DREAM: "I was at home; some one looking like a nurse said: 'Come up stairs. You are going to have a baby.' I was neither surprised nor worried. The nurse added: 'When you have had the baby, you can select a husband for yourself.' I followed her and lay on a bed waiting for pains. Feeling nothing I grew impatient and went downstairs. Suddenly I became frightened and decided I must not have the child. I started to think how I could find a doctor to perform an abortion. I awoke suddenly with a tremendous sense of relief." INTERPRETATION: The patient is a southern girl living in New York. Home for her means the small town where her family resides. She has had a liaison and has often worried about possible consequences. The first part of the dream is a solution offered by the dream. She is at home, pregnant, but it seems natural to every one and the nurse (a nurse girl of her childhood days) is not only taking the matter as natural but shows her the advantages of her condition. On the other hand, the girl is frigid in love and used to associate pregnancy with orgasm. The pregnancy means here the fulfilment of her wish for an orgasm. Also it reveals her secret desire that her lover might be compelled to marry her. The lack of labor pains is another form of wish-fulfilment. The end of the dream indicates the mental processes of the patient, and her struggle against a regression. She first attempts to solve the problem by running back to "home and nurse" but insight enables her to analyse her dream and return to real life. There is no doubt but some painful dreams are, without any symbolism or distortion of any kind, dreams of obvious wish-fulfilment. There is a human type which enjoys pain, be it inflicted by others or self-torture, and to which fear and anxiety vouchsafe a good deal of gratification. When we remember the workings of our autonomic nerves we may not wonder at that fact. Pain, anxiety or fear pour into our blood stream fuel which gives us for a few minutes or a few hours a feeling of energy and power we may lack, and secretions which cause an arterial tension translated easily into "excitement," "exhilaration," etc. Children of the masochistic type like to have some one tell them stories of the most nightmarish variety which fill them with terror. We have all met the child who at some time or other makes the strange request: "Scare me." Anxiety dreams may play the part of a bracer and tonic in subjects of that type. The strange ritual of some primitive races, ancient and modern, in which mourners slash themselves or pull their hair or beards, corresponds closely from the endocrine point of view to the craving for terrible fairy tales or the frequency of certain anxiety dreams. The secretions brought forth by that self-inflicted pain may combat successfully the depression due to the loss of a dearly beloved person. CHAPTER X: TYPICAL DREAMS AND SLEEP WALKING