H. Addington Bruce had for several months had the same dream: a cat was clawing at his throat. Examination of the throat revealed a small growth which required immediate surgical intervention. The cat never came back. CHAPTER XIV: DAY DREAMS We do not always need to sleep in order to escape _normally_ from reality. Some of us manage to do it with their eyes open. Day dreams are not essentially different from night dreams and would not be mentioned separately but for the fact that they at times verge on a neurosis and that in certain cases they are not easily distinguished from delusions and hallucinations. Whatever was said of night dreams in the preceding chapters holds true of day dreams. There are pleasant day dreams, unpleasant day dreams and even day "nightmares" or anxiety day dreams. Like the sleep walker, the day dreamer manages at times to take just enough notice of reality to direct himself through his house or along the streets, while his mind is elaborating stories of varying complication. A day dreamer who consulted me during the war would imagine himself, while walking along the streets, enlisting, taking a tearful farewell from his relatives and friends and accomplishing deeds of valour which made him famous; after which he would be so affected by his greatness that tears would roll down his cheeks. Or the dream would end tragically and he would die and then again a cascade of tears would be let loose at the thought of all the grief his demise would cause. The result was that day after day he would suddenly "wake up" in some public place, his face wet with tears, annoyed and embarrassed by the attention which his appearance would attract. Those day dreams constituted in spite of their sad cast a fulfilment of his egotistical cravings. Even death was not too high a price to pay for the importance he acquired in his dream, a psychological fancy which is often found at the bottom of some sensational forms of suicide. The anxiety day dream is the form of compensation sought by many neurotics, weak in body and frequently taken advantage of by more vigorous and ruthless persons. It also plays at times the same part as masochistic nightmares, filling as it does, the body with glycogen and a sense of power. I have heard patients suffering from a sense of real or imaginary inferiority tell me of their obsessive anger finding relief in scenes which they made, while walking along the streets or when sleepless of nights, to some absent person whom they held responsible for their troubles. They would then rehearse some annoying or humiliating incident provoked by the offensive person and let loose a torrent of abuse leading unavoidably to a fight in which they would beat, scratch or murder their enemy.