DREAMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1916, Page 3

DREAMS.

THE LATEST THEORIES. MANY FOND ILLUSIONS DISPELLED. (By Cora Roche Rowland in the New York Times). Tlie dream is a safety valve for the mind. Without it our memories, which are packed away under pressure, like steam in a boiler, might blow us up. The dream is a sleep protector, not a sleep disturber. It guards man's sanity, giving to "nature's sweet restorer" chance for its beneficent work. This is what Gergson says in an article on "Dreams," and in a recent volume of Dr. Isador H. Coriat, neurologist of Boston, the theory is elaborated with special reference to conclusions reached by Dr. Sigmund Freud, of Vienna, who published not long ago results of his researches into dreams and their interpretation. To date, psychologists have occupied themselves, mainly, with showing wliat sleep was not. They have revealed that it is neither a state of spiritual torpor nor a period of arrested consciousness. Dreams they treated similarly, trying to prove that they were not the "children of an idle brain begotten of nothing but vain fantasy." Freud and his followers take up the subject more constructively—they seek to show what dreams are and what value they have to man. In so doing they relegate to the scrap-heap some of the most cherished of popular beliefs in regard to dreams. Men have always dreamed and always they have asked the question, "Why?" If a man would be ranked as seer among the ancients he hung out his sign as "interpreter of dreams." The quickest road to royal favor, as both Joseph and Daniel found out, was to interpret with plausibility the dreams of rulers. The penalty for lack of success was high—banishment from court, or death —so the dream interpreter was put on his metal and developed diplomacy and political sagacity into a fine art. And so on down the ages. In Homeric days messengers came from Zeus in form of dreams. Half of the Babylonian records yet \ preserved ito us are nothing more or less than dream books. Even to-day it I is generally supposed t'hs *nany dreams ' are prophetic for telling or indicating . events to come. All this the Freudian psycho-analysis rejects.

GUARDIAN OF THE MIND. Dethroned thus, as mysterious overlord, controlling secrets both of past and future, the dream assumes nevertheless a place of dignity and power. It is the guardian of a man's mind, protector for him of soul restoring slumber. Without it, sleep would be indeed "a short insanity." Memories, kept down by the day's activities and also by the mind's protective fear of pain, would rush upon the sleeper insurgently, ruining his happiness, diminishing his power. By the same token, says Coriat, elaborating upon this premise, it is through a man's dreams, and only through his dreams, that you can come to understand his character. Mail is a bluffer from the cradle to the gruve. From his conduct or speech you cannot judge what his character really is. Would you know him truly you must know his dreams, for therein his most secret wishes lie concealed, even motives of which he may not be himself aware. Through dreams the personal riddle of life is solved for then ithe submind speaks. Coriat lets us keep a few illusions about man's spiritual ascendancy: he simply says that however weird, phantasmagoria!, absurd, and disconnected a dream may seem to be, yet the subconscious thoughts which give rise to it are arranged logically after an order of their own, and they have their definite purpose in the mental well-being of the dreamer. From dreams, run his argument, we learn the unconscious desires, both of the race and of society; from them properly interpreted, we gain an understanding'of human personality, whether it be normal or abnormal Wit and dreams, claims Coyisit, depend on the same mental mechanism. A dream then is a kind of cryptic joke; its essence is incongruity. It represents logical thinking, yet .thinking under laws not open to the eye.

EVERY DREAM MEANS SOMETHING. Every dream, no matter how trivial it may appear, how fantastic or nonsensical, has a meaning of its own and one which sometimes is of great significance to the dreamer. It may indicate something unimportant, or it may bo symbolical, or it may touch something deep seated in the dreamer's personality. Yet the moaning is usually wrapped up in many associations, anil can be understood only through an analysis. By analysing dreams, therefore, you come to understand the unconscious or subconscious mind. Since the dream is the first link in the normal or abnormal psychic structure you gain, by interpretation of it, insight into certain functional nervous disturbances. The study, then, is of great use in medical treatment of psychic disorders.

In the mental world ideas which seem to come at random are really subject to a definite law. There is a physical connection between the apparently random thoughts; nothing in a dream is caused by chance. At the same time dreams use certain symbolisms to disguise the ideas back of them, but even these symbols have the same general meaning in all dreams, they belong to the subconscious thinking of the human race. Therefore he who } seeks the psycho-analyst in order .to »et acquainted with himself must make a clean breast of all that happened in the dream even to the most trivial detail. Everything, 110 how irrelevant it may seem, is essential. To state the theory in a few words, all dream analysis is for the purpose of deciphering hidden wishes; _ the wish that von have failed to realise supplies ithe motive, for your dreams. It may be a wish of to-day or yesterday or of tlie long ago; there was registered in your subconscious bfe, awaiting an opportunity for expression. There, too, are one's morbid fears and various obsessions, all of which have the same mechanism and wish fulfilling purposes. The term "wish" for purposes of tins study includes all our desires, ambitions, strivings; these ideas have been repressed in our lives from social, personal, religious or ethical motives; they are fulfilled in our dreams because every dream represents a wish fulfilment. To use the simplest illustration, are yon hungry during sleep? You may dream of gratifying this wish through eating; since the hunger is gratified in a dream, the wish for food is satisfied and yon glgep on undisturbed- ,

SLEEPING BRAIN ACTIVE THINKER. It is only with children and the primitive races that the dream says right out what it means without disguise and symbolisation. What the child cannot ■liavo by day he gains by nights in his dreams. Savages are simple in (their mental activities —their dreams are like those of children. We adults have in our subconscious mental life, condensed and slumbering, our whole childhood history. By a wish wc can awaken our sleeping childhood —it flowers in our dreams. But usually in our dreaming the mind has work to do; the sleeping brain thinks logically with most complex activity. It enfolds adult dream motives in myriad wrappings of associated ideas. According to one authority, tlia owner of a New England conscience is likely to have bad dreams; he may pride himself on subduing his emotions or in not yielding to so-called vulgar feelings or temptations. But in the limbo of his subconscious thought he holds imprisoned an emotional volcano of repressed desires. The subconscious is made up of seemingly forgotten groups of thoughts over which, as gaoler, stands guard a certain resistance or defensive quality of the mind, which Coriat calls the censor. Sometimes the censor nods at his post; then a repressed wish slips through in the form of a dream, and the refined dreamer is surprised to find ait heart that he is a cave man. V Who among us has not at seme time suddenly awakened with a sense of terror and anxiety, in a cold sweat, and with a rapid heart beat. One may dream of suffocation, or think he is being nailed down in a coffin. Perhaps as one is falling asleep, he awakes each time with a momentary vivid dream of being pursued, of choking, or being unable ito breathe. What produces the nightmare? The censor wiFs weak; certain latent dream Minnyhts and emotions have succeeded in escaping its vigilance. Such dreams are continual disturbers of sleep and lead to insomnia, because the subconscious repressed emotions are continually escaping th<? censor with disguise or fusion, and so

lead to a state of constant morta anxiety in the mind of the sleeper.

RELATIONSHIP r "mjeAMS AND MYTHS. The subconscious contains nothing that has not been learned, thought, or experienced. Subconscious mental processes are exactly like mortal thinking —active, dynamic, but without the sense of awareness. The processes remain subconscious because they are prevented from reaching consciousness through activity of the censor. Only thoughts which are emotionally painful or disagreeable, and which we have repressed, cither in adult or childhood life, tend to remain in the unconscious. The discussion of typical dreams leads (to that of the relationship between dreams and myths. In psychological structure and meaning, dreams and myths are the same. A myth is a waking dream. The same common emotion which gives rise to typical dreams produces typical myths, and the analysis of typical dreams furnishes the best standpoint for 4he analysis of universal myths and legends. Compare, for instance, the dreams of nakedness without shame with the idea of the myth in the Garden of Eden. What relation do the hidden thoughts of a dream bear in !the dream itself! The dream is like a kinematograph, in two particulars—it is highly visualised and it is constantly in motion. .Tust as it takes many feet of film to form a moving picture, so it takes a long series of dream thoughts to produce a dream picture. Suppose a young man dreams of a girl walking down the street. The face of the girl may be a condensation of that of a girl with whom he is in love, or that of a recent woman acquaintance, of that of one of his boy pupits in a school where he taught, and of a portrait of an actress.

PROPHETIC POWER DOUBTFUL. Yoy may have a dream within a dream. You, the sleeper, may say to yourself, "why, it is only a dream." If you are having a nightihare this protects you from horror, unless you go on sleeping undisturbed; or you may have a dream within a dream which is like a mirrored picture Been in a mirror. Contrary to ithe popular belief, it is extremely doubtful if dreams in any way can foretell future events. Suppose we dream of a certain person, whom we have never met before, and soon after we meet the individual. The dream is not prophetic. What occurs is this—the sirange' individual dreamed of is usually a condensation, like a composite photograph, and on meeting the actual stranger, we unconsciously take one element of his composite dream figure and apply it to the stranger; thence arises ithe illusion. A dream may often solve situations, important crises, and mental conflicts, which may baffle one in waking life. The situation and the conflict are cleared up in the dream by a kind of unconscious incubation otj wishes, and only in this sense the dream may be said to be propheltic. The reverie, also day dreams, are really fulfilments of desires impossible in reality. Tlicv are Aladdin's lamp, by which man makes himself the hero of his soul's ambition. When we try to make up artificial dreams we make dream of what we would like to be. We are always egotistical and we always see ourselves in heroic guise. Thus through interpretation of day dreams, we interpret a man's personality. Since the doctors and psychologists have begun writing dream books, reducing dreams to exact formula:—also, for literature! What will poor authors do now ? No more Brushwood Boys will charm our sense of romance; no more prophetic visions will come ito our favorite hero's waiting soul in sleep.