IS IT TELEPATHY?

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1930, Page 9

IS IT TELEPATHY?

WHY DRDAMS COME TRUE. Tiia interest in 'dreams has increased enormously since the war, because they proved to be of such great value in the diagnosis of mental disorders which, for want of a better name, were grouped under the general term “shell shock,” writes Dr C. W. Kimmins, in the “Sunday Express.” The source of the particular weakness which incapacitatead the soldier under the stress and strain of battle ■was frequently traced to some incident of childhood revealed in dreams, which was the cause of the trouble.

It was then possible by appropriate treatment to celar away the repressed material, and enable the man to return to the lighting line. As examples of this, two severe cases of claustrophobia (dread of being in a confined space) were success fully dealt with by prominent psychologists. In one case a dream revealed the fact that in his boyhood the soldier had been punished by being locked up in a Clark cupboard, which terrified him so much that he fainted. In the other, a boy had been left by mistake in a connecting passage between two houses. The doors wei e closed, and he was horrified to discover a barking dog which had also been shut in.

In both cases the recall of the memoi”’ of the painful incident and treatment resulted in complete recovery. There appears to be a vast amouni of evidence that visions of serious ac cidents or deaths of relatives or friends have been seen at the time of ucurrence by an interested person the full accounts of the incidents afterward received corresponding to the smallest detail. The whole question of telepathic comunication has made, and is still making great advances. In broadcasting the i'linprovement and sensitiveness of the receivers have been carried to such an extent that with a small set it has been found possible to pick up and hear distinctly a speech delivered 3000 miles away.

The transference of thought appears, from the experiments performed, to be of the same nature as that of sound —namely, some kind of wave medium.

For example, a mother has in her room a sickly child, and though she may sleep perfectly well with the ordinary noises of the houses and -.treet. she is acutely sensitive to any sound coming from her child. Posibly some similar reason may account for the transference of thoughts from children thinking of the mother in time of great danger or of emotional activity.

If a dream is heavily symbolised it needs a good interpreter of dreams to decide the real meaning of it. Even the young child’s dream, which is generally plain sailing, being the evident, fulfilment of a wish, may present difficulties.

A small boy of five, in giving his account, said, “Last night I had a lovely dream. I dreamed that burglars broke into our house and smashed all the cups and saucers.” On inquiry I found that the boy had broken a cup, and was in terror lest his mother should discover it. If his dream had come true then the fact that he had broken a cup would never havo been found out. His dream was, therefore, clearly a wish fulfilment. Some dreams are compensatory and never come true. The blind child, in his dreams, always sees, the deaf hears, the dumb speaks, and the physically defective performs wonderful deeds of valour requiring great physical strength.

In some cases special knowledge comes in dreams, which therefore, being acted upon, come true. Thus Robert Louis Stevenson received all the details of Treasure Island in a dream.

Dreams of illness sometimes come true because of the great sensitiveness to changes of temperature which are reflected in dreams. Thus, when children have nightmares, which are generally associated with a high temperature, these may be a warning of somo feverish ailment such as in Juenza.

Similarly warning of certain rheumatic affections may find expression in the dream. Under-feeding is foreshadowed by dreams of hearty meals. In carrying out an investigation of dreams of London children it was striking that only in the poorest schools did the children dream of hearty meals, and where the matter was remedied and the children properly fed this type of dream disappeared. The records of dreams of children furnish a large mass of material in ■support of their actual fulfilment. Here is .a dream of a girl of twelve about, the signing of the armistice: — “I had the following dream on the night of November 10, the night before the ‘Cease Fire’ armistice was signed. “The Kaiser and his Chancellors were seated at a long table debating whether to sign the armistice or not. The Kaiser sat twirling his moustache angrily. He glanced round the table at the assembled people. “Suddenly a flash of lightning lit u£ the room then almost at the same time a terrific crash of thunder burst upon them. The Kaiser went pale. Then his favourite Chancellor spoke: ‘The delay wifi. do no good; sign it, sire..’

“The Kaiser glanced at his friend, picked up his pen, and signed the armistice. The wind outside stopped, the rain ceased, and through the clouds floated a white figure with a shining crown, and on it was written ‘Peace.’

“It floated through the open window, hovered over the asembled company, and disappeared. The sun came out and shone on the Kaiser and his men.

“Tim Kaiser stood up. ‘The audience is at an end,’ he said.. The Chancellors stood up and silently walked out, leaving the Kaiser to his meditations. Then 1 awoke.” The. following' abstract of a dream is typical:—A child whose father was abroad dreamed that her mother had a wish-bone, and the child, who was successful in obtaining the wish in pulling said that she wished that her dad. would be homo on Christmas Day. There was no sign of him, however, on the day, and they settled down to the Chistmas festivities. After Santa Claus had given the children their presents from the Christmas tree he took off iiis clothes, and there was the father, and so “after' all,” said the child, "my wish came true.” Children are so intensely interested in their dreams that they fresuently

account for the strange things which they dream about. For example: A boy had an exciting dream about a man flying low in an aeroplane shooting rabbits, and the boy was running along picking them up. He explains it as follows:—“.Early in the day wo were playing cricket and I remember seeing an aeroplane, and in the morning after my dream I heard some of the boys in the school saying that they had heard some one shooting rabbits in the evening, so I expect my dream was due to seeing an aeroplane in the day and hearing the th© shots, of the man shooting rabbits in the evening in my' sleep.”