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.
Whether the influences which stimulate our dreams arise from without or
from within the organism, they are always filtered and diffused through
the obscured channels of perception. They reach the brain at last in a
vague and massive shape which may or may not betray to waking analysis the
source from which they arise, but will certainly have become so changed
in these organic channels that their affective tone will be predominant.
They are, that is to say, largely transformed into _emotion_. And, when so
transformed, they become the origin of what we regard as the imaginative
element in dreams.[75]
Sleep is especially favourable to the production of emotion because while
it allows a considerable amount of activity to sensory activities, and a
very wide freedom to the imagery founded on sensory activities, it largely
and in many directions inhibits motor activity. The actions suggested
by sensory excitation cannot, therefore, be carried out. As soon as the
impulse enters motor channels it is impeded, broken up, and scattered in
a vain struggle. This process is transmitted to the brain as a wave of
emotion.
Sometimes, indeed, as we know, motor co-ordinations, usually inhibited in
sleep, are not so inhibited. The dreamer is able to execute, perfectly
or imperfectly, some action which, really or in imagination, he desires
to execute. He is then said to be in a state of somnambulism. The
somnambulist, in the wide sense of the word, is not necessarily a person
who walks in his sleep, but any person in whom a group of co-ordinated
muscles is sufficiently awake to respond more or less adequately to the
motor impulse from the sleeping brain. To talk in sleep is a form of
somnambulism. When the motor channels are thus unimpeded, there is usually
no memory of a dream on awaking. The impulses that reach consciousness
can be, as it were, quickly and easily drained off to the surface of the
nervous system, and they tend to leave no deep impress on consciousness.
'I worked late last night,' writes a lady, a novelist, 'went to bed, and
dropped into a dead kind of sleep. When I woke this morning about seven
a funny thing had happened. Two candles were burning in my room. When I
went to bed I had only one burning, and I know I put that out. Now, there
were two burning side by side as if I had been writing, and they had
evidently been burning only an hour or so, I must have got up and lighted
them in my sleep.'[76] The actions carried out in the somnambulistic
condition are not usually co-ordinated with the action of higher emotions:
thus, a young woman was impelled by a distended bladder, while still
asleep, to get out of bed and proceeded to carry out the suggested action,
but without further precautions, on to the floor; she was only awakened by
an exclamation from her sister, who had been aroused by the sound. We seem
to see that under a strong stimulus--unfinished work in one case, vesical
tension in the other--the motor centres have awakened to activity in the
early morning while the higher centres are still soundly asleep. If the
second sleeper had not been awakened, in neither case would any memory
of the incidents have remained.[77] There has been no struggle, and no
resultant emotions have, therefore, been aroused to impress consciousness.
It is evident that the lack of adaptation between sensory and motor
activity is an important factor in dreams, and contributes to impart to
them their emotional character.
In somnambulism we have a state which is in some respects the reverse
of that usual in dreams. The higher centres are, indeed, split off from
the lower centres, but it is the former that are asleep and the latter
are awake, whereas in ordinary dreaming the higher centres are acting
in accordance with their means, while the lower centres are quiescent.
Somnambulism is an approximation to a condition found in some diseases
of the brain when, as a result of lesion of the higher nervous levels,
we have a mental state--the ideatory apraxia of Liepmann--in which the
muscular system carries out plans, but the plans are defective because not
supervised by the higher centres. In ordinary dreams, on the other hand,
we have a state comparable to that produced by brain lesions in what Pick
terms motor apraxia, in which the higher centres are acting freely, but
their plans are never carried into action owing to failure of the motor
centres.
This characteristic of dreaming has seemed puzzling to some writers. They
ask why, in our dreams, we should sometimes be so conscious of failure
of movement, and why, when we strive to move in dreams, we do not always
actually move.[78]
There scarcely seems to me to be any serious difficulty here; still, the
question is one of considerable interest and importance. It is necessary
to point out in the first place that, however complete the actual absence
of movement, there is usually no failure of movement in the dream vision.
We dream that we are talking, that we are moving from place to place, that
we are performing various actions. We are conscious of no difficulty,
even sometimes of a peculiar facility, in executing these movements. And
in normal persons, under normal conditions, it would seem that the dream
movements take place without even an incipient degree of corresponding
actual movement perceptible to an observer. The efferent motor channels,
and even to a large extent the afferent sensory channels, are asleep, and
the whole representative circuit is completed within the brain, or, as we
say, imaginatively.[79] Thus a middle-aged friend, whose habits are by no
means athletic, dreams that, desiring to attract some one's attention,
he rests one knee on his wife's small work-table, and holding the foot of
the other leg in one hand, he whirls rapidly and easily round and round
on the pivot of the knee which rests on the table, the dream afterwards
continuing without any awakening. A lady, again, who, when awake, is
unable to swim, and knows no reason why she should think of swimming,
vividly dreams that she jumps from a houseboat into the river, and
proceeds to swim on her side with great ease, this dream also continuing
without awakening. These dreamers were able to execute triumphantly the
muscular feats they planned, because they had not really attempted to
execute them at all, and, moreover, no sufficient sensory messages reached
the brain to give information that the limbs were not actually obeying the
orders of the brain. The dreamers were probably in a somewhat deep state
of sleep.[80]
The dreams in which we seem to ourselves to be suffering from the
difficulty or impossibility of movement thus constitute a special class.
Jewell would apply to them the term 'nightmare,' which he regards as
'characterised by inability to move or speak.' When, in dreams, we become
conscious of difficult movement, it has frequently, and perhaps usually,
happened that the motor channels are not entirely closed, the sensory
channels unusually open, and very frequently, though not necessarily, this
is associated with the approach of awakening. I dreamed that I was walking
with a friend, that we quarrelled, and that thereupon I crossed the road,
and walked on ahead of him. These actions seemed entirely effortless.
Gradually, however, I became conscious of immense and ineffectual effort
in keeping in front, and slowly began to experience, as I awakened, a
feeling of lassitude in my actual and motionless limbs. In the process
of awakening, I take it, the increased, but still defective, efflux of
sensation from the legs, conveying the message of their real position,
entered into conflict with the dream imagery, and produced a struggle in
consciousness. It is by no means necessary to assume that there was a
complete absence of sensory impressions from the legs during the earlier
part of the dream; on the contrary, it is probable that the feeling of
lassitude was itself the cause of the dream, the idea of walking being a
theory to account for the lassitude; this seems more probable than that
the actual lassitude was caused by the mental exertion in the dream.
In a dream which a friend tells me he has often had, and always finds
painful, he imagines he is climbing a mountain, and at last reaches a
point at which, notwithstanding all his efforts, further progress is
impossible. It seems probable that this dream is also an example of the
conflict due to the process of awakening. In this case, however, the
solution is complicated by the fact that in earlier life the dreamer had
really once found himself in the situation he now only experiences in
dreams.
It is sometimes possible to prove, through the evidence of a witness,
that in our dreams of movements executed with difficulty, we are really
sufficiently awake on the motor side to be making actual movements,
though these actual movements may only very roughly correspond to the
movements we imagine we are trying to make. Very frequently, no doubt,
dreams of difficult movement co-exist with, or are caused by, some degree
of actual movement. In some such cases, indeed, the slight and imperfect
actual movement may, in dream consciousness, be a complete and adequate
movement. In these cases the imperfect sensory messages are not, it seems,
sufficiently precise to reveal to sleeping consciousness the imperfection
of the motor impulses.
Exactly the same thing occurs under the allied conditions of anaesthesia
produced by drugs. Thus, on one occasion, when coming to consciousness
after the administration of nitrous oxide gas, I had the sensation of
crying out aloud, but in reality, as I was informed by a friend at my
side, I merely made a slight guttural sound. In the same way we see
sleeping dogs making slight movements of all their paws in succession,
a faint and abortive movement of running, which in the sleeping dog's
consciousness may, doubtless, be accompanied by the notion that he is
dashing across a field after a rabbit.
In these dreams of failure of movement, it seems to me, the dream process,
as the result of an approximation to the waking state, has become mixed
with actual sensori-motor impulses, but the threshold of waking life is
still too far off for actual movements to be completely and successfully
accomplished, and in the case of the limbs the eye cannot be used to
guide movements which the muscular and cutaneous sensations are still too
dead to guide. It is important to remember that in waking life, under
pathological conditions, we may have a precisely similar state of things.
In some states of cerebro-spinal degeneration, resulting in defective
sensibility of muscle and nerve, the subject sways unsteadily when he
closes his eyes, and when there is loss of sensibility in the arm it is
sometimes impossible to hold objects in the hand except with the guiding
aid afforded by the eye.[81]
In a dream, dating from fifteen years back, that I now regard as
conditioned by the approach of the moment of awakening, I imagined that I
was making huge efforts to copy in a copy-book a capital H, engraved in a
rather peculiar fashion, but really offering no difficulties to any waking
schoolchild. By no means could I get the proportions right, if, indeed, I
could make any stroke at all, and at the end of my painful and ineffectual
efforts I seemed to be trying to write on sand, which was merely displaced
by my hand. This final impression seems clearly to be that of a dreamer
who is already sufficiently awake to be conscious of the bedclothes
yielding to the touch.
The foregoing dream suggests that failure of movement in dreaming may tend
to be associated with an accentuation of that shifting of imagery which is
one of the most primary elements in dreaming, both failure of movement and
accentuation of shifting imagery being, perhaps, alike due to the approach
towards the waking state. Thus, if in a dream one is brushing one's coat,
one finds, without any overwhelming surprise, that fresh patches of dust
appear again and again, even when one's efforts in brushing them away are
successful. Even when we feel able to effect movement in our dream, there
may still be a failure of that movement to effect its object.
The question of movement in dreams, of the presence or absence of effort
and inhibition, is thus seen to be explicable by reference to the depth of
sleep and the particular groups of centres involved. In full normal sleep
movements are purely ideatory, and no difficulty arises in executing any
movement, for the reason that there really is no movement at all, or even
any attempt at movement, while, even if slight movement occurs, no message
of its actual defectiveness can reach the brain. Movement or attempt at
movement, with more or less inhibition, tends to occur when the motor and
sensory centres are in a partially aroused state; it is a phenomenon which
belongs to the period immediately before awakening.[82]
It is doubtless mainly due to the diffusion of inhibited nervous impulses
through many channels, and the vague and massive character which they
hence assume in consciousness, that we must attribute the magnification
of dream imagery, and the exaggeration of dream feelings. This is not a
constant tendency of our dreams; sometimes, indeed, perhaps in special
stages of sleep-consciousness, there is diminution, and people look no
larger than dolls, and houses like doll's houses, while, on the emotional
side, events which in real life would overwhelm us, may, in dreams, be
accepted as matters of course. But the heightening of imagery and ideas
and feelings is very common. There is a kind of normal megalomania in our
dreams. We have already incidentally encountered many instances of this: a
tooth appears large enough for a mouse to play in, or like a great jagged
rock; the irritation of a mosquito evokes the image of a huge scarlet
beetle; in vesical dreams endless streams are seen to flow; a canary's
song is heard as Haydn's _Creation_, and the howling of the wind becomes a
chanted Te Deum.
A French author has written an impressive literary description of his own
purely visual dreams, with their magnificent exaggerations and joyous
expansiveness, seeking to show that their chief character is their
excessiveness; 'the flowers are almost women.'[83] I cannot, however,
recognise this as characteristic of normal dreaming. It bears more
resemblance to De Quincey's opium dreams, or to the visions which came to
Heine as he listened to Berlioz's music. In normal dreaming the imagery
may, indeed, be stupendously vast, or fantastically absurd, or poignantly
intense. But normal dreams are not built on a consistently colossal
scale. The megalomania of dreaming is only accidental and occasional, not
systematic.[84]
The heightening of dream experiences may, however, be very complete in,
as it were, every direction: thus a botanical friend joined a large party
for a pleasant country excursion, in the course of which, while sitting
in a waggonette, an acquaintance, a miller, standing in the road, handed
up to him a dog-rose. In the course of a dream of agreeable emotional
tone on the night following, this incident was reproduced, but the miller
had become an angel, who handed down to him, instead of up from below, a
flower which was a moss-rose.
Thus, not only do the actual stimuli taking place during sleep suggest to
dream-consciousness imagery of a magnitude out of all proportion to their
real intensity, but even the repercussion of the day's incidents in dreams
under the influence of a favourable emotional tone may partake of the same
heightening influence.
We may say, therefore, that while the excessiveness of dream imagery is
mainly due to the conditions of the nervous sensory and motor channels,
there is also probably a heightened affectability of the cerebral centres
themselves--perhaps due to their state of dissociation or absence of
apperception[85]--which leads us in our dreams to react extravagantly to
the stimuli that reach the brain. A lady tells me that she often dreams of
being very angry at things which, on awaking, she finds are mere trifles
that would never make her angry when awake.[86] It is a common experience
that the things which, in our dreams, impress us as beautiful, eloquent,
witty, profound, or amusing, no longer seem so, or only seem so in a much
slighter degree, when we are able to recall them awake.
All these various considerations lead us up to a central fact in the
psychology of dreaming: the controlling power of emotion on dream ideas.
From our present point of view we are now able to say that the chief
function of dreams is to supply adequate theories to account for the
magnified emotional impulses which are borne in on sleeping consciousness.
This is the key to imagination in dreams. From the first we have seen that
in dream life the mind is always freely and actively reasoning; we now
see what is usually the real motive and aim of that reasoning. Sleeping
consciousness is assailed by waves of emotion from various parts of the
organism, but is entirely unable to detect their origin, and, therefore,
invents an explanation of them. So that in sleep we have to weave theories
concerning the unknowable origin of our emotions, just as when we are
awake we weave theories concerning the ultimate origin of the totality of
our experiences. The fundamental source of our dream life may thus be said
to be emotion.[87]
There is certainly no profounder emotional excitement during sleep
than that which arises from a disturbed or distended stomach, and is
reflected by the pneumogastric to the accelerated heart and the excited
respiration.[88] We are thereby thrown into a state of emotional
agitation, a state of agony and terror, such as we rarely or never attain
during waking life. Sleeping consciousness, blindfolded and blundering,
a prey to these massive waves from below, and fumbling about desperately
for some explanation, jumps at the idea that only the attempt to escape
some terrible danger or the guilty consciousness of some awful crime can
account for this immense emotional uproar. Thus the dream is suffused by
a conviction which the continued emotion serves to support. We do not--it
seems most simple and reasonable to conclude--experience terror because we
think we have committed a crime, but we think we have committed a crime
because we experience terror. And the fact that in such dreams we are far
more concerned with escape from the results of crime than with any agony
of remorse is not, as some have thought, due to our innate indifference
to crime, but simply to the fact that our emotional state suggests to us
active escape from danger rather than the more passive grief of remorse.
Thus our dreams bear witness to the fact that our intelligence is often
but a tool in the hands of our emotions.[89]
In this tendency, it may be noted, we see the basis of the symbolism which
plays so real a part in dreams. Such symbolism rests on the fact that we
associate two things--even if the one happens to be physical and the other
spiritual--which both happen to imply a similar state of feeling.[90]
Symbolism of this kind is, indeed, characteristic of the human mind
at all times, in all stages of its development. Thus the physical idea
of _height_ seems to express also a moral idea, which we feel to be
correspondent, while wormwood and gall furnish a taste which enabled men
to speak of what seemed to them the corresponding _bitterness_ of death.
In dreams this natural tendency of the mind is able to work unchecked and
extravagantly. It acts with much facility on any impulse arising from the
gastric region, because this region is the seat of various sensations and
emotions, both physical and moral, which may thus act symbolically the one
for the other.[91]
Even when we realise the process of transformation and irradiation,
through which organic sensations can alone reach the brain in sleep, and
the inevitable 'errors of judgment' thus produced, it may still seem
strange and puzzling to observe how a stimulus which has its origin in the
stomach will, by affecting the neighbouring viscera, in its circuitous
course along the nerves and through the brain, be transformed, as it
may be, into a tragic scene which has never been experienced, nor even
deliberately imagined, as for instance--to cite a dream of my own--in
the fiery vision of following a leader, in real life a peaceful and
inoffensive man, who, revolver in hand, dashes among foes, shooting and
shot at, every moment in danger of life, and always miraculously escaping.
I may illustrate this transformation by the following example: A lady
dreamed that her husband called her aside and said, 'Now, do not scream
or make a fuss; I am going to tell you something. I have to kill a man.
It is necessary, to put him out of his agony.' He then took her into his
study, and showed her a young man lying on the floor, with a wound in
his breast, and covered with blood. 'But how will you do it?' she asked.
'Never mind,' he replied; 'leave that to me.' He took something up and
leaned over the man. She turned aside and heard a horrible gurgling sound.
Then all was over. 'Now,' he said, 'we must get rid of the body. I want
you to send for So-and-so's cart, and tell him I wish to drive it.' The
cart came. 'You must help me to make the body into a parcel,' he said to
his wife; 'give me plenty of brown paper.' They made it into a parcel, and
with terrible difficulty and effort the wife assisted her husband to get
the body downstairs, and lift it into the cart. At every stage, however,
she presented to him the difficulties of the situation. But he carelessly
answered all objections, said he would take the body up to the moor, among
the stones, remove the brown paper, and people would think the murdered
man had killed himself. He drove off, and soon returned with the empty
cart. 'What's this blood in my cart?' asked the man to whom it belonged,
looking inside. 'Oh, that's only paint,' replied the husband. But the
dreamer had all along been full of apprehensions lest the deed should be
discovered, and the last thing she could recall, before waking in terror,
was looking out of the window at a large crowd which surrounded the house
with shouts of 'Murder!' and threats.
This tragedy, with its almost Elizabethan air, was built up out of a few
commonplace impressions received during the previous day, none of which
impressions contained any suggestion of murder. The tragic element appears
to have been altogether due to the psychic influences of indigestion
arising from a supper of pheasant.[92] To account for our oppression
during sleep, sleeping consciousness assumes moral causes, which alone
appear to it of sufficient gravity to be adequate to the immense emotions
we are experiencing. Even in our waking and fully conscious states we
are inclined to give the preference to moral over physical causes, quite
irrespective of the justice of our preferences; in our sleeping states
this tendency is exaggerated, and the reign of purely moral causes is not
often disturbed by even a suggestion of physical causation.
In an emotional dream of similar visceral origin, I dreamed that I was to
die--why or how I could not tell on awakening. With the object of putting
an end to my sufferings, I imagined that my wife administered to me some
substance mixed in jam. I found the taste peculiar, not bitter, as I
recalled on awaking, but warm and spicy, and I asked what she had put in
it. She replied that it was strychnine. I remarked that that would be a
very painful mode of death, and refused to take any more. I debated with
myself whether I had probably taken a poisonous dose, and had not better
resort to an antidote; the only antidote that suggested itself to me was
opium pills. Meanwhile the horror of impending death grew more and more
acute until, at length, I awoke. I thereupon found that I had a headache,
a faint taste in my mouth, and some general malaise evidently associated
with a slightly disordered stomach. The definite images brought forward in
the dream had all been fairly familiar during the previous day, but the
idea of impending death which pervaded the whole dream so indefinitely and
incoherently, yet so acutely, was entirely a theory to account for the
massive and widely irradiated messages of discomfort which reached the
sleeping brain.
Many people are unwilling to admit that psychic phenomena so tragical,
poignant, or pathetic as these dreams may be, should receive their
stimulus from a source which they regard as so humble as the stomach.
Thus Frederick Greenwood, whose conception of the function of dreaming
was very exalted, only admitted this association with reluctance, and
was careful to point out that 'if an unwholesome supper produces such
phenomena, it does so only in the sense that a bird singing in the
air produced Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark."'[93] That analogy really
underestimates the distance of the physical stimulus of such dreams from
its psychic concomitants. When we talk of dreams we must place ourselves
at the dreamer's standpoint. The poet was conscious that his inspiration
was stimulated by the bird's song, but the dreamer has no consciousness
that the tragic experiences he passes through imaginatively are stimulated
by the activity of his visceral organs. He is altogether unconscious
of visceral disturbance; if he were conscious of any of these physical
facts which occupy waking consciousness, he would no longer be a dreamer.
He lives in a psychic world which physical facts, from within or from
without, can never reach until they have been transformed. His position
resembles, therefore, not that of the poet who deliberately seeks to
interpret the song of the bird, but rather that of the bird itself, the
poet 'hidden in the light of thought,' sublimely unconscious of the
mechanism revealed in its own structure.
The explanations devised by sleeping consciousness to account for visceral
discomfort of gastric origin are not necessarily tragic. Thus I dreamed,
after a somewhat indigestible meal, that I was slowly and painfully eating
bread mingled with cinders and mouse's excrement, trying in vain to avoid
these impurities, and after the meal was over, finding my mouth full of
cinders. On awaking there was no traceable taste or sensation of any
kind in the mouth, and the dream was apparently a theory to account for
some gastric disturbance. Such a theory seems less far-fetched than that
of murder, and probably indicates much less marked and diffused visceral
disturbance. Occasionally the explanatory theories of actual sensations
accepted by sleeping consciousness are plausible and ingenious, indeed
entirely adequate and probable. Thus a lady dreamed that she was drinking
glass after glass of champagne, saying to herself the while that she
would have to pay for this afterwards. On awaking she found that she was
feeling the slight rheumatic pains and discomfort that she was really
liable to experience after taking a glass or two of champagne. She had not
tasted champagne, or thought of it, for some time previously; the dream
champagne was a theory invented to account for the sensations which were
actually experienced, though those sensations remained outside dreaming
consciousness.
Most of the examples I have presented of the influence of emotion of
visceral origin in suggesting dream theories have had the stomach as their
source. There can be no doubt that the stomach has enormous influence in
this respect; its easily and constantly varying state of repletion, its
central position and liability to press on other organs, its important
nervous associations, together with the fact that sleep sometimes tends
to impede its activity and initiate disturbance, combine to impart to it
a manifold and extensive influence over the emotional state in sleep, and
at the same time render the source of that emotional state peculiarly
difficult for sleeping consciousness to detect.
It is, however, easy to show that any pronounced or massive feeling
continuing or arising during sleep may similarly lead to an emotional
state calling for explanation at the hands of sleeping consciousness.
Thus, falling asleep with toothache during a singularly close night, I
once dreamed that I had committed murder, having apparently killed several
persons, and that I was occupied, after arrest, in considering whether my
act was likely to be regarded as an unpremeditated act of manslaughter.
A headache, again, may be a source of dreams. Thus, falling asleep with
headache, I dream that I am waiting for an express train to London; an
express comes up to the platform, and I cannot ascertain if it is the
train I want. The explanation seems obvious; railway travelling is a
cause of headache, and it is therefore put forward in the dream, with
accompanying imagery, to account for the sensations experienced. The
actual sensation, as is always the case in dreams, that is, the headache,
remains subconscious, and, indeed, totally unconscious; the imagery it
suggests alone occupies the field of consciousness.[94] An entirely
different type of dream may, however, be associated with headache. Thus
I once dreamed that I was in a vast gloomy English cathedral, and on
the wall I observed a notice to the effect that on such a day evensong
would take place without illumination of the cathedral in order to avoid
attracting moths. I awoke with slight headache. Here the cool, silent
gloom of the cathedral is the symbol of what is desired to soothe the
aching head, and the fantastic suggestion read on the notice is merely the
theory of dreaming consciousness which knows nothing of the real reason of
the wish.
Dreams of murder or impending death or the like tragic situations seem
usually to be aroused by visceral stimuli. In some cases, however (as
in Maury's famous dream of the guillotine), they are due to an external
cutaneous sensation. When the stimulus thus comes from the periphery,
the emotional element, even when the dreamed situation is tragic, seems
usually (though this is not quite certain) to be less pronounced than when
the stimulus is visceral. Thus in a dream of my own, which seemed to be
due to a cramped position of the head and neck, I dreamed that I had died
(though, somehow, I was not myself, but had become more or less identified
with an ugly old woman), and was being autopsied. Then very gradually I
became faintly and peacefully conscious of what was going on, though I
remained motionless, and all the time believed that I was dead, and that
my faint consciousness was merely a part of death. Preparations for the
funeral were meanwhile being made, and I was about to be nailed down in
my coffin. At this point I became horribly aware that these proceedings
would cause suffocation, and, with great effort, I succeeded in moving
my arms and speaking incoherently. Thereupon the funeral arrangements
were discontinued, and very slowly I seemed to regain speech and the
power of movement. But I felt that I must be extremely careful in making
any movements, on account of the post-mortem wounds; especially I felt
pain in my neck, and realised that it was necessary not to move my head,
or the result might be instant death. In such a dream, it may be noted,
and in some others I have recorded, we see very instructively the nature
of the changes produced in the dream and in the dreamer's attitude by
the approach of waking consciousness. The dreamer's relationship to
his imagined situation becomes more and more what it would be if the
situation occurred in real life, and as soon as there is painful effort
and imperfect muscular movement, the coming of waking consciousness is
imminent.
The visceral and emotional element in dreaming helps to explain the
dreamer's moral attitude and the real significance of those criminal
actions in dreams which have often been misinterpreted. Many writers
on dreaming have referred, with profound concern, to the facility and
prevalence of murder in dreams, sometimes as a proof of the innate
wickedness of human nature made manifest in the unconstraint of sleep,
sometimes as evidence of an atavistic return to the modes of feeling of
our ancestors, the thin veneer of civilisation being removed during sleep.
Maudsley and Mme. de Manacéïne, for example, find evidence in such dreams
of a return to primitive modes of feeling. Clarke speaks of 'the entire
absence of the moral sense' from dreams.[95] Professor Näcke, who has
given much attention to the phenomena of dreaming, writes in a private
letter: 'What I am amazed at, having perceived it in myself, is the little
known fact that a person's character becomes _worse_ in dreaming. Not
only the most secret thoughts, wishes, and aspirations become clear, but
also qualities which have never been observed before, as, for instance,
that one becomes a murderer, an adulterer, etc.' Freud, especially, has
elaborated this aspect of dreams as representing the fulfilment of the
dreamer's most secret desires.[96]
It may well be that there is an element of truth in the belief that in
dreams we are brought back to mental conditions somewhat more closely
approaching those of primitive times. It is the manifold variety
and complexity of our mental representations which prevent us from
responding immediately to impulse under civilised conditions, and when,
by dissociation, only a few groups are present to consciousness, the
inhibition on violent action tends to be removed. If, therefore, we
are more violent, more immoral, more criminal, in our dreams than
in waking life, this is by no means necessarily to be regarded as a
revelation of our real nature, but is merely an inevitable result of
the mental dissociation which prevents many important groups of mental
representations from finding their way into consciousness, and at the same
time brings all our mental possessions on to the same plane, so that the
things we have merely thought or heard of have the same visual reality as
our own actual experiences. The sleep of the real criminal, as Sante de
Sanctis has shown on the basis of a wide experience, even of criminals
guilty of serious acts of violence, tends to be peaceful and dreamless,
and such dreams as they have are usually of a simple and innocent sort. If
normal people often dream of crime, it is because they are more sensitive
and imaginative, and because sleeping consciousness is strained to the
utmost to invent a phantasmal tragedy adequate to account for the waves of
emotion that beset it.[97]
There is another reason why, in dreams, we may find ourselves engaged in
criminal operations. The purely automatic process by which the imagery of
dreams is perpetually shifting in pursuit of associations of resemblance
or contiguity, leads to confusions which are not rooted in any personal
or primitive impulse, as in the example I have previously referred to,
of a lady who had carved a duck at dinner, and a few hours later woke up
exhausted by the imaginary effort of cutting off her husband's head.
Such a dream is merely a mechanical turn of the visionary kaleidoscope,
bringing together two unrelated images.
The most potent cause of dream criminality, and especially of murders we
have been guilty of before the dream commenced, seems clearly, however,
to be that emotional factor of visceral origin which is well illustrated
by one or two of the dreams already brought forward.[98] In these cases,
again, we are not concerned with any primitive or personal impulse to
crime, but we feel ourselves to be so possessed by all the physical
symptoms of terror, that the only adequate explanation of our state
seems to be the theory that we have committed murder. And if we are more
concerned to flee from justice than to experience remorse, that is clearly
because the really labouring and agitated heart suggests flight from
pursuit far more than any passive emotion.[99] There is, moreover, no more
fundamental and primitive emotion than fear.
While these considerations combine to deprive criminal dreams, when they
occur, of any great significance as an index of the dreamer's latent
morality, I must add that I am by no means prepared to agree that moral
emotions are so absent from sleep as many writers have stated. There is
often a diminished sense of morality, an easier yielding to temptation
than would take place in real life, a diminished remorse--these tendencies
being mainly due to the conditions of dream-life--but there is frequently
a strong sense of morality in dreams, as well as a vivid perception of
social proprieties. Those persons who have an unusually strong moral
sense, when awake, frequently show, I think, a similar tendency when
asleep, but in the dreams of most people moral and decorous considerations
seem, as a rule, to make themselves more or less clearly felt, much as in
waking life. It may be worth while to bring forward a few dreams which
incidentally illustrate the moral attitude of the dreamer.
A lady narrated the following dream immediately on awakening: 'I had
murdered a woman from some moral or political motive--I forget what--and
had come in great agony to my husband with her shoes and watch-chain. He
promised to help me, and while I was wondering what could be done for
the benefit of the woman's family, some one came in and announced that a
lecture was about to be given on the beauty of nakedness. I then went,
with several prim and respectable ladies of my acquaintance [the names
were given], into a crowded hall. The lecturer who--so far as appearance
is concerned--was a well-known Member of Parliament, then entered and
gave a most eloquent address on Whitman, nakedness, ugly figures, etc.
He especially emphasised the fact that the reason people are shocked at
nakedness is that they usually only see unbeautiful bodies which repel
them because they are unlike their ideals. Then he put out his hand, and
a naked woman entered the room. Her loveliness was extreme; her form was
perfectly rounded, but without suggestion of voluptuousness, though she
was not an animated statue, but had all the characters of humanity; she
walked with undulating thighs, head slightly drooping, and hair falling
down and framing a face that expressed wonderful spiritual beauty and
innocence. The lecturer led her round, saying, "This is beauty; now, if
you can look at this and be ashamed----" and he waved his arm. She went
away, and a beautiful Apollo-like youth, slender but athletic, entered the
room, also completely naked. He walked round the room alone, with an air
of majestic virility. I applauded, clapping my hands, but a shiver went
through the ladies present; their skin became like goose-flesh, and their
lips quivered with horror as though they were about to be outraged. The
youth went out, and the lecturer continued. At the climax of his oratory,
the Apollo-like youth entered, dressed as a common soldier, with no
appearance of beauty, and in a rough tone said: "'Ere! I want a shilling
for this job." (And I sighed to myself: "It is always so.") No one had a
shilling, and the lecturer proceeded to explain to the man that what he
had done was for the sake of art and beauty, and for the moral good of
the world. "What do I care for that?" he returned, "I want a drink." Then
a lady among the audience produced a collar, wrote on it a testimonial
expressing the gratitude of those present for the man's services on this
occasion, and handed it to me to present to him. "Damn it," he said, "this
is only worth twopence halfpenny; I want my shilling!" Then I awoke.'
The idea of murder with which this dream began seems to suggest that it
may have had its origin in some slight visceral disturbance of which
the subject was unconscious, but nothing had occurred to suggest the
details of the episode. The interesting feature about it is the presence
throughout of moral notions and sentiments substantially true to the
dreamer's waking ideas.
In another dream of the same dreamer's the sense of responsibility is
clearly present: 'Mrs. F. and Miss R. had called to see me, and I was
sitting in my room talking to them, when a knock came at the door, and
I found there a poor woman belonging to the neighbourhood, but who also
combined in my dream the page-boy at a dear friend's house. From this
friend, whom I had not heard from for some time, the woman bore a large
letter. She tore it open in my presence, saying, "It says here that the
bearer is to open this," and produced from it another letter, a large
document of a legal character in my friend's handwriting. When the woman
began to open the second letter I remonstrated; I was sure that there was
some mistake, that that letter was private, and that no one else ought to
see it. The woman, however, firmly insisted that she must carry out her
instructions; so we had a long discussion. After a time I called Mrs. F.
and appealed to her. She agreed with me that the instructions must only
mean that the bearer was to open the outer envelope, not the inner letter.
At last I took out five shillings and gave it to the woman, telling her
that I would assume all the responsibility for opening the letter myself.
With this she went away well satisfied, saying (as she would in real
life), "All right, Mrs. ----, you're a lady, and you know. All right,
my dear." Then at last I was able to tear open my letter and read these
words: "_Always use Sunlight Soap_." My vexation was extreme.'
On another occasion the same dreamer experienced remorse. She imagined she
was in a restaurant, and the girl behind the counter pointed to a barrel
of beer--a golden barrel, she said, with a magic key--which could only be
opened by the owner. The dreamer declared, however, that she could open
it, and, producing a key, proceeded to do so, handing round beer to the
bystanders. Then she realised that she had been stealing, and was full of
remorse. She asked a friend if she ought to tell the owner, but the friend
replied, 'By no means.' This conclusion of the dream seems to indicate
that the moral sense, though present in dreams, is apt to be impaired.
In yet another dream this dreamer exhibited a curious combination of moral
sensibility and criminal indifference. She imagined that, while walking
with a man, a friend, she revealed to him a secret of a woman friend's.
Then, realising her betrayal of confidence, she decided that the best
thing she could do would be to kill the man. On reflection, however,
she thought that it would, after all, be unkind to do so since he was a
friend, and so told him that if he ever repeated the secret she would have
him torn to pieces. It will be seen that the betrayal of a secret was
felt as a far more serious offence than murder. The facility with which,
in such dreams as this, the suggestion of murder presents itself, even to
dreamers who, when awake, cherish no bloodthirsty or revengeful ideas, is
certainly remarkable.
It is often said that in dreams erotic suggestions present themselves with
extreme facility, and are eagerly accepted by the dreamer. To some extent
there is truth in this statement, but it is by no means always true. This
may be illustrated by the following dream, the sources of which could
be easily traced; two days before I had seen the gambols of East Enders
at Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday, and the day before I had visited
a picture gallery, the two sets of impressions becoming ingeniously
combined, according to the usual rule of dream confusion. I thought that
when walking along a country lane a sudden turn brought me to a broader
part of the road covered with grass, into the midst of a crowd of women,
large and well-proportioned persons, mostly in a state of complete
nudity, and engaged in romping together, more especially in tugs-of-war;
some of them were on horseback. My appearance slightly disturbed them, I
heard one cry out my name, and to some extent they drew back, and partly
desisted from their games, but only to a very slight degree, and with
no overpowering embarrassment. I was myself rather embarrassed, and,
glancing at them again, turned back. Afterwards my walk again brought
me in view of them, and it occurred to me that women are somewhat
changing their customs, a very wholesome change, it seemed to me. But I
remonstrated with one or two of them that they ought to keep in constant
movement to avoid catching cold. No erotic suggestions were present,
although the dream might be said to lend itself to such suggestions.
The idea of moral retribution and eternal punishment may also be present
in dreams. This may be illustrated by the dream of a lady who had an ill
and restless girl companion sleeping with her, and was disturbed as well
by a yelping and howling terrier outside. She had also lately heard that
a friend had brought over a python from Africa. 'I dreamed last night I
had a basket of cold squirming snakes beside me; they just touched me all
over, but did not hurt; I felt mad with loathing and hate of them, and
the beasts would not kill me. That, I thought, was my eternal punishment
for my sins.' In her waking moments the dreamer was not apprehensive of
eternal punishment, and it may be in such a case that, as Freud suggests,
an unfamiliar moral idea emerges in sleep in much the same way as an
unfamiliar or 'forgotten' fact may emerge.
On the whole, it may be said that while the moral attitude of the dreaming
state is not usually identical with that of the waking state, there still
nearly always is a moral attitude. It could not well be otherwise. Our
emotional states are intimately bound up with moral relationships; we
could not display such highly emotional states as we experience in dreams,
with all their tragic accompaniments, in the absence of any sense of
morality.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 75: The dependence of sleeping imagination on emotion of organic
origin was long ago clearly seen and set forth by the acute introspective
psychologist, Maine de Biran (_Œuvres Inédites_, 'Fondements de la
Psychologie,' p. 102).]
[Footnote 76: Jastrow (_The Subconscious_, p. 206) relates a similar case
observed in a girl student.]
[Footnote 77: Herbert Wright, who finds that in children night-terrors
are apt to be associated with somnambulism, points out that when the
somnambulism replaces the night-terrors it leaves no memory behind
(_British Medical Journal_, 19th August 1899, p. 465). An interesting
study of movement in normal and morbid sleep has been contributed by
Segre ('Contributo alla Conoscenza dei Movimenti del Sonno,' _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1907, fasc. 1.).]
[Footnote 78: This question is, for instance, asked by F. H. Bradley ('On
the Failure of Movement in Dreams,' _Mind_, 1894, p. 373). The explanation
he prefers is that the dream vision is out of relation to the very dimly
conscious actual position of the body, so that the information necessary
to complete the idea of the movement is wanting. Only as regards the less
complicated movements of lips, tongue, or finger, when the motor idea is
in harmony with the actual position of the body movements, does movement
take place. We have no means of distinguishing the real world from the
world of our vision; 'our images thus move naturally to realise themselves
in the world of our real limbs. But the world and its arrangement is for
the moment out of connection with our ideas, and hence the attempt at
motion for the most part must fail.' It is quite true that this conflict
is an important factor in dreaming, but it fails to apply to the large
number of movements which we dream of actually doing.]
[Footnote 79: The action of some drugs produces a state in this respect
resembling that which prevails in dreams. 'Under the influence of a large
dose of haschisch,' Professor Stout remarks (_Analytic Psychology_, vol.
i. p. 14), 'I found myself totally unable to distinguish between what
I actually did and saw, and what I merely thought about.' Not only are
the motor and sensory activities relatively dormant, but the central
activity is perfectly able, and content, to dispense with their services.
'Thought,' as Jastrow says (_Fact and Fable in Psychology_, p. 386), 'is
but more or less successfully suppressed action.']
[Footnote 80: This seems to me to be the answer to the question, asked
by Freud, (_Die Traumdeutung_, p. 227), why we do not always dream of
inhibited movement. Freud considers that the idea of inhibited movement,
when it occurs in dreams, has no relation to the actual condition of the
dreamer's nervous system, but is simply an ideatory symbol of an erotic
wish that is no longer capable of fulfilment. But it is certain that
sleep is not always at the same depth and that the various nervous groups
are not always equally asleep. A dream arising on the basis of partial
and imperfect sleep can scarcely fail to lead to the attempt at actual
movement and the more or less complete inhibition of that movement,
presenting a struggle which is often visible to the onlooker, and is not
purely ideatory.]
[Footnote 81: This explanation, based on the depth and kind of the sleep,
is entirely distinct from the theory of Aliotta (_Il Pensiero e la
Personalità nei Sogni_, 1905), who believes that dreamers differ according
to their nervous type, the person of visual type assisting passively at
the spectacle of his dreams, while the person of motor type takes actual
part in them. I have no evidence of this, though I believe that dreams
differ in accordance with the dreamer's personal type.]
[Footnote 82: Dugald Stewart argued that there is loss of control over
the muscular system during sleep, and the body, therefore, is not subject
to our command; volition is present but it cannot influence the limbs.
Hammond argued, on the contrary, that Stewart was quite wrong; the reason
why voluntary movements are not performed during sleep is, he said, that
volition is suspended. 'We do not will our actions when we are asleep. We
imagine that we do, and that is all' (_Treatise on Insanity_, p. 205).
Dugald Stewart and Hammond, though their phraseology may have been too
metaphysical, were, from the standpoint I have adopted, both maintaining
tenable positions. In one type of dream, we imagine we easily achieve all
sorts of difficult and complicated actions, but in reality we make no
movement; the ease and rapidity with which the mental machine moves is due
to the fact that it is ungeared, and is effecting no work at all. In the
other type of dream we make violent but inadequate efforts at movement
and only partially succeed; the machine is partially geared, in a state
intermediate between deep sleep and the waking condition.]
[Footnote 83: Jacques le Lorrain, _Revue Philosophique_, July 1895.]
[Footnote 84: The systematic megalomania of insanity can, however, have
its rise in dreams; Régis and Lalanne (_International Medical Congress_,
1900; _Proceedings, Section de Psychiatrie_, p. 227) met within a short
period with four cases in which this had taken place.]
[Footnote 85: This indeed seems to have been recognised by Wundt, who
regards a 'functional rest of the sensory centres and of the apperception
centre,' resulting in heightened latent energy which lends unusual
strength to excitations, as a secondary condition of the dream state.
Külpe (_Outline of Psychology_, p. 212) argues that the existence of
vivid dreams shows that fatigue with its diminished associability fails
to affect the central sensations themselves; this increased excitability
resulting from dissociation may itself, however, be regarded as a symptom
of fatigue; hyperaesthesia and anaesthesia are alike signs of exhaustion.]
[Footnote 86: The exhaustion sometimes felt on awaking from a dream
perhaps testifies to its emotional potency. Delboeuf states that a friend
of his experienced a dream so terrible in its emotional strain that on
awaking his black hair was found to have turned completely white.]
[Footnote 87: The fundamental character of emotion in dreams has been
more or less clearly recognised by various investigators. Thus C. L.
Herrick, who studied his own dreams for many months, found that the
essential element is the emotional, and not the ideational, and that,
indeed, when recalled _at once_, with closed eyes and before moving,
they were nearly devoid of intellectual content (_Journal of Comparative
Neurology_, vol. iii. p. 17, 1893). R. MacDougall considers that dreaming
is 'a succession of intense states of feeling supported by a minimum of
ideational content,' or, as he says again, more accurately, 'the feeling
is primary; the idea-content is the inferred thing' (_Psychological
Review_, vol. v. p. 2). Grace Andrews, who kept a record of her dreams
(_American Journal of Psychology_, October 1900), found that dream
emotions are often stronger and more vivid than those of waking life; 'the
dream emotion seems to me the most real element of the dream life.' P.
Meunier, again ('Des Rêves Stéreotypés,' _Journal de Psychologie Normale
et Pathologique_, September-October 1905), states that 'the substratum of
a dream consists of a cœnæsthesia or an emotional state. The intellectual
operation which translates to the sleeper's consciousness, while he is
asleep, this cœnæsthesia or emotional state is what we call a dream.']
[Footnote 88: The night-terrors of children have frequently been found
to have their origin in gastric or intestinal disturbance. Graham Little
brings together the opinions of various authorities on this point,
though he is himself inclined to give chief importance to heart disease
producing slight disturbances of breathing, since he has found that
in nearly two-thirds of his cases (17 out of 30) night-terrors were
associated with early heart disease (Graham Little, 'The Causation of
Night-Terrors,' _British Medical Journal_, 19th August 1899). It should
be added that night-terrors are more usually divided into two classes:
(1) idiopathic (purely cerebral in origin), and (2) symptomatic (due to
reflex disturbance caused by various local disorders); see _e.g._ Guthrie,
'On Night-Terrors,' _Clinical Journal_, 7th January 1899. J. A. Symonds
has well described his own night-terrors as a child (Horatio Brown, _J.
A. Symonds_, vol. i.). Lafcadio Hearn (in a paper on 'Nightmare-Touch'
in _Shadowings_) also gives a vivid account of his own childish
night-terrors.]
[Footnote 89: It has not, I believe, been pointed out that such dreams
might be invoked in support of the James-Lange or physiological theory of
emotion, according to which the element of bodily change in emotion is the
cause and not the result of the emotion.]
[Footnote 90: This physiological symbolism was clearly apprehended long
ago by Hobbes: 'As anger causeth heat in some parts of the body when we
are awake; so when we sleep the overheating of the same parts causeth
anger, and raiseth up in the brain the imagination of an enemy. In the
same manner as natural kindness, when we are awake, causeth desire and
desire makes heat in certain other parts of the body; so also, too much
heat in those parts, while we sleep, raiseth in the brain an imagination
of some kindness shown. In sum, our dreams are the reverse of our waking
imaginations; the motion, when we are awake, beginning at one end, and
when we dream at another' (_Leviathan_, Part 1. ch. 2).]
[Footnote 91: 'The pains of disappointment, of anxiety, of unsuccess, of
all displeasing emotions,' remarks Mercier (art. 'Consciousness,' Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_), 'are attended by a definite
feeling of misery which is referred in every case to the epigastrium.' He
adds that the pleasures of success and good repute, aesthetic enjoyment,
etc., are also attended by a definite feeling in the same region. This
fact indicates the extreme vagueness of organic sensation. There is in
fact much uncertainty and great difference of opinion as to the nature,
and even the existence, of organic sensation; see _e.g._ a careful summary
of the chief views by Dr. Elsie Murray, 'Organic Sensation,' _American
Journal of Psychology_, July 1909.]
[Footnote 92: More than ten years later, the same dreamer, who had
entirely forgotten the circumstances of this dream, again had a vivid
dream of murder after eating pheasant at night; this time it was she
herself who was to be killed, and she awoke imagining that she was
struggling with the would-be murderer.]
[Footnote 93: F. Greenwood, _Imagination in Dreams_, p. 31.]
[Footnote 94: Dreams of railway travelling, and especially of losing
trains, are not always associated with headache or any other recognisable
condition. They constitute a very common type of dream not quite easy to
explain. Dr. Savage mentions, for instance, that in his own case scarcely
a week passes without such a dream, though in real life he scarcely ever
loses a train and never worries about it. Wundt considers that the dreams
in which we seek something we cannot find or have left something behind
are due to indefinite coenaesthesic disturbances involving feelings of
the same emotional tone, such as an uncomfortable position or a slight
irregularity of respiration. I have myself independently observed the same
connection, though it is not invariably traceable.]
[Footnote 95: E. H. Clarke, _Visions_, p. 294.]
[Footnote 96: An amusing, though solemn, interpretation of an ordinary
dream of murder, railway travelling, and impending death, as experienced
by Anna Kingsford, is furnished by her friend and biographer, Edward
Maitland, _Anna Kingsford_, vol. i. p. 117.]
[Footnote 97: Various opinions in regard to morality in dreams are brought
together by Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_, pp. 45 _et seq._]
[Footnote 98: Head ('Mental Changes that Accompany Visceral Diseases,'
_Brain_, 1902, p. 802) refers to the association between visceral pain and
the anti-social impulses, and thinks that the viscera, being part of the
oldest and most autonomic system of the body, appear in consciousness as
'an intrusion from without, an inexplicable obsession.']
[Footnote 99: 'In my dreams,' W. D. Howells remarks, 'I am always less
sorry for my misdeeds than for their possible discovery' ('True I talk of
Dreams,' _Harper's Magazine_, May 1895).]