Analysing Dreams

Horowhenua Chronicle, 10 November 1915, Page 3

Analysing Dreams

TO CUlili BATTLIS SHOOK. Tlie 'following in taken from a letter received .from Professor Cr. Qiilliotj Smitii, of Australia,- who is working at tlio 'Military Ked, Cross Hospital afc Mughill, near Liverpool, to which mental oa&ea and those suffering from battle shock are sent. Before he went he was a secretary to a committee which was looking after the Australian wounded in tho 100 thoepitals scattered over Manchester and the adjaceat districts. IVofessor Efliot Smith was recently elected a Fellow of the ltoyal College of Physicians. "1 am helping to look after soldiers suffering from nerve shock, of whom Ave have thirty here, and the work is s.) successful that we are sending men ouL quite cured at the rate of aboit ten a week, and getting others in '-o .till tho vacant places. The work h extremely interesting. The kind o , work we are doing is so novel' in i'icglaud that we are constantly receiving visitors, wiho come to see for themselves what is being done. We have had a commission headed by the president of tlhe Royal College of Physicians, another with the Director-Gen-eral of tho Army Service Oorps, and a number of high officers in the army, and several other groups of official people. "In each case wo endeavour, hy probing into tho past history of each patient to discover tho underlying causes of the state of shock, for in every case the shock of battle experiences has been merely the exciting cause, which, as it were, has taken the lid off all pent-up emotions oi a lifetime and allowed them *vee scope to influence the individual's conduct and determine his behaviour. In nearly every case th« primary causo was some fright or terrilying experience in early childhood, maltreatment by parents, some accident, or some dreadful sight or experience. "Many of these things can be got at only by analysing the patients dreams. Once 'we have fully workud out the emotional life history we proceed to re-educate the patient and remove the causes of his disturbance. By these simple means we .not only save scores of men from asylums, but so strengthen their control that they become less liable to mental disturbance iu the future than they were before they went to tho front."