WHY WE DREAM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 154, 22 February 1932, Page 2

WHY WE DREAM

SUBCONSCIOUS WISH TO REMAIN ASLEEP. Experiments have proved that the reason why we dream is to prevent us from waking up and that without dreams a person would seldom have a night's unbroken sleep, said Dr. William Brown (the Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy), in a lecture on the interpretation of dreams, reports the Manchester Guardian. "Every dream may be said to fulfil one wish — the wish to go on sleeping," said Dr. Brown. Only by dreaming did the sleeper avoid waking up. It was a common experience that if one became thirsty during sleep one dreamed of drinking copious draughts of water and continued to sleep. In one instance a hot-water bottle was placed at a sleeping man's feet, and he dreamed that he was climbing Vesuvius and walk'.ng on hot lava. A drop of water on his forehead made hirn believe he was perspiring freely and drinking wiue When his nose was pinched be dreamed that a mask was put on his= face and takeri off, hut he was stiil enabled to go on sleeping. "During the war we saw an enormous number of cases of battle dreams, obviously due to repression of fear and of the instinet of self -preservation. In the Fourth Army every man suffering from shell-shoek was sent to me. Seventy per cent. went hack to the line. Only 30 per cent. of the cases I saw went down the line, where Dr. C. S. Myers saw them and sent some of them back. Yet after all that the residuum of the residuum — the neurasthenics — made up oneseventh of all those invalided out of the army for any reason. Lven the strongest nerves were affected under continuous shellfire. In spite of all this the Freudians band together and say it is {bue.to repressed desire."