Most people forget their dreams as they forget their waking thoughts.
Unless some very striking idea came to my mind yesterday afternoon, I am
likely to be embarrassed if some one asks me: "What were you thinking of
yesterday afternoon?"
We shall see in another chapter that our dream thoughts are not in any way
different from our waking thoughts, and that unless they have a special
meaning there is no reason why they should obsess us more than our waking
thoughts do.
In fact, a remembered dream is as important as an obsessive idea and has
the same meaning. Thousands of futile dreams dreamt in one night may not
leave a deeper impression on our "mind" than thousands of futile thoughts
which flit through our consciousness in one day.
Before considering the origin of dreams I must restate briefly a
proposition which I have discussed at length in _Psychoanalysis and
Behaviour_, the indivisibility of the human organism.
The words physical and mental are lacking in any real meaning and there is
no physical manifestation which it not inseparably linked with some
psychic phenomenon. Emotions, secretions and attitudes may be studied
separately for the sake of convenience, but in reality there cannot be any
emotion which is not unavoidably accompanied by a secretion and betrayed
by some attitude, nor can there be any attitude which is not accompanied
by a secretion and interpreted by some emotion.
This must be constantly borne in mind when we attempt to answer the
question: Where do dreams come from?
If dreams "come from the stomach" why should distressed minds seek refuge
in them? If they are purely psychic phenomena, what relief can they afford
to our dissatisfied body?
We shall not deny that a full bladder may at times induce urination
dreams, that a full stomach may at times conjure up anxiety visions in
which heavy masses oppress us, or that long continence and the consequent
accumulation of sexual products may be at times responsible for sexual
dreams.
What the physical theory of dreams, most scientifically and
conscientiously expounded by the Scandinavian Mourly Vold, will not
explain, however, is that, in one subject, a urination dream may be a
pleasurable visualization of relief, leading to continued sleep and, in
another, an anxiety episode, picturing frustrated gratification and ending
in an unpleasant awakening. A heavy dinner may people one sleeper's
visions with large animals treading his stomach, and cause another to
dream of vomiting fits which relieve the pressure of food.
In one sleeper, sexual desire evokes libidinous visions, in another,
terrifying scenes of violence.
On the other hand, the very close relation observed in thousands of cases
between the sleeper's dreams and his physical condition, invalidates any
theory which would revert more or less literally to the belief held in
ancient times that dreams were purely psychic phenomena, visions sent by
the gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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