Northcote Whitridge Thomas

“ We may be also conscious that we have been dreaming, and subsequently, without intermediate waking, relate as a dream the dream previously experienced. In spite of the irrationality of dreams in general, it by no means follows that the earlier and later portions of a dream do not cohere; we may interpolate an episode and again take up the first motive, exactly as happens in real life. ”

“ Nearly twice as many women as men had vivid dreams; in the matter of complication of the dream experiences the sexes are about equal; daily life supplies more material in the dreams of men; nearly twice as many women as men remember their dreams clearly, a fact which hangs together to some extent with the vividness of the dreams, though it by no means follows that a vivid dream is well remembered. There are great variations in the emotional character of dreams; some observers report twice as many unpleasant dreams as the reverse ”

“ Incongruence and incoherence are not, however, a necessary characteristic of dreams, and individuals are found whose dream ideas and scenes show a power of reasoning and orderliness equal to that of a scene imagined or experienced in ordinary life. ”

“ Dreams among the Non-European Peoples.—In the lower stages of culture the dream is regarded as no less real and its personages as no less objective than those of the ordinary waking life; this is due in the main to the habit of mind of such peoples (see Animism) , but possibly in some measure also to the occurrence of veridical dreams (see Telepathy) . In either case the savage explanation is animistic, and animism is commonly assumed to have been developed very largely as a result of theorising dreams. ”

“ The false reasoning of dreams is due in the first place to the absence, to a large extent, of the memory elements on which our ordinary reasoning depends, and, secondly, to the absence of sensory elements.
Objectivity of Dreams.—In waking life we distinguish ideas or mental images from real objects by the fact that we are able under normal circumstances to dismiss the former at will. In sleep, on the other hand, we have, in the first place, no real objects with which to compare the images, which therefore take on a character of reality comparable to the hallucination of waking life ”

“ These dream memories of other states of consciousness suggest that dreams are sometimes the product of a deeper stratum of the personality than comes into play in ordinary waking life. It must be remembered in this connexion that we judge of our dream consciousness by our waking recollections, not directly, and our recollection of our dreams is extraordinarily fragmentary; we do not know how far our dream memory really extends. Connected with memory of other states is the question of memory in dreams of previous dream states ”

“ In sleep the withdrawal of the mind from the external world is more complete and the objectivity of the dream images is usually unquestioned, whereas in the waking state the hallucination is usually recognized as such; we may, however, be conscious that we are dreaming, and thus in a measure be aware of the hallucinatory character of our percepts. The physiological nature of sleep (q.v.; see also Muscle and Nerve) and of dreaming is obscure. As a rule the control over the voluntary muscles in dreams is slight ”

“ Reason in Dreams.—Studies of dreams of normal individuals based on large collections of instances are singularly few in number; such as there are indicate great variations in the source of dream thoughts and images, in the coherence of the dream, and in the powers of memory. In ordinary life attention dominates the images presented; in dreams heterogeneous and disconnected elements are often combined; a resemblance need not even have been consciously recognized for the mind to combine two impressions in a dream ”

“ Dreaming seems to be rare in idiots. De Sanctis divides paranoiacs into three classes: (a) those with systematized delusions, (b) those with frequent hallucinations, and (c) degenerates;—the dreams of the first class resemble their delusions; the second class is distinguished by the complexity of its dreams; the third by their vividness, by their delusions of megalomania, and by their influence on daily life. Alcoholic subjects have vivid and terrifying dreams, characterized by the frequent appearance of animals in them, and delirium tremens may originate during sleep. ”

“ It has been commonly held by metaphysicians that the nature of dreams is explained by the suspension of volition during sleep; Dugald Stewart asserts that it is not wholly dormant but loses its hold on the faculties, and he thus accounts for the incoherence of dreams and the apparent reality of dream images. ”

“ According to F. Heerwagen’s statistics women sleep more lightly and dream more than men; the frequency of dreams is proportional to their vividness; women who dream sleep longer than those who do not; dreams tend to become less frequent with advancing age. The total number of remembered dreams varies considerably with different observers, some attaining an average of ten per night. The senses mainly active in dreams are, according to one set of experiments, vision in 60%, hearing in 5%, taste in 3%, and smell in 1.5%, where the dreamers had looked at coloured papers before falling asleep ”

“ Dreams of Animals.—We are naturally reduced to inference in dealing with animals as with very young children; but various observations seem to show that dreams are common in older dogs, especially after hunting expeditions; in young dogs sleep seems to be quieter; dogs accustomed to the chase seem to dream more than other kinds. ”

“ The common sensation of flying seems to be due in many cases to the disturbance of these organs setting up sensations resembling those felt in rapidly ascending or descending, as in a swing or a lift. Indigestion is a frequent cause of nightmare—the term given to oppressive and horrible dreams—and bodily discomfort is sometimes translated into the moral region, giving rise to the dream that a murder has been committed. (b) Dreams of flying, &c., have also been attributed to the condition of the muscles during sleep ”

“ Among the psychological problems raised by dreams are the condition of attention, which is variously regarded as altogether absent or as fixed, the extent of mental control, and the relation of ideas and motor impulses. There is present in all dreams a certain amount of dissociation of consciousness, or of obstructed association, which may manifest itself in the preliminary stage of drowsiness by such phenomena as the apparent transformation or inversion of the words of a book. ”

“ It is a matter of common observation that the temperature of the surface of the body determines in many cases the character of the dreams, the real circumstances, as might be expected from the general character of the dream state, being exaggerated. ”

“ The strength of the dream memory is shown by the recurrence of images in dreams; a picture, the page of a book, or other image may be reproduced before our eyes several times in the course of a dream without the slightest alteration, although the waking consciousness would be quite incapable of such a feat of visualizing. In this connexion may be mentioned the phenomenon of redreaming ”

“ On the whole, however, there appear to be no good grounds for the assertion that we always dream when we are asleep. On the other hand, there is no proof that partial awakening is a necessary condition of dreaming. ”

“ In many parts of North America the individual Indian acquires a tutelary spirit, known as manito or nagual, by his initiation dream or vision; the idea being perhaps that the spirit by the act of appearing shows its subjection to the will of the man. ”

“ Dreams of the Neuropathic, Insane, Idiots, &c.—Much attention has been given to the dreams of hysterical subjects. It appears that their dreams are specially liable to exercise an influence over their waking life, perhaps because they do not distinguish them, any more than their waking hallucinations, from reality. P. Janet maintains that the cause of hysteria may be sought in a dream. The dreams of the hysterical have a tendency to recur. Epileptic subjects dream less than the hysterical, and their dreams are seldom of a terrifying nature ”

“ Democritus, from whom the Epicureans derived their theory, held the cause of them to be the simulacra or phantasms of corporeal objects which are constantly floating about the atmosphere and attack the soul in sleep—a view hardly distinguishable from animism. ”

“ According to K. A. Scherner, dreaming is a decentralization of the movement of life; the ego becomes purely receptive and is merely the point around which the peripheral life plays in perfect freedom. Hobbes held that dreams all proceed from the agitation of the inward parts of a man’s body, which, owing to their connexion with the brain, serve to keep the latter in motion. For Schopenhauer the cause of dreams is the stimulation of the brain by the internal regions of the organism through the sympathetic nervous system. ”

“ The Stoics seem to have held that dreams may be a divine revelation and more than one volume on the interpretation of dreams has come down to us, the most important being perhaps the Όνειροκριτικά of Daldianus Artemidorus. ”

“ In the same way the pressure of bed-clothes, obstruction of the supply of air, &c., may serve as the starting-point of dreams. The common dream of being unclothed may perhaps be due to this cause, the sensations associated with clothing being absent or so far modified as to be unrecognizable. In the same way the absence of foot-gear may account for some dreams of flying. It is possible to test the influence of external stimuli by direct experiment; Maury made a number of trials with the aid of an assistant.
Rapidity of Dreams.—It has often been asserted that we dream with extreme rapidity ”