Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
was evidently a corruption of "salad oil." I select this dream to
illustrate the uncertainty of dream consciousness, because it also
illustrates at the same time the element of certainty in dream
_subconsciousness_. Throughout my dream I remained, consciously, in
entire ignorance as to the real nature of _selvdrolla_, yet a latent
element in consciousness was all the time presenting it to me in
ever-clearer imagery.
While the confusions of dreaming are usually the union of unconnected
streams of imagery which have, as it were, come from widely remote
parts of the memory system to strike together at the narrow focus of
shaping consciousness, in some rarer cases the fused images are really
suggested by analogy and are not accidental. Maury records successions
of dream imagery strung together by verbal resemblances; I have found
such dreams rare, but other forms of association fairly common. Thus I
once dreamed that I was with a dentist who was about to extract a
tooth from a patient. Before applying the forceps he remarked to me
(at the same time setting fire to a perfumed cloth at the end of
something like a broomstick in order to dissipate the unpleasant odor)
that it was the largest tooth he had ever seen. When extracted I found
that it was indeed enormous, in the shape of a caldron, with walls an
inch thick. Taking from my pocket a tape measure (such as I always
carry in waking life) I founds the diameter to be not less than
twenty-five inches; the interior was like roughly hewn rock, and there
were sea-weeds and lichenlike growths within. The size of the tooth
seemed to me large, but not extraordinarily so. It is well known that
pain in the teeth, or the dentist's manipulations, cause those organs
to seem of extravagant extent; in dreams this tendency rules
unchecked; thus a friend once dreamed that mice were playing about in
a cavity in her tooth. But for the dream first quoted there was no
known dental origin; it arose solely or chiefly from a walk during the
previous afternoon among the rocks of the Cornish coast at low tide,
and the fantastic analogy, which had not occurred to waking
consciousness, suggested itself during sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account