not necessarily result in rememberable
dreams, even although it is possible that they still affect the current of
sleeping consciousness. It is possible to press and massage the body of
a sleeper all over, gently but firmly, without interrupting sleep. When
the pressure reaches a considerable degree of vigour, the sleeper may
move a muscle, perhaps the lips, even an arm, may go so far as to half
wake and move the whole body. All these movements suggest that they have
accompaniments on the psychic side, yet, on finally awakening, the sleeper
may be unable to recall any memory of the occurrence, or any vestige of a
dream.
In a certain proportion of cases, however, a dream results. Thus a lady
dreams that, with a number of other people, she is on board a ship which
is rocking heavily, and on awakening she finds that her large dog is on
the bed, vigorously scratching himself. The ship has clearly been the
theory invented by sleeping consciousness to account for the unfamiliar
sensations of movement.
When living in the south of Spain, I awoke early one morning, and heard a
mosquito buzzing. I fell asleep again and dreamed that a huge insect--as
large as a lobster, but flat like a cockroach, and scarlet in colour--had
alighted on my hand. The creature had two long horns, and from each of
these proceeded numerous very long and delicate filaments which were
inserted into my hand to a considerable depth. I had to cut the creature
in half, and draw away the forepart, which was attached to my hand, with
great care lest I should leave portions of the filaments in the flesh.
This animal seemed all the more unpleasant because it was noiseless,
and its attacks, I thought, imperceptible. I appeared to be attacked by
a succession of them. On awakening, there was irritation of the left
wrist, as though the mosquito had bitten me, although I had long ceased
to be bitten by mosquitoes. This dream, it will be seen, corresponds in
an unusually close way to the idea of a presentative dream; imagination
followed reality in presenting an insect as the cause of the sensation
experienced (possibly because I had actually heard the mosquito when
awake), but still, as in all dreams, the process was mainly central,
and imagination was freely exercised in creating a creature adequate to
explain the doubtless vague and massive cutaneous sensations transmitted
to sleeping consciousness.[58]
Perhaps one of the commonest skin sensations to excite dream formation
is that of cold due to disturbance of the bed coverings. The following
example may serve as an illustration of this class. I dreamed that I was
in an hotel, mounting many flights of stairs, until I entered a room where
the chambermaid was making the bed; the white bedclothes were scattered
over everything, and looked to me like snow; then I became conscious that
I was very cold, and it appeared to me that I really was surrounded by
snow, for the chambermaid remarked that I was very courageous to come up
so high in the hotel, very few people venturing to do so on account of
the great cold at this height. I awoke to find that it was a cold night,
and that I was entangled in the sheets, and partly uncovered. Nothing
else had occurred to suggest this dream which sleeping consciousness had
elaborated out of the two associated ideas of altitude and snow in order
to explain the actual sensations experienced. It is noteworthy that, as in
the dream just before narrated, there was here also a link with reality,
this time furnished by the disarranged bedclothes.[59]
The auditory experiences of dreams, to a greater extent perhaps than those
involving the sense of touch, may be based on spontaneous disturbances
within the sensory mechanism. This is notably also the case with visual
experiences, and in many respects the conditions in the ear are analogous.
Apart from increased resonance of the ear, or hyperaesthesia of the
auditory nerve, producing special sensitiveness to sounds, an increased
flow of blood through the ear, as well as muscular contractions and mucous
plugs in the external ear, furnish the faint rudimentary noises which, in
sleep, may constitute the nucleus around which hallucinations crystallise.
Disease of the ear may obviously act in the same way, but, even apart from
actual disease, various nervous disturbances favour the production of
auditory hallucinations during sleep, and, in marked cases, even awake.
We may dream of listening to music in the absence of all external sounds
having any musical character. In such cases, no doubt, the actual
conditions within the auditory mechanism are suggesting music to the
brain, but the resulting music seems usually to be less definite, less
rememberable, than when it forms around the nucleus of an external series
of sounds. In many of these cases it is probable that we do not hear
music in our dream; we are simply under conditions in which we imagine
that we hear music. Thus, on going to bed soon after supper, but not
perceptibly suffering from indigestion, I dreamed that I was present at
a public meeting combined with an orchestral concert. A speech was to be
made by a man who looked like an old sailor or soldier, and meanwhile
the orchestra was playing. The speaker--unaccustomed, I gathered, to the
etiquette of such a meeting--suddenly interrupted the orchestra by a
remark, and the surprised conductor stopped the performance for a moment
and then continued, subsequent remarks by the speaker failing to affect
the music, which continued to the end, becoming more lively and vigorous
in character. But what the music was, I knew not at the time, nor could
I recall any fragment of it on awakening. It is even possible that such
a dream is mainly visual, and that no hallucinatory music is heard, its
occurrence being merely deduced from the nature of the vision.
If the dreams evoked by sounds within the ear are usually difficult to
trace in normal persons under ordinary circumstances, this is not the
case with dreams suggested by sounds which strike the ear from without.
These constitute one of the most interesting groups of dreams as well as
one of the easiest to explain, and they are very frequent.[60] Their
mechanism may, indeed, be observed under some circumstances even in the
waking state. In some persons, music, a voice, a bird's song, even a
word, a comment, arouse phantoms of colour and form, light and shade,
coloured clouds, streams, waves, etc. The phenomena are especially rich
when produced by an orchestra. Such 'music-phantoms,' as they are termed,
are a special and freer development of the narrow and rigid phenomena
of 'colour-hearing.' They have been studied by Dr. Ruths.[61] We have
to remember that music possesses a fundamental motor basis. As Dauriac
remarks, music may be defined as 'movement clothed with sound.'[62]
It tends to produce movement, or, failing movement, to produce motor
imagery.[63]
Dreams excited by definite external auditory stimuli may be of various
character. A not uncommon source--especially for those who live on
a wind-swept coast--is the occurrence of storms. A lady dreams, for
instance, that her little dog has fallen off a high cliff and that she
hears his shrieks; it was an extremely windy night, and her window was
open. The dream has some resemblance to one which Burdach recorded that he
shared with a companion in an hotel during a storm; they both dreamed they
were wandering at night among high precipices.
On one occasion I awoke in the middle of a windy night imagining I had
been listening to an opera of Gluck's (which in reality I had never
heard), and experiencing all the sense of delicious waves of melody
which one actually experiences in listening to such operas as _Alceste_.
A fragment of a melody I had heard in the dream still persisted in my
memory on awaking, so that I could mentally repeat it, when it seemed as
agreeable as in the dream, though unfamiliar.
The following dream had also a similar origin. I imagined that I was
assisting at a spectacle of somewhat dubious erotic character, in company
with other persons who, out of modesty, covered their faces with their
hands with the decorous gesture which recalled (as dream consciousness
evidently realised) that of people during prayer in church. Thereupon a
beautiful voice was heard in the background loudly chanting a versicle of
the Te Deum. This awoke me, and I seemed to realise when half awake that
the voice I had heard in the dream was a real voice. There had, however,
been no real voice, only the loud howling of the wind and the beating of
the rain on the window panes.
Once, on a very windy night, and when, perhaps, suffering a trifling
disturbance of health--for there was slight pleurodynic pain the next
morning--I dreamed I was quietly at home with friends, when suddenly
the sky became illuminated. We found that this was due to steady and
continuous lightning, a state of things which remained throughout the
dream, the sky presenting the appearance of a cracked and crushed sheet
of melting ice.[64] By and by, fragments of buildings and similar debris
were whirled past in the air, and I caught sight of a woman driven above
me by her skirts. We now realised the imminent approach of a terrific
cyclone which, at any moment, might carry the house and ourselves away. I
remembered no more.
Yet another dream may be mentioned as likewise directly due to a violent
storm and the rattling of a window near my bed. The latter sound evidently
recalled to sleeping consciousness the sound of the rattling window of
a railway train, and I dreamed that I was travelling to Berlin with a
medical friend. There were the accompaniments, not unfamiliar in dreams,
of rushing along interminable platforms, and up and down endless stairs,
finding myself in a carriage of the wrong class, with, in consequence,
more wandering along corridors, and finally finding that my friend had
been left behind. The character of the dream may have been influenced by
slight indigestion. In this dream, unlike those already recorded as due to
external stimuli, the elements of the dream were not the pure invention
of dreaming imagination, but compacted entirely of ideas that had been
recently familiar.
The following dream was due to an auditory stimulus of different
character. I dreamed that I was listening to a performance of Haydn's
_Creation_, the orchestral part of the performance seeming to consist
chiefly of the very realistic representation of the song of birds, though
I could not identify the note of any particular bird. Then followed solos
by male singers, whom I saw, especially one who attracted my attention
by singing at the close in a scarcely audible voice. On awakening, the
source of the dream was not immediately obvious, but I soon realised that
it was the song of a canary in another room. I had never heard Haydn's
_Creation_, except in fragments, nor thought of it at any recent period;
its reputation as regards the realistic representation of natural sounds
had evidently caused it to be put forward by sleeping consciousness as
a plausible explanation of the sounds heard, and the visual centres had
accepted the theory.
However far-fetched and improbable our dreams may seem to the waking mind,
they are, from the point of view of the sleeping mind, serious and careful
attempts to construct an adequate theory of the phenomena. The imagery is
sought from far afield only to fit the facts more accurately. Thus a lady
dreamed that her dog was being crushed out flat in a large old-fashioned
box-mangle. She awoke to find that water from a burst pipe was falling
from the ceiling on to the floor on the landing outside her door, close to
where the dog had his bed. She had never seen a mangle of this kind since
she was a child, or had any occasion to think of it, but the rhythm and
sound of it somewhat resembled that of the falling water.
One more example of an auditory dream may be given. I dreamed that I was
back in a schoolroom of my boyhood, with two or three of the present
masters. The room had been entirely changed, and it contained much new
school apparatus and, notably, on a table, several miniature engines,
of different character, actually working. I said to the masters that I
wished all these apparatus had been there twenty years ago (a considerable
under-estimate of the actual interval since I left that schoolroom), so
that I might have enjoyed the benefit of them. 'All life is made up of
machinery,' I found myself uttering aloud as I awoke, 'and unless you
understand machinery you can't understand life.' It was not till some
moments later that I became conscious of a faint whirring sound which
puzzled me till I realised that it was the sound of distant machinery
entering through the open window. This had, undoubtedly, suggested the
engines of the dream, though I had not been conscious in my dream of
hearing any sounds, and the small size of the dream engines corresponded
to the faintness of the actual sounds.
Dreams aroused by odours do not usually seem to occur except on
the experimental application of them to the sleeper's nostrils,
and experiments in this direction are not usually successful.[65]
Occasionally, however, smell dreams occur without any traceable sensory
source, and Grace Andrews, for instance, records a dream of the sea,
accompanied by the seashore odour, 'a pure and rich sensation of smell.'
In my own case olfactory dreams have been rare and insignificant.
Taste, as we usually understand it, really involves, as is well known, an
element of smell, and taste dreams of this kind seem to occur from time to
time under the influence of any slight disturbance of the mucous membrane
of the mouth or slight indigestion. It is possible that the latter element
was present in the following dream: I imagined that, following the example
of a friend, I gave some cigarettes to a tramp we had casually met, and
that, in return, we felt compelled to drink some raw gin he carried. I
did so with some misgiving as to the possible results of drinking from
a tramp's flask, but although in real life I had not tasted gin for
many years, the hot burning taste of the spirit was very distinct. On
awakening, my lips seemed hot and dry, and it was doubtless this labial
sensation which led dream consciousness to seek a plausible explanation in
cigarettes and spirits. Although the spirit seemed to have the specific
flavour of gin, it is always difficult, if not impossible, in dream
sensations, to distinguish between what one feels and what one merely
concludes that one feels. In such a case, that is to say, it remains
doubtful whether the labial sensation evokes the specific hallucination
of gin, or whether it merely suggests to sleeping consciousness that the
gin has been tasted, much as it is possible to suggest to the hypnotised
person that the substance he is tasting is a quite different substance,
that salt is sugar, or that water is wine.
As with dreams of smell, it is not always possible to detect any external
stimulation as the cause for a taste or pseudo-taste dream.[66] This may
be illustrated by a dream which belongs strictly to the tactile class; I
dreamed that I called upon a medical acquaintance whose assistant I found
in a dark surgery. I absently took up a broken medicine bottle and put
it to my mouth, when my friend came in. I spoke to him on some medical
topic, but he entered his carriage, and was driven off before he had time
to answer me. I then found that my mouth was full of fragments of broken
colourless glass, which I carefully removed. This dream was constructed,
in the manner which has been often illustrated in the previous pages,
of small separate incidents which had occurred during the immediately
preceding days. One of the incidents was the fact that I had myself
smashed a little coloured (not colourless) glass and carefully picked up
the fragments. But the vividest part of the dream was the sensation of
broken glass in the mouth, and on awaking no sensation could be detected
in the mouth. So that though the most plausible explanation of such a
dream would be the theory that the recent experience with broken glass
had suggested to sleeping consciousness the explanation of an unpleasant
sensation actually experienced in the mouth, there was nothing whatever to
support that theory.
The falling of light on the closed eyes, or the half opening of the eyes,
has been found to serve as a visual stimulus to dreams, but I have myself
no decisive evidence on this point.[67] In the case of a lady who dreamed
that a lover was in her room, and that suddenly the door opened, and she
saw her mother standing before her with a bright light, which awoke her,
she could find nothing in the room, no light, to account for the dream. It
is, of course, unnecessary for a dream of a bright light to be actually
produced by an external visual stimulus accompanying the dream, for the
spontaneous retino-cerebral activity itself produces sensations of light.
Thus, on the night after a pleasant walk in a country lane through which
the setting sun shone, I dreamed that I was walking along a lane in which
I saw a bright light and my own vast shadow in front of me. It would seem
that, on the whole, the curtain of the eyelids effectually shuts out
light from the eye during sleep, and that the sense which is more active
during the day than any other is the most carefully guarded of all during
the night. The peculiarly delicate and unstable nature of the chemical
basis of vision makes up for this protection from external stimulation,
and by its spontaneous activity ensures that even in dreams vision is the
predominant sense.
What we find as regards the part played in dreams by excitations arising
from the external specific senses holds good also for excitations arising
from internal organic sensations. The main difference is that the stimuli
which reach sleeping consciousness from the organs within the body--the
stomach, heart, lungs, sexual apparatus, bladder, etc.--are usually more
vague and massive, more difficult to recognise and identify, than are the
more specific sensory stimuli which reach us from without. These visceral
excitations may be transformed within the brain into imagery so unlike
themselves that we may refuse to recognise them, and must frequently
experience some amount of hesitation. Evidence of this fact will come
before us in due course later on. I only wish to refer here to the more
obvious part played in dreams by sensations arising within the body.
We should expect that the visceral processes to be translated most
clearly and directly into dreaming consciousness would be, not those which
are regular and continuous, but those which assert themselves, more or
less imperiously, at intervals. This is actually the case. The heart,
for instance, probably plays a part in dreams only when disturbed in
its action, and even then nearly always a very transformed part. On the
other hand, when the impulses of the generative system arise in sleep to
manifest themselves in erotic dreams, the resulting imagery is usually
very clear, and with very definite and recognisable sexual associations.
Erotic dreams are, indeed, in both men and women, among the most vivid of
all dreams, and the most emotionally potent.[68]
The bladder, again, is an internal organ which makes its functional
needs felt only at intervals, and thus, when those needs occur during
sleep, they become conscious in imagery which easily recalls the source
of the stimulus. It may, indeed, be said that vesical dreams are full of
instruction in the light they throw on the psychology of dreaming. This
has long been well known to writers on dreams. Thus Scherner, many years
ago, insisted on the interest and importance of vesical dreams. In women,
especially, he regarded them as very frequent and developed, most dream
stories of women, he considered, containing symbolic representations of
this organic irritation. Water, in some form or another, is naturally the
commonest symbol. In Scherner's opinion, also, all dreams of fish playing
in the water are vesical dreams.[69]
In its simplest form the vesical dream is what Freud would term a
wish-dream of infantile type, frequently in the magnified form common
in dreams, and sometimes transferred from the dreamer himself to become
objectified in another person, or even an inanimate object.[70] There
is, however, a very important difference according to whether these
dreams take place in an adult or in a young child. In the adult it almost
invariably happens that the dream act remains merely a dream act, and no
corresponding motor impulse is transmitted to the bladder. But when such
dreams occur to very young children, in whose brains the motor inhibitory
mechanism is not yet fully established, it not infrequently happens that
the motor impulse is transmitted and the expulsive action of the bladder
is set up in sympathy with the imagery of the dream; thus is established
the condition known as nocturnal enuresis. As the young brain develops,
and inhibition becomes more perfect, these vesical dreams cease to exert
any actual effect on the bladder, even when, as sometimes happens, they
continue to occur at intervals in adult life.[71] Occasionally, both in
those who have and those who have not suffered from nocturnal enuresis in
childhood (especially women), vesical dreams of this character may occur
without even any real distension of the bladder. In some of these cases
the dream can be shown to be due to a reminiscence or suggestion from the
waking life of the previous day. Dreams stimulated by organic sensations
from within are thus found to resemble those proceeding from sensory
sensations from without in that they are both exactly simulated by dreams
which are mainly of central origin.
When we turn to those internal organs of the body which normally carry
on their functions in a constant and equable manner, seldom or never
obtruding themselves into the sphere of consciousness, any disturbance of
function seems much less likely to be translated into dream consciousness
in a simple and direct form. It is sufficient to take the example of the
heart. When the heart is acting normally any consciousness of its action
is as rare asleep as awake. Even when cardiac action is disturbed, either
by disease or by temporary excitement, dream consciousness seldom realises
the physical cause of the disturbance. Occasionally, indeed, the cardiac
disturbance may reach sleeping consciousness without any very remote
transformation; thus a lady dreams that she is fainting while really
breathing in a slightly laboured and spasmodic way; but at another period
the same lady, at a time when she was suffering from some degree of heart
weakness, dreamed one night, when the trouble was specially marked, that
she was driving sweating horses up a steep hill, urging them on with the
whip in order to avoid an express train which she imagined was behind her.
This dream of sweating and panting horses climbing a hill has been noted
by various observers to occur in connection with heart trouble.[72] The
real difficulty of the panting and struggling heart instinctively finds
its apparent explanation in a familiar spectacle of daily life.
In another case a dreamer awoke from a disturbed sleep associated with
indigestion, having the impression that burglars were tramping upstairs,
but immediately realised that the tramp of the burglars' feet was really
the beating of her own heart. Somewhat similarly, when suffering from
headache, I have dreamed of hammering nails into a floor, a theory
obviously invented to account for the thump of throbbing arteries.
An interesting group of phenomena connected with the sensory influences
discussed in this chapter is furnished by the premonitions of physical
disorders and diseases sometimes experienced in dreams. A physical
disturbance may reach sleeping consciousness many hours, or even days,
before it is perceived by waking consciousness, and become translated
into a more or less fantastic dream. This has been recognised from of
old, and Aristotle, for instance, observed that dreams magnify sensory
excitations, and pointed out that they were thus useful to the physician
in diagnosing symptoms not yet perceptible in the waking state. Thus
Hammond knew a gentleman who, before an attack of hemiplegic paralysis,
repeatedly dreamed that he had been cut in two down the middle line,
and could only move on one side, while a young lady who dreamed she had
swallowed molten lead, though quite well on awaking, was attacked by
severe tonsilitis toward midday. Erythematous conditions of the skin, as
has been pointed out to me by Dr. Kiernan, who has met with numerous cases
in point, play an especial part in generating these dreams. Jewell, again,
mentions a girl who dreamed, three days before being laid up with typhoid
fever, that some one threw oil over her and set light to it. Macario, who
was, perhaps, the first to record and study scientifically the dreams of
this class, termed them prodromic.[73]
'Prophetic' dreams, in which the dreamer foresees, not a physical
condition which is already latent, but an external occurrence, belong to
an entirely different class, and need not be discussed in detail here,
since they are usually fallacious. A fairly common experience of this
kind is the dream of an unknown person who is afterwards met in real
life. These dreams fall into two groups: in the first the 'prophecy' is
based on a failure of memory, the dreamer having really seen the person
before; in the second, the subsequent 'recognition' of the person is
due to the emotional preparation of the dream, and the concentrated
expectation. Sante de Sanctis, who points this out, gives an experience
of the kind which happened to the distinguished novelist, Capuana, who
had a vivid dream of a dark lady, with expressive eyes, and three days
after met the lady of his dream in the street.[74] Women, in a state of
emotional expectation, have often mistaken dead (or even living) persons
for missing husbands or children, and any one who has observed how, when
a noted criminal flies from justice, he is soon 'recognised,' from his
portrait, in the most various parts of the world, will have no difficulty
in believing that it is easily possible to 'recognise' people from dream
portraits, which are much vaguer than photographs. That there are other
prophetic dreams, less easy to account for, I am ready to admit, though
they have not come under my own immediate observation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 56: Although I reached this conclusion independently, as a
result of the analysis of dream experiences, I find that it was set forth
at a much earlier period by Wundt. 'Men are accustomed to regard most of
the phantasms of dreams as hallucinations,' he writes (_Grundzüge der
Physiologischer Psychologie_, vol. iii.), 'but most dream representations
are apparently illusions, initiated by the slight sensory impressions
which are never extinguished in sleep.' Weygandt, in his brief but
excellent book, _Entstehung der Traäme_, fully adopts this view, although
I scarcely think he is always successful in his attempts to demonstrate
it by his own dreams; such demonstration is necessarily often difficult
or impossible because, apart from the dream itself, we seldom know what
sensory impressions are persisting in our sleep. C. M. Giessler (_Die
Physiologische Beziehungen der Traumvorgänge_, 1896, p. 2), who also
proceeds from Wundt, likewise regards dreams as in general the more or
less orderly and successive revival of psychic vestiges of waking life,
conditioned by inner or outer excitations. Tissié (in _Les Rêves_, 1898),
again, declares that 'dreams of purely psychic origin do not exist,'
and Beaunis (_American Journal of Psychology_, July-October 1903) also
believes that all dreams need an internal or external stimulus from the
organism.]
[Footnote 57: Thus W. S. Monroe ('Mental Elements of Dreams,' _Journal
of Philosophy_, 23rd November 1905) found that in nearly three hundred
dreams of fifty-five women students of the Westfield Normal College
(Massachusetts), visual imagery appeared in sixty-seven per cent. dreams,
auditory in twenty-six per cent., tactile in eight per cent., motor in
five per cent., olfactory in a little over one per cent., and gustatory
in rather under one per cent. In the results of observation recorded by
Sarah Weed and Florence Hallam (_American Journal of Psychology_, April
1896) the sensory imagery appears in the same order of frequency and
approximately in the same proportions.]
[Footnote 58: In another case, a sensation of irritation in the palm
led to a dream of being scratched by a cat. Guthrie mentions (_Clinical
Journal_, 7th June 1899) that as a child he used to dream of being
tortured by savages by being slowly tickled under the arms when unable
to move; he sweated much at night, and considers that the tickling thus
caused was the source of the dreams.]
[Footnote 59: The corresponding sensation of heat can also, of course, be
experienced in sleep, alike whether the stimulus comes from the brain or
the skin. Thus I dreamed that, not knowing whether some water was hot or
cold, I put my finger into it and felt it to be distinctly hot.]
[Footnote 60: The ease with which musical sounds can be applied during
sleep and the beneficial results on emotional tone have suggested their
therapeutic use. Leonard Corning ('The Use of Musical Vibrations before
and during Sleep,' _Medical Record_, 21st January 1899) is regarded as the
pioneer in this field.]
[Footnote 61: Ch. Ruths, _Experimental-Untersuchungen über Musikphantome_,
1898.]
[Footnote 62: Dauriac, 'Des Images Suggérées par l'Audition Musicale,'
_Revue Philosophique_, November 1902.]
[Footnote 63: De Rochas has described and reproduced the gestures and
dances of his hypnotised subject, Lina, under the influence of music.
Ribot (_L'Imagination Créatrice_, pp. 177 _et seq._, 291 _et seq._) has
discussed the imagery suggested by music and points out that it is most
pronounced in non-musical subjects. Fatigue and over-excitement are
predisposing conditions in the production of this imagery, as is shown by
MacDougall (_Psychological Review_, September 1898) in his own experience.]
[Footnote 64: One is tempted to think that this lightning may have been a
symbolistic transformation of lancinating neuralgic pains, magnified, as
sensations are apt to be, in sleep.]
[Footnote 65: In some experiments by Prof. W. S. Monroe on twenty women
students at Westfield Normal School a crushed clove was placed on the
tongue for ten successive nights on going to bed. Of 254 dreams reported
as following there were seventeen taste dreams and eight smell dreams, and
three of these dreams actually involved cloves. The clove also influenced
dreams of other classes; thus, as a result of the burning sensation
in the mouth, one dreamer imagined that the house was on fire (W. S.
Monroe, 'A Study of Taste Dreams,' _American Journal of Psychology_,
January 1899). It has indeed been found, by Meunier, specially easy to
apply olfactory stimuli during sleep and so improve the emotional tone
(R. Meunier, 'A Propos d'onirothérapie,' _Archives de Neurologie_, March
1910). Meunier found that in his own case tuberose always called out
agreeable dreams full of detail, though in another subject the dreams were
always unpleasant. In hysterical subjects essence of geranium provoked
various agreeable dreams followed by a pleasant emotional tone during the
following day.]
[Footnote 66: Titchener ('Taste Dreams,' _American Journal of Psychology_,
January 1895) records taste dreams by auto-suggestion, and Ribot
(_Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 142) thinks there can be no doubt dreams
of both taste and smell can occur without objective source.]
[Footnote 67: Hammond (_Treatise on Insanity_, p. 229) knew a gentleman
who dreamed he was in heaven and surrounded by dazzling brilliance,
awaking to find that the smouldering fire had flared up. Weygandt
dreamed that he was gazing at 'living pictures' illuminated by magnesium
light, and awoke to find that the morning sun had just appeared from
behind clouds and was flooding the room with light. See also Parish,
_Hallucinations and Illusions_, p. 52.]
[Footnote 68: I have discussed erotic dreams in the study of
'Auto-erotism' in the first volume of my _Studies in the Psychology of
Sex_ (third edition, revised and enlarged, 1910).]
[Footnote 69: K. A. Scherner, _Das Leben des Traums_, 1861, pp. 187
_et seq._ Volkelt some years later (_Die Traum-Phantasie_, 1875, p.
74) pointed out the occurrence of somewhat similar vesical symbolisms
(including in the case of women a filled knitting-bag) in dream life,
though he regarded visions of water as the most usual indication in
such dreams. Vesical dreams may, of course, contain other elements; see
_e.g._ an example given by C. J. Jung, 'L'Analyse des Rêves,' _L'Année
Psychologique_, 15th year, 1909, p. 165.]
[Footnote 70: A typical dream of this kind, of sufficient importance to be
embodied in history, occurred several thousand years ago to Astyages, King
of the Medes, and has been recorded by Herodotus (Book 1. ch. 107).]
[Footnote 71: In the study of Auto-erotism mentioned in a previous note I
have brought forward dreams illustrating some of the points in the text,
and have also discussed the analogies and contrasts between vesical and
erotic dreams. The fact that nocturnal enuresis is associated with vesical
dreams, though referred to by Buchan in his _Venus sine Concubitu_ more
than a century ago, is still little known, but it is obviously a fact of
clinical importance.]
[Footnote 72: So, for instance, the asthmatic patient of Max Simon (_Le
Monde des Rêves_, p. 40) who, during an attack, dreamed of sweating horses
attempting to draw a heavy waggon uphill.]
[Footnote 73: Forbes Winslow also recorded cases (_Obscure Diseases_,
pp. 611 _et seq._), and many examples were brought together by Hammond
(_Treatise on Insanity_, pp. 234 _et seq._). Vaschide and Piéron discuss
the matter and bring forward thirteen cases (_La Psychologie du Rêve_, pp.
34 _et seq._). Féré recorded two cases in which dreams were the precursory
symptoms of attacks of migraine (_Revue de Médecine_, 10th February 1903).
Various cases, chiefly from the literature of the subject, are brought
together by Paul Meunier and Masselon (_Les Rêves et leur Interpretation_,
1910).]
[Footnote 74: Sante de Sanctis, _I Sogni_, p. 380.]