STRANGE THEORY OF DREAMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1082, 1 April 1913, Page 4

STRANGE THEORY OF DREAMS.

Some queer theories about dreams were outlined by Dr. W. Brown (of King’s College), who spoke on Freud’s Theory of Dreams and Its Use in Diagnosis ” at a meeting at King’s College Hospital (says the “Citizen ”). He said that according to this theory every dream was the fulfilment of some wish, and in the great majority of cases the wish was one which bad been repressed by the waking consciousness, and its fulfilment in the dream was digitised according to rules that were both complicated and diverse. It was for that reason that the general law had so long escaped notice and scientists had been so ready to deny all significance to dreams.

That state of things, he declared, was inevitable so long as attention was restricted to the dream simply as it appeared in consciousness and as it was remembered by the dreamer. But, corresponding to this “manifest content” of the dream, there was a “ latent content ” made up of memories from the past life of the dreamer, patched together in ap patently quite random order and according to the most superficial laws of association. As a general rule the memories most commonly aroused were those of the day before the dream and those of early childhood. The memories of the dream-day formed part of every dream without exception. Actual bodily disturbances were, if not too intense, incorporated in the dream, though in a disguised form.

He gave au instance of a student who was very fond of his bed, and, when called, proceeded to dream that he was in a ward of the hospital, and, remarking that as he was already in the hospital he did not need to get up. he continued his sleep.

As an instance of the effect of a repressed wish, he referred to the mystery of Hamlet. Hamlet was unable to take vengeance on the man who had supplanted and murdered his father because he himself in his early youth had wished his lather’s death. The wish had been vigorously repressed, and he was unconscious of it, but it still existed subconsciously and produced the inhibitory effects depicted in the play.

Another case of the effect of a wish was that of a mother who dreamt she saw her is-year-old daughter lying dead in a box. The mother bad wished fifteen years previously that the child might die before it uas born,

Dr, Brown also referred to a distinguished poet, who had once been a tailor’s assistant, and who dreamt night after night that he was still working on the tailor’s bench, and after the dream he always felt that he was a better man before the change came in his life and he left the berch.

In conclusion, Dr. Brown said that the great defect of Freud’s theory was that he had definitely tied himself down to a limited explanation of dreams. - In dealing only with wishes he had left out a large number of possibilities, but, on the other band, this theory was much superior to post previous theories.