DREAMS AND INSOMNIA.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17419, 1 April 1922, Page 17

DREAMS AND INSOMNIA.

| A PARTIAL AWAKENING. "WISHFUL" AND "ANXIETY" TYPES. (from CUE OWN -CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, Feb. 14. "Dreams —Their Cause and Effect" I was the subject of Dr. W. Brown's lecture at the Institute of Hygiene. This mental specialist propounded a new theory. ( Until quite recent times, he said, the scienoo of dreams had not j been deemed worthy of study. Dreams had the power of magnifying impressions during sleep. Descartes dreamt that he had been run through by a sword; on waking, he found he had been bitten by a Ilea; this was an instance of magnification. With the advance of science, the tendency liad been to depreciate more and more the i prophetic nature of dreaming and its occult value, if it had such a thing. If we turned to the predecessors ,ot Freud, we found that tiicy belittled the significance of dreams. One theory to-day w;as that dreams came from partial brain activity, and that they were (Irrational owing to that fact. Freud said that the dreams had a different meaning from what was actually dreamt; there were dreams that were wishful; the wishes were at the back of the mind, and had been repressed; hence, they came out in a distorted form, and the dreams were known as "anxiety" dreams. Patients who had suffered from shellshock during the late war dreamt over and over again of the battle scenes they had witnessed. The Function of a Dream. Dr. Brown rejected the theory of the psycho-analysts tliat dreams are always significant, and that every part of them has a meaning wliich must be looked for in primitive desires lurking in the subconscious mind. Hs gave them a much simpler significance. "The function of a dream is to guard sleep," he said. ''Sleep is an instinct like fear, flight, and the rest, and has a function which has developed in the course of evolution. At night this instinct of sleep comes into play, but it finds itself in conflict with other instincts and tendencies, as well as with external impulses. Desires, cravings, anxieties, the memories of earlier days, all of which are the lower and fundamental elements of the mind, well up and strive towards consciousness while the main personality is in abeyance. If they reach consciousness sleep is at an end, but the dream, which is a sort of intermediary form of consciousness, intervenes, and makes the impulses inocuous, so that sleep persists. This theory covers the entire ground of all types of dreams. We dream because we do not wake ur> all at once. Parts of lis wake souncr than other parts. A dream is a partial awakening." Dream Comedies. The following are some humorous results which followed experiments of external stimuli applied by Dr. Brown to various sleepers. A very hot water bottle was applied to a man's feet; he dreamt he was walking on hot lava on crater of Vesuvius. Another sleeper, whose brow was sprinkled with water, dreamt he was in Italy drinking wine. A third, whose nose was tickled with a feather, dreamt that a doctor was covering his face with plaster of Paris, and then nulling it off, causing him excruciating pjyn. Dr. Brown claimed that he himself dreamt an examination paper which ho was to set in a few days. Unfortunately he could not recall it when he awoke. Somnambulists, he eaid, never reinem-

bered tlieir dreams, but their dreams could be brought back by hypnotism. Somnambulism was a fuller dream, and the patient had control of his motormechanism, which the ordinary dreamer had not. In such cases it may be found that there is a strange connexion between the dream and the sleep-walking. A patient in his hospital who walked downstairs with a pillow in his hand was dreaming that a boy of whom he was very fond had sprained his ankle while fishing, and that he was .fetching water for him in a canvas bag. The patient at the time was worrying because ho could get no news of the boy, who was in France.

The lecturer felt fairly certain he could not accept generally Freud's conclusions about tho dream, and this, following uoon the examination of his own and others' dreams. Dreams were helpful in showing one's subconscious tendencies, and illustrated the active nature of subconsciousness. Shun Sheep and. Dope. Sufferers hom insomnia should avoid drugs, and they should also refrain from counting sheen in the hope of inducing sleep. This was the keynote of a very striking address on mental hygiene given by Dr. Hildrcd Carlill, of Westminster Hospital, and the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, before the Institute of Hygiene. Counting sheep, he described as "ridiculous," while "the most useless treatment of all is to tell the patient to think of nothing; it is uncommonly difficult to think of nothing. It is better to lie relaxed and to repeat with each breath tho word 'sleepy' in a regular and monotonous manner." It was better to get up for an hour and read or write rather than to lie in bed in a panic. Reading in, bed was inadvisable in any circumstances. Education .on the right lines would do much to lessen the incidence of hysteria. Children should be taught to breathe and to chew; they should learn the reasons . why people stammered, tho dangers of rapid eating, and of eating between meals, and serious thought should be encouraged about acts and behaviour vital to efficiency. (Hear, hear). Hysteria was often regarded as inordinate laughing or weeping, but other varieties of unusual conduct were equally hysterical. Hysteria was always curable, and in many cases would never occur if someono with the needful personality were present. The moods, sulks, and tantrums of some children all had causes, and it was worth while taking time to discover them. It was useless merely to scold, and worse than useless to let the child have its way. Terrors of darkness and fear of sleep were very common, and might originate in ail-chosen bed-time stories. The condition be treated by drugs, but the dangers of the drug habit were greater than those of sleeplessness. Cases of suicide attributed to insomnia were usually due to dread of insanity. Women Drug Victims. The victims of the drug habit seem to be increasing in number and tho most unlikely people succumb to temptation. Some women, rather than mis 3 tho season, pass into it with tho artificial strength obtained, from drugs and out of it with an inability to stop the habit. It mattered little what we did once or twice in a lifetime; poisoning depended upon overdose. It is the liabit which goes against the laws of Nature which destroys us. The majority of mankind he described as suggestible, though only a portion IB hysterical. He ascribed many headaches to hysteria. It had been said that men who suffered head wounds in tho war were not likely to be the same again on account of headaches, vet it was the exception at St. Dunctan's to find men, even though blinded by head wounds, complaining of headaches. Concussion snocks to the brain in peace time certainly get well, for a pugilist who has been knocked out by a blow on the chin is ready for

the next fight as soon as his financial advisers. The war brought home to the people that hysteria is not peculiar to one sex, but is determined by tho quality and condition of tho mental soil when the seed of suggestion is sown. In conclusion the lecturer remarked: "It is chiefly in connexion with their own health and the health of their children that people are fools. 'lhe things men live by, and for lack of which they die, are very simple. For the bodv, wo need little more than light, air, l'resh food and water; and for tho soul, we need no more and no less than work, play, love and worship."