If a phenomenon occurs frequently, its frequency must have a certain
relation to its importance to the criminalist. Hence, sleep and dream
must in any event be of great influence upon our task. As we rarely hear
them mentioned, we have underestimated their significance. The
literature dealing with them is comparatively rich.[342]
The physician is to be called in not only when we are dealing with
conditions of sleep and dream which are in the least diseased, i.e.,
abnormally intense sleepiness, sleep-walking, hallucinatory dreams,
etc., but also when the physiological side of sleep and dream are in
question, e.g., the need of sleep, the effect of insomnia, of normal
sleepiness, etc. The criminalist must study also these things in order
to know the kind of situation he is facing and when he is to call in the
physician for assistance. Ignorance of the matter means spoiling a case
by unskilful interrogation and neglect of the most important things. At
the very least, it makes the work essentially more difficult.
But in many cases the criminalist must act alone since in those cases
there is neither disease nor a physiological condition by way of
explanation but merely a simple fact of the daily life which any
educated layman must deal with for himself. Suppose, e.g., we are
studying the influence of a dream upon our emotions. It has been shown
that frequently one may spend a whole day under the influence of a
dream, that one’s attitude is happy and merry as if something pleasant
had been learned, or one is cross, afraid, excited, as if something
unhappy had happened. The reason and source of these attitudes is
frequently a pleasant or unpleasant dream, and sometimes this may be at
work subconsciously and unremembered. We have already shown that
so-called errors of memory are to a large extent attributable to
dreams.[343]
This effect of the dream may be of significance in women, excitable men,
and especially in children. There are children who consider their dreams
as real experiences, and women who are unable to distinguish between
dreams and real experience, while the senile and aged can not
distinguish dreams and memories because their memories and the power to
distinguish have become weakened.[344]
I know of an eight-year-old child who after dinner had gone looking for
chestnuts with a man. In the evening it came home happy but woke up in
tears and confessed that the man in question had raped it. Another case
concerns a great burglary which had caused its victims considerable
excitement. The second day after the event the ten or twelve-year-old
daughter of the victim asserted with certainty that she had recognized
the son of a neighbor among the thieves. In both cases there were
serious legal steps taken against the suspects, and in both cases the
children finally admitted, after much thinking, that they had possibly
dreamed the whole matter of their complaints.
The character-mark of such cases is the fact that the children do not
make their assertions immediately, but after one or two nights have
passed. Hence, whenever this occurs one must entertain at least the
suspicion that reality and dreams have been confused.
Similarly, Taine narrates that Baillarger once dreamed that he had been
made director of a certain journal, and believed it so definitely that
he told it to a number of people. Then there is the familiar dream of
Julius Scaliger. Leibnitz writes that Scaliger had praised in verse the
famous men of Verona. In dream he saw a certain Brugnolus who complained
that he had been forgotten. Later Scaliger’s son Joseph discovered that
there really had been a Brugnolus who had distinguished himself as
grammarian and critic. Obviously Scaliger senior had once known, and had
completely forgotten about him. In this case the dream had been just a
refreshing of the memory. Such a dream may be of importance, but is
unreliable and must be dealt with carefully.
To get at a point of departure concerning the nature of the sleep and
the dreams of any given person, we may classify them with reference to
the following propositions:[345] 1. The vividness of dreams increases
with their frequency. 2. The lighter the sleep the more frequent the
dreams. 3. Women sleep less profoundly than men and hence dream more. 4.
With increasing age dreams become rarer and sleep less profound. 5. Who
sleeps lightly needs less sleep. 6. The feminine need of sleep is
greater. I might add with regard to the last point that the fact that
women are better able to endure nursing children or invalids constitutes
only an apparent contradiction of this point. The need of sleep is not
decreased, but the goodwill and the joy of sacrifice is greater in woman
than in man.
The extraordinary things people do in half-dream and in sleep are
numerously exemplified by Jessen. Most of them are taken from the older
literature, but are quite reliable. A comparison indicates that such
somnambulistic conduct occurs most frequently among the younger, more
powerful, over-strained people, who, e.g., have not slept for two
successive nights, and then have been awakened from deep sleep. It is
remarkable that they often act intelligently under such
circumstances--that the physician writes the proper prescription or the
factory superintendent gives the proper orders, but neither knows
anything about it later on. Criminalistically their significance lies on
the one hand in the fact that they can be investigated with regard to
their correctness; and on the other that they occur to people who had no
reason to falsify. If a defendant tells about some such experience, we
lack the means and the power to make an accurate examination of the
matter, and tend for this reason to disbelieve him. Moreover, his very
position throws doubt upon his statements. But this is just the ground
for a careful study of similar occurrences in trustworthy people.[346]
All authorities agree that actions during sleepiness[347] occur almost
always in the first deep sleep, disturbed by dreams, of over-fatigued,
strong individuals.
An important circumstance is the phenomenon cited by Jessen and
others--the capacity of some people to fall calmly asleep in spite of
tremendous excitement. Thus, Napoleon fell into deep sleep during the
most critical moment at Leipzig. This capacity is sometimes cited as
evidence of innocence. But it is not convincing.
We have yet to mention the peculiar illusions of the phenomena of
movement which occur just before falling asleep. Panum tells how he once
inhaled ether, and then observed, lying in bed, how the pictures on the
wall went further and further back, came forward and withdrew, again and
again. Similar things happen to sleepy people. Thus, the preacher in
church seems progressively to withdraw and return. The criminalistic
significance of such illusions may be in the observation of movements by
people who are falling asleep, e.g., of thieves who seemed to be
approaching the witnesses’ beds, though standing still.
That sleeping people may be influenced in definite ways is indubitable.
Cases are mentioned in which sleepers could be made to believe any
story; they would dream of it, and later on believe it. There is in this
connection the story of the officer who acquired the love of a young
girl in this fashion; the girl had shown definite distaste for him at
first, but after he had told her during her sleep, in her mother’s
presence, of his love and loyalty, she began in the course of time to
return it. It is a fact that certain of our burglars believe similar
things, and carry them out in most cases with the assistance of red
light, to which they assign hypnotic power. They claim that with a
lantern with red glass they are able to do anything in the room
containing a sleeping individual, and can intensify his sleep by letting
the red light fall on his face, and speaking to him softly. Curiously
enough this is corroborated by a custom of our mountain lads. They cover
a lantern with a red cloth and go with it to the window of a sleeping
girl. It is asserted that when the red light falls on the latter’s face
and it is suggested to her softly to go along, she does so. Then a
pointed stone is placed in the girl’s way, she steps on it, it wakes her
up, and the crude practical joke is finished. It would be interesting,
at least, to get some scientific information concerning these cited
effects of red light upon sleeping people.
O. Mönnigshoff and F. Piesbergen[348] have thrown some light on the
profoundness of sleep--why, e.g., a person hears a thing today and not
at another time; why one is awakened and another not; why one is
apparently deaf to very loud noise, etc. These authorities found that
the profundity of sleep culminates in the third quarter of the second
hour. Sleep intensifies and grows deeper until the second quarter of the
second hour. In the second and third quarters of that hour, the
intensification is rapid and significant, and then it decreases just as
rapidly, until the second quarter of the third hour. At that point sleep
becomes less and less profound until morning, in the second half of the
fifth hour. At this moment the intensity of sleep begins again to
increase, but in contrast with the first increase is very light and
takes a long time. Sleep, then, reaches its culmination in one hour out
of five and a half; from that culmination-point it decreases until it
reaches the general level of sleep.