“PROPHETIC” DREAMS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 21, 8 January 1923, Page 7

“PROPHETIC” DREAMS.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THEM. (By a Physician.) Certain individuals seem to have, specially developed, the peculiar gift of dreaming a true account of future events more frequently than can be ac< ounted for by coincidence, thus leading their associates to invest them with supernatural power, and to declare that “there must bo something in it.” This seemingly prophetic attribute of dreams led, in the past, to much supersitition and conjecture, but the mental mechanism of the production of dreams is now very fully understood and their prophetic nature can no longer be believed in. The great majority of dreams arc a mental safety-valve through which the mind gets rid of unpleasant ideas. During the waking hours many unpleasant thoughts pass through the mind and are banished, after a longer or shorter stay, to the oblivion of the forgotten or, to use more psychological language, to “the unconscious.” It is a natural attribute of the healthy mind so to rid itself of the distasteful, and a mind incapable of this would very quickly become insane through the constant presence of disquieting memories in the forefront of consciousness. A very large proportion of our unpleasant feelings result from frustrated wishes, and so, if we could take stock of our unconscious minds, we should find there a large accumulation of “unsatisfied conations” or, in other words, desires which wc had found it impossible to. gratify. During sleep, when the mind is not fettered by the power of will or reason, these stored-away desires come to the surface, as it were, and appear s part of a drcam. Very strong desires, if brooded over and subsequently repressed, are so unpleasant that even during sleep the mind will not suffer them to appear unchanged, but distorts them so that when they arise in dream form they arc unrecognisable even to ourselevs. The drcams thus built up simply strike us as incomprehensible and silly, and sodom, if ever, simulate prophecies. Wc seldom dream, for instance, that we have supplanted a rival in love, reached the height of our profession, or made a huge fortune in our business. Should, however, the original wish have been hardly noticeable, as when a momentary desire to profit flashes through our minds as we accidentally catch sight of the name of a horse in the betting news, or of a company in the financial reports, then it is extremely likely that the name of tbe horse or the company will appear in a subsequent dream. If that particular horse wins or tne , shares rise, then our dream will be remembered with reinforced vividness, and be for ever fixed in our memory as-a prophecy; on the other hand, we are so accustomed to our drcams bearing no relation to the truth that a false forecast makes no correspoding impression.