DREAMS: The Latest Views of Science.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 28, 1 February 1913, Page 13

DREAMS: The Latest Views of Science.

The meaning of dreams has exercised man's imagination throughout the ages, and may with some plausibility be regarded as the first question which the human mind set to itself in the earliest dawn of reason on our planet. Among the ancients the explanation most readily accepted was that dreams, in many, if not in all cases, were revelations of a superior power, the voice of a god or demon imparting to the dreamer knowledge of things future or far distant which he could not acquire by his own unaided faculties. However absurd a dream might superficially appear, interpretation- according to the right -'code" of symbolism was considered capable of giving it sense. Tn modern times, however, the theory that is on the whole, most popular is one which denies all meaning to dreams, and regards them as merely the confused and jumbled reappearance during sleep of memories belonging to the person's past history, strung together in any chance order. At least, this is the theory adopted by many so-called scientists who do not happen to have studied this particular problem scientlficallv.

These two views are the extremes between which the manifold opinions held by modern tliinkens ■will be found to oscillate. Somewhere between them, no doubt, the truth must lie. It is quite possible that no one explanation will suffice for all cases, but that different types of dreams require different 'theories to explain them. In any case, one is now able to limit the possibilities within fixed bounds, thanks to the careful scientific research that has been done in connection with the subject during quite recent years. Mot only have

fern, which he knew they liked to eat. The name of this fern seemed in his dieam to be Asplenium ruta muralis. Later on in his dream he saw two other lizards come and eat the remains of the fern, and then a whole host of lizards coming to the wall in a long procession which covered the end ire street. On awaking he could not remember ever to have heard the name of the fern of his dream, although he discovered that a fern called Asplenium ruta muraria really existed. Sixteen years later, however, he happened to be turning over the pages of a friend's album of dried flowers, and to his surprise came across the very fern, with the Latin name written underneath in his own handwriting. He then remembered that in iB6O, two years before the dream, he had met the sister of his friend, and to please her had written the Latin names under the various plants in her album at. the dictation of a botanist. Fifteen years after the dream he also discovered the source of the lizard proce**sion in an old illustrated paper, dated 1861, which, .16 a regular subscriber, lie must have seen. Innumerable cases of a similar nature are on record, and go to show how remarkably heightened the memory may be in dreams. They also warn us not too rashly to believe that incidents in a dream which seem entirely new are really

.events of tbe previous day. Indeed, upon | this fact has been built the theory that dreaming Is to be explained as the i method'which the mind employs for eliminating or •'excreting" the unimporti ant incidents of the day. which if left in ■ihe mind would disturb its normal function. ' A very remarkable feature of dreams is the apparent speed with which they occur. A fraction of a second may suffice for quite a lung and complicated dream. The classical instance of this is a dream recorded by iMaury. Maury dreamt that he war. living in Paris at. the time of the French""Revolution: that, after many adventures, he was eventually arrested and brought before a tribunal consisting of Robespierre, Marat, Feuqilier-Tinville and the rest, was crossquestioned, and eventually condemned to death. Accompanied by an innumerable crowd of people, be proceeds to the scaffold, the executioner binels him to the plank, the knife falls, be feels his head severed from his body, and—wakes up terror-stricken, to find that the curtainpole of his bed has fallen across his neck. If the facts are correct, it would seem that this complicated dream took place between the moment that tbe curtainpole fell and the momenit the dreamer aw-oke. But another explanation of this and similar dreams is possible, as we shall presently see. i Tt is interesting to note how appropriately the dream adapts itself to the nature of the waking stimulus, and yet how divergent the dreams may he which on different occasions end with the same '. waking stimulus. Hildebramit gives three striking examples of dreams brought, to an end (or aroused?) hy an alarum-clock. Tn the first the dreamer is sauntering through the fields on a beautiful spring morning, meets people walking in their best clothes, prayerbook in hand, arui remembers that it is Easter Day. Eventually reaching a village church, he rests in the churchyard

Another characteristic of the memory in dreams is that it chooses incidents that in the waking life are the most unimportant and trivial, and passes over events that have absorbed the dreamer's attention during the day. This is especially the case with regard to the parts of the dream originating in the

trained scientists observed and recorded . their dreams with great accuracy over j leng stretches of time: they have also studied dreams experimentally, by deltb- ' erately interfering with a person's sleep in certain ways and noting the ef- I feet on bis dreams. The object of the ' present article is to state the more im- . portant of these scientifically-ascertained facts in simple language, to describe several important theories that have been suggested in recent years, giving actual dreams as examples, and to indicate what seems to be the most probable explanation of dreams in the light of our present knowledge. Since the explanation of dreams given quite recently by Professor Signiund Freud, of Vienna, is exceptionally original, as well as being highly ingenious anil interesting, much space will be devoted to the elescription and explanation of this theory. Even if it is not the entire truth about dreams. there is little doubt that it contains a great part of the truth. Almost all scientific ol«servers agree that the materials of which dreams are made are menrories of past experiences of the individual. Curiously enough, the memories that occur most frequently are those of the previous day and those of early childhood. The former class are to be found in every dream, and are probably an essential condition to its formation; the latter (recollections of; childhood) seem to be of even greater importance, since they contribute much of the hidden meaning of tbe dream. In many cases where the incidents of a dream seem to be entirely unfamiliar it has been shown by careful investigation that they correspond to actually experienced events that have escaped the memory of the waking 6elf. Del- ' boeuf records an interesting example of this. In 1862 he dreamt that he found two lizards in the snow. He took them up, warmed them, and placed them in a hole in a wall, together with a small

to cool himself, and hears the bell-ringer slowly mount the rickety stairs of the steeple. After an appreciable pause the bell begins to move and sends out a clear note, which quickly changes to a harsh clamour, and he awakes to hear the alarum-clock. In another dream it is the depths of winter, snow lies deep on the ground, he prepares for a sleighride. The 6leigh is at the door. He done fur coat and cap, mounts, and, after a few moments' delay, during which the horse paws the ground with impatience, shakes the reins. The horses bound forward, the sleigh-bells tinkle — then the note changes, and he wakes to the sound of the alarum-clock. In a

third dream he sees a maid-servant car- | rying a tall pile of plates from the kit- . cten, and calls out: "Be careful; they | will fall!" The maid ignores his warn- I ing, stumbles on the threshold, he 6ees ' the column sway in the air and then fall with a crash, and he awakes—again to hear the alarum-clock. One is tempted to conclude rroni these in6tan--es that the dreams were produced by the waking stimulus, and were so many unsucce__-ful attempts of the drowsy consciousness to perceive and interpret the nature of this intruding stimulus. In fact, Maury, Weygandt, and others have experimentally produced dreams in this way. Maury got someone to tickle him on the lips and nose with a feather while asleep. He dreamed of a frightful torture, in which a plaster was laid on his face and then torn away, dragging the skin with it. (In another occasion water was dropped upon his forehead, lie dreamt that he was in Italy and perspiring profusely from the heat: also that he was drinking the white wine of Orvieto. These experiments are certainly sufficient to show how important the waking stimulus is in the production of dreams, but it needs little reflection upon then, to fiee that the stale of the person's mind and brain at the moment Uof at least equal importam-e. In cverv case the real explanation of the dream, if an explanation it> demanded at all. must lie looked for in the latter of these two factors. Professor Freud's tbeory of dreams docs explain them in this way, and. consequently, is far more satisfactory than moist other theories. But before describinrr this theory T must just mention another which, as it were, paves

the way to Freud's view. This is the i theory of Schemer. Schemer held that ; dreams were due to organic sensations— ' ! i.e., sensations aroused by changes in j the internal organs, such as the stomach, ' i liver, heart, etc. These sensations are, ' jof course, present during waking life, ' I but in sleep, owing to the suppression of ! sensations of sight, hearing, etc., they become very much more prominent. The mind then reacts to them "symbolically," j translating tht-m into sensations of sight i and touch which may correspond to their | shape or represent them in some other I plausible and metaphorical way. Thus, in a headache during sleep the head may be represented by a room with spiders crawling over the ceiling. The sensations from the lunge, when pronounced, may ! be symbolised in the dream-consciousness I by the roaring of a stove filled with flames. Persons sufTering from heart- | trouble may dream of driving sweating horses up a steep hill. Disturbances of inner sensations seem in this way not only f o be symbolically transformed, but also to undergo a kind of psychical magnification. Dreams may thus in many

By WILLIAM BROWN, MA., D.Sc, Head of the Psychological Department, King's College, University of' London.

cases act like a mental microscope, and reveal the earliest beginnings of mental or physical disease which might otherwise escape the physician's notice. Aristotle was the first thinker to recognise this fact, ami he emphasised its importance as an aid in the diagnosis of commencing disease.

Freud's theory, put quite briefly, is that every dream represents the fulfilment of some wish. This wish-fulfil ment in most cases occurs in a disguised form, and only becomes apparent after interpretation of the dream according to his method of "psycho-analysis." Freud draws an important distinction between what he calls the "manifest content" and

born resistance that he despaired of taking it), dreamt one night that he saw a satyr dancing on his shield. An astrologer, Aristandros, wiho happened to he in his train, interpreted this dream as meaning that he would take Tyre, since

•■-aturos," the Greek for satyr, could be split up into "so Turos," which equals

'"Tyre is thine." Encouraged by the dream, Alexander pressed the siege with great vigour, and quickly took the town. This example is a very neat illustration of Freud's theory, and also shows the •play upon words which is so frequent a way in which wish-fulfilments are symbolised. Freud has himself remarked upon the fact that most of our "dreambooks," which are still popular among the ignorant at the present day, are translations from Eastern writings, where the interpretation of dreams was , mainly a matter of verbal similarity. Of course, these verbal similarities and ' analogies lose their force when translated into another tongue, and so become merely misleading.

Freud would explain tMaury's dream of the guillotine, described earlier in this article, as being an entire memory, or rather imagination, originating from early life, when the stirring history of the French Revolution produced a wish to have lived in thcrae times, which is aroused en bloc by the fall of the cur-tain-pole. Tbe hidden wi_h seized the opportunity afforded by this guillotinelike stimulus to realise itself as an actual incident of Maury's life. That the wish culminated in a tragedy does not necessarily make the explanation a farfetched one.

The wish to continue sleeping is the cause of many dreams. A medical student, who was very fond of his bed, was one morning called by his landlady: "Mr Pepi. get up; you must go to the hospital!"' Thereupon the 6leeper proceeded to dream of a ward in the hospital, where he lay on a bed, with a card over bis head containing the legend: "Pepi, H., medical student, twenty-two years." He said to himself in his dream: "Since T am already in the hospital, I don't need to go there," turned over, and continued his sleep. A similar explanation will partly account for the following dream. A father has lost his dearly-loved child. The open coffin is in a room adjoining the father's bedroom, lighted candles are placed near it, and an o'd man watches during the night while the father snatches a few hours' much-needed sleep. The latter dreams that his little son stands at his side and cries reproachfully: "Don't you see, father, that I am burning?" Waking up, he sees through the half-open door the old man asleep and one of the candles fallen and burning the arm of his boy. We may suppose that the light of the conflagration, striking on the father's half-closed eyes, 'served as the stimulus to produce a I dream realising his heartrending wish to see his child alive once more. Combined with this desire is the wish to continue dreaming, that be may still enjoy its bitter sweetness. That the child in the dream complains of burning shows that the father correctly inferred in bis sleep that the light seen was due to burning of the winding-sheet. Instead of awaking immediately, the dream comes as a fulfilment of the two wishes just mentioned.

I the "latent content" of a dream. The I "manifest content" is the dream as it I appears for ordinary observation, and j shows all the characteristics which we have enumerated earlier in this article, i That is, it is shadowy, confused, seemj ingly unintelligible, and is made up of I elements that come from (in many cases) long-forgotten incidents of the dreamer's . past life. The different parts of the dream are joined together in an apparently arbitrary manner. The "latent content" is the hidden meaning of the dream, and in every case represents the fulfilment of some wish. The wish often originates from the earliest years of one's life and disguises itself in the fragmentary memories of the previous day, all bough many wishes of one's recent life may also be represented in dream?. Often it is only upon analysis and interpretation of a dream that .one becomes aware of the very existence of the wish. The wish exists ih what is called the subconscious or unconscious part of the person's mental life, and may only come to the surface of the mind in this disguised form of a dream. Why should the wish be bidden or disguised in this way? Because, says Freud, it is not in harmony with the ethical or conventional ideals of the waking life. Many wislies of early childhood are evidently of this nature, and therefore they have been "•wppreswed" (but not annihilated) by the censor of the waking and conventional -self. Even during sleep this censor still keeps watch over the mind, though not with the same alertness as in the daytime. The forbidden wishes, which \n waking life are kept out of consciousness altogether, find that they jean evade the vigilance of the censor

during sleep by disguising themselves— i.e., by assuming a symbolic dress patched up out of the neglected memories of the dreamer's recent experiences — and can so slip past into the half-light of dream consciousness. In order to overcome this resistance of the censor, it may for the wish to undergo great distortion. Feelings may be changed into their opposites. hostility represented by apparent friendship and tenderness, pleasure by pain and anxiety; unimportant details may be overemphasised and the essential parts of the dream left in shade and obscurity. As the dreamer rouses and eventually wakes, the censor gains greater power and perspicacity, and does its best to wipe out the traces of the dream altogether. This is l-'reud's explanation of the remarakable rapidity with which most dreams are forgotten after waking. The wish may be of a quite innocuous nature, and yet appear in the dream in a disguised fGrm. It is reported that Alexander the Great, when besieging Tyre (which was making such a s'.ub-

Dreams, like the poor, are always with us, and it should not be difficult for my readers to test the truth of Freud's theory from their own manifold experiences. They will find that the method of psycho-analysis, when applied to their dmsa-ms, throws light upon springs of action in their character which would otherwise have remained hidden in obsenritv.

Of the dreams not to .be explained by this theory, some would seem to be entirely meaningless, an obscure jumble of memories, often unpleasant, aroused by disturbances of digestion, etc.; others, such as those of falling from a height, going into water, etc.. are derived from experiences of earliest childhood: and. finally, some are not to be explained without the assumption of telepathic communication between the mind of the dreamer and some other outside mind. Examples of the last are to be found in great numbers in the "Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research." and several good ones in F. W. H. Myers's well-known book: and. in my own view at least, many, if not all of them, make the view of telepathic communication between minds during sleep unavoidable. Whether dreani6 ever make it possible for one to look into the future is too ; difficult a question to consider here.

Po far as the future is contained in the past, such prophetic dreams are, of coiiTS-e, conceivable, even on the lines of the strictest materialism. To speculate farther would be to step beyond the bounds of science.