WHY YOU TALK NONSENSE YOUR SLEEP.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 489, 7 August 1912, Page 7

WHY YOU TALK NONSENSE YOUR SLEEP.

In a paper on the mechanism and interpretation of dreams, reatt rc j uently before the neurological section of the Academy of Science, Mr. Morton Prince stated that dreams are in reality psychoses or types of delirilm, and are characterised by the same general symptoms, if one may speak of symptoms aside from disease. Mr. Prince said he did not beieve with Freud that, every dream represents the fulfilment of a wisl), out rather that it represents the fulilment of a: wish or the fulfilment of i fear.

One woman mentioned by him always dreamed that she was surrounded by a myriad of cats, and she would usually awake when they :eemed to be attacking her or when >he was thrown helplessly among .hem. Under hypnotic influence it vas found that in early childhood ;his woman had been greatly fright:ned by a pet cat, which had scratchJiX and bitten her, and that the memDry of this occasion, although secm j .ngly buried deep in the jumble of jast experiencesi, nevertheless had a certain psychological colouring which :aused it to be resurrected only luring unconscious states. Such facts, he said, may explain n a measure the curious and apparently utterly illogical single wordd ind statements coming from the .lips of those in delirium, but it will alvays be found that, just as in mauy lullucinatiotory states of the insane, :he mind is working at a tremendous rate, much faster than the organs of speech can record the ideas, md hence what comes to our cars rom the dreamer is simply a mas? of nonsensical words.