A STUDY of the dreams of normal persons suggests that the censor in dreams is a very shadowy person. The mere use of symbols does not prove the presence of a censorship in any serious sense, though they may indicate slight repression, or, at least, aversions. The following dream is typical of a number which illustrate this, and, at the same time, it exemplifies other ways of the dream work.

I dreamt that I was in my garden and that Professor X was sitting with me. He was engaged in marking some essays written by my students upon the subject "Christ as the Ideal of Education." While he was doing this, I gathered some grapes from a garden frame and offered them to him, though they were much over-ripe. At this moment a window opened in a large barrack-like building opposite, and the wife of Professor Y appeared and invited me and my wife to come and have dinner with them.

This apparently absurd dream may be interpreted as follows. A few days before I had discovered to my annoyance that there were a number of essays written by students which I had forgotten to correct during the holidays, and the term was now beginning. The subject of the essay was "Aims and Ideals of Education." On the Sunday previous I had discussed with Professor X an early philosophical essay of mine, in which I had referred to a certain view as to the person of Christ as the orthodox one. Professor X, however, thought this view not orthodox but a heresy, to which I had replied that a distinguished theologian, who had read my essay in manuscript, had said that this view was the orthodox one, and that another view which I had first described in the manuscript as orthodox was "heresy." As I was still inclined to my original view, and as Professor X seemed to support that view, I expressed a wish that Professor X should see this essay. In the dream the theological essay and the educational essay, which I very much wished to have marked, are combined, in title at least, and Professor X, in reading the essay, is also doing my work by marking my students' papers on "Christ as the Ideal of Education."

But what about the grapes? Professor X had given me hospitality when I visited the city before my appointment to the University Chair. When I had settled in my new home I had frequently tried to arrange a dinner to which he could be invited, but owing to the time taken to settle into the house, and, subsequently, to long illness in the house, this had been delayed. In the dream I offered refreshments to Professor X in the form of grapes which were over-ripe - symbolic of the long overdue hospitality!

We had also been delayed in returning the hospitality of Professor and Mrs. Y for the same reason. In the dream, by a delightful inversion, Mrs. Y settles this little trouble by inviting us to dinner again, instead of our inviting them. I have had a number of examples of the same type among dreams of my own and of other persons, which indicate that symbolism may be used when there is no very serious reason for concealment. Yet I must admit that in every case, I think, there has been at least some unpleasant aspect which may have led to a slight non-deliberate repression. A dream of mine which may have resulted from a slight repression also illustrates the tendency of some dreams to take the simple form of a cartoon and the tendency towards abbreviation. Some days before the Armistice I felt, as I believe many did in this country, some slight anxiety lest the internal collapse of Germany should be even too complete, lest there should be no one with sufficiently recognised authority to make a peace, and lest the over-running of the whole Empire by Allied troops should prove necessary. No doubt this fear was once or twice rejected as improbable, or repressed as an unnecessary anticipation of difficulties. The night before the Armistice was signed I dreamt that I saw a newspaper placard as follows: PEACE - LUDORF. Thus was announced in cartoon form, and with an abbreviation of the full name, Ludendorf, a peace arranged by the former Head of the Army Council, still apparently in power and able to make peace with full authority. I do not think that the repression in this case can have been at all forceful, as the anxietv itself was not great. Certainly, in the following dream, the repression can only have been of the mildest. This dream will serve also to introduce the reader to Freud's idea that the dream is often a means not of disturbing sleep but of guarding it. This is supposed to happen particularly when some disturbing sensation, which might arouse us to a sense of reality about us, is taken by the dream and woven into its substance, thus preserving the detachment from the outer world.

The Dream as the Guardian of Sleep.

The dream I refer to was as follows. When I was staying at a seaside hotel I dreamt that I heard the sea water rushing up a supply pipe from the sea for the sea-water baths in the hotel, and striking the end of the tank with a tremendous thud. This continued a number of times. Shortly afterwards, I woke up and realised that the noise of which I had been dreaming was in reality the occasional rattling of the bedroom door caused by the high wind. The rattling of a door usually wakes me at once, and I cannot sleep until I have secured it. The interesting point is that in the dream the door rattling was blended to the dream in which an unfulfilled wish was realised. I had inquired the day before if one could obtain the usual sea-water baths, but was told that the water supply was not working. I had looked at the great pipe leading from the sea towards the hotel with regret. In the dream the water supply is working most efficiently - too efficiently indeed. My wish is fulfilled and the disturbing noise reinterpreted. But in this case the dream interpretation did not succeed in preserving sleep for very long.

Most of the dreams which we have discussed seem to fit in with the supposition that thoughts and desires which have been cut off, perhaps by repression, may tend to run on, in a modified form in dreams. But there is another supposition which may explain some dreams, and which would bring them into relationship with the psychology of waking life. It is that the mere interruption of a mental process may result in its tendency to complete itself in dreams, as it often does in waking life. If we are engaged in thinking out a practical problem and we are interrupted by a telephone call or by the necessity of making up the fire, the problem thoughts tend to recur when the interruption is over. Domestic worries, driven out of a man's mind by business at his office, recur as he goes out to lunch. This tendency with which we are already familiar in waking life, makes it not surprising if some dreams are the completion of interrupted mental processes, processes which have not fulfilled their purposes with satisfaction. And, again, as every mental process has its cona-tional, i.e. striving, desiring aspect, many dreams will appear as the completion, partial at least, of unfulfilled conations. If the uncompleted processes have been strongly impulsive and have had to be repressed, they may be the more insistent when repression is removed, that is, when the higher controlling centres are at rest. Or when repression continues to act against the unpleasant ideas or undesirable impulse, a side track may be discovered, which has never consciously been thought of in connection with the repressed idea, and so a way to consciousness is reached by an odd fantastic association or symbol which completely puzzles the dreamer. This is really no more surprising, however, than the fact that by letting our waking thoughts wander at will, we may get odd associations, which have never occurred before, coincidences of ideas, between which we recognise only the flimsiest bond, if any. It is the illusion of reality and the intensity of feeling accompanying such odd conjunctions of ideas in dreams which differentiate them from waking reveries, and which point to their being connected with fundamental impulses and emotions. No doubt the curious symbols and cross associations may be partially explained by the unequal degrees of resting of the various portions of the brain. As regards symbolism, however, we have one point of extraordinary interest, which suggests again a rising into activity during sleep of some elements of the mind deep-rooted in the ancestral history of the race. I refer to the fact that some symbols used in dreams seem not only to be common to the dreams of many people, even people of different nationalities, but also to have some connection with the symbolism of the primitive myths and primitive types of thought.