The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1915. DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2372, 30 January 1915, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1915. DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

War seems to have a psychology of its own. At any rate, it provides exceptional opportunities for scientific research into certain phases of human personality. Those interesting letters from the front which .are published from time to time £ive us some weird glimpses into tbe feelings of men when they face death for the first time. Only a few days ago a careful analysis by the medical correspondent of the London Times of the state of mind in the presence of danger which we call courage' was published in The Dominion. War also affords unique chances of studying,various phases of crowd psychology. A crowd is something more than the total of the individuals of which it is composed. A man's behaviour as one of a multitude is often 1 quite different from his ordinary conduct as a separate individual. The effect of warfare on the mind and character of the fighters is another fruitful subject for systematic inquiry, and the latest phase of the scientific investigation of war experiences is the collection and interpretation of facts regarding the dreams of soldiers. A cablegram which appeared in our columns a few days ago shows that this matter has been receiving the attention of a high-class medical journal, the Lancet'. According to this authority the dreams of wounded soldiers most frequently take the form of wanderings in endless trenches or picking one's way in solitude through a lonesome forest. The slightest noise* during sleep provokes exciting visions of bursting shells, while an exasperating form of nightmare is the discovery of shells in bed ready to explode., Such dreams are just what one' would naturally expect 'in the circumstances. It is almost inevitable that the nerve-wracking sights and sounds of a modern battlefield should colour the sleeping thoughts of the fighters. Still, it would be a mistake to suppose that soldiers dream of nothing else but shells and trenches. There is an old saying that dreams go' by contraries; though that refers to the interpretation than to the nature of sleep experiences. Many, soldiers dream peacefully of "home and mother, anil the serenor days of peace and comfort. One wounded man gives quite a graphic account of a sleep brim full of pleasant thoughts. I slipped beautifully into a sleep full of dreams, in 'which all things we're pleasins: and kind (he writes). Everyone 1 met was sympathetic, sweet-voiced, and loving. We were once again in the bench, but nobody was fighting. The Germans were our dearest friends. . . . The Ciown Prince, too, was there, a perfect gentleman, not a Crown Prince, but a Fairy; Prince. I do not recall meeting the Kaiser, but had I done so he would 6urely have been revealed as a modest, kindly, and unliable royal gentleman. Such extraordinary people and deeds! Nobody quarrelled or opposed. Whatever any of the dream characters sDigested the others agreed with, and did in their gentle loving way. It_ ought perhaps to bo stated that this patient had been put to sleep by means of an jnjection of morphia. Many people look upon dreams as crazy, topsy-turvy things to which the law of causo and effect and the ordinary canons of common-scnse havo no application. Yet, unless wo live in a wild world, everything must be subject to the reign of law. We know comparatively little regarding the laws which govern the inner recesses of our personality, hut that they arc law-governed we can hardly doubt. Yet we feel certain that allowance must bo made for tho free exercise and spontaneous development of our mental and spiritual faculties. The ideas of law and freedom are not mutually destructive. The efforts of science to explain our dreams have not yet been remarkably successful, but they have not been in vain hy any means.' Some very wonderful facts have been brought to light, and we we he.sjtmittfl Uj «nme(,hl»ir j

which, in the opinion of the late Father .Tyrrell, "is the mystery of mysteries." We are, he says, "immeasurably more than we can ever comprehend.." This judgment is amply confirmed by the explorations of modern psychologists in tho dark continent of dream land, though they have not yet penetrated very, far into that unknown region. Dream experience is only one of those deeper aspects of human nature which include telepathy, dual personality, faith hcaljng, premonitions, and the inspiration of genius. Much difference of opinion exists concerning these matters, but it is now generally conceded that they are legitimate subjects for scientific investigation, ana the information which is being collected regarding tho dreams of our soldiers at the front will probably throw some additional light on the problem of personality. Facts should always como first. The wider the range of fa.cts the more reliable aro the theories erected upon them. Professor Freud has arrived at tho conclusion that dreams are determined by the sub-conscious working of a repressed tendency. That is to say, an idea which, for moral or other reasons, is rigidly crushed down during our waking moments, pursues a subterranean course, and is apt to reassert itself in sleep when the moral censorship is more or less in abeyance. Commenting on this theory, Mr. MDoxjgall, a distinguished English psychologist, remarks that if it is not altogether fanciful ''some complex dreams are not, as hitherto generally assumed, merely fortuitous and purposeless streams of pictorial fancies; rather, they are full at every point of significance, are, in fact, highly elaborated trains of symbolical imagery produced by ingeniously selective and constructive thinking, which, while remaiiiing_ subconscious, is guided and sustained by a hidden purpose or design." Freud's theory does appear to_ explain in some measure a certain type of dreams, but it does not seem to afford a reasonable interpretation of dream experience as a whole. . It is difficult to see, for instance, how it can account for the dreams and nightmares of wounded soldiers quoted by the Lancet. As a matter of fact, no satisfactory solution has yet been found that will cover the whole problem, which puzzles us almost as much as it puzzled primitive man. Sleep is a great mystery to the savage mind, ancient and modern, and dreams have a peculiar significance. The savage regards his experiences in sleep as actual occurrences, and a good dreamer is regarded with awe as a medium of divine communication. It is even contended by some that savage man dreamed immortality intohissoul. He-seemed at times to visit distant scenes in his sleep, and yet his friends told him that his body had not travelled. Therefore ho argued that the soul was separate from the body, and that it did the wandering. He also dreamed of the dead, and saw them in his sleep, which proved to him that there was a life beyond death. This does not, of course, mean that the belief in immortality is nothing more than the "baseless fabric of a vision." It merely indicates the prooess by which tnis great truth may have dawned upon the imagination of primitive man. The origin of a belief is one thing and its validity qnifce another. The very risky path by which I have scrambled up a cliff," writes an authority on this question, "does • not make the top less safe when I have got there." But the mystery of sleep did not disappear with the dawn of civilisation. Condorcet_ is said to have solved a mathematical problem in a dfeam which'had baffled his powers when awake, and Coleridge dreamt the poem of "Kubla Khan." These strange happenings are now ' being studied in a scientific manner, but tho deeper the matter is probed tho more puzzling it seems to become. The mystery of dreams forms part of the greater mystery of the pronoun "I," the solution of'which is one of the most fascinating tasks which modern psychologists have set before them.