THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 19

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

"History of Dreams." By A. J. J. RatchSe. London: Grant Richards and Co. '

In this book Mr. Ratcliffe relates how Professor Monroe, in America experimented on 20 girls students. ,"A. crushed clove was put on each student's tongue before she fell asleep. The dreams were reported next day, and the process was 'repeated 20 ■ times. There were 250 dreams reported, but only in 17 were there taste impressions (and onlythree were of cloves)." ■

The extraordinary speed with which we dream is made evident in the following storj\:—"At the first stroke of midnight by the parish clock, a certain man fell asleep and dreamed a dream. He ran away to sea, served on board a ship for a long time, and, just escaping with his life from a shipwreck, swam, to a desert island. No rescue arriving, he began to abandon hope, when at last a ship hove in sight arid took him on board. He became a ringleader in a successful mutiny, took charge of the ship himself, and sailed it across remote and uncharted seas. At length, wearying of this life, he sailed for England, sold the ship, and entered business on shore. One day, someone recognised him as a mutineer; he was arrested and tried, condemned to death and led off to execution; but at^the eleventh hour, when the noose was around his neck, and h« was expecting death at any moment, he awoke with a start, and heard—the last 1 of the twelve strokes of the clock." Mr. Ratcliffe says that dreams "began by being real and obvious 1; they become real and not obvious, and last they became not real and not obvious. First' they were self-explanatory; then they required explaining; last they became mechanical omens."

-Thus we arrive at the«common delusions that .there is no better dream-than, of wallowing up to the neck iii mud, that clear water means sorrow, and running naked in the streets and per- 1 plexity. ■ Dreams, according to Freud, are; caused by the wishes of the. unconscious and "are vri 'th'e*'main symbolic. It is the: business of the psycho-analysts to inter-! pret them. v Every detail has to be re : called ;to. discover, principal wish at the^ base r of,-the dream. Mr. Ratcliffe tells of famous dreams that have come' true. There is a story, of the tinker of Swaffham,-who dreamed that ha would meet someone- on London Bridge who •would tell him news of great importance. After dreaming this three times, he tramped the 90 miles, and there'met a stranger, told him not to be a fool and go home; that he, too, had a, foolish dream urging him.to go to Swaffham and dig in a ecrtain garden under an apple tree, but that no one in his senses paid attention to such follies. The tinker went homo, found two chests of gold and silver, and made a thank-offering in the form of a new chancel in the parish churcht