Dreams as Completions.

Symbols and Primitive Thoughts.

For example, the idea of father and mother is often apparently symbolised in dreams by that of king or queen, and Dr. Ernest Jones points out that the word king is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit root gan, to beget: ganaka was the Sanskrit for father, and occurs also in the Vedas as the name of a well-known king. The word queen comes from the Sanskrit "gain," which means "mother." The idea of teeth in dreams is sometimes related symbolically to the thought of the birth of children, a connection which is never found in waking consciousness. In the Song of Songs we read: "Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them."* I was able recently to get the clue to the significance of a friend's dream through this interpretation of the symbol of teeth.

The suggestion is, that in the unconscious self there are buried not only relics of all our childish experiences, and not only those great instincts which are the heritage of all, but the faint traces of more detailed and more variable far-back experiences of the race, and that this is why we find so much resemblance between primitive imaginings, dreams, and some of the imaginative experiences of early childhood. Or we may, at least, trace the resemblance between dreams and primitive myths to the fact that in both, the mental mechanism at work is of an infantile nature, each being characterised for example, by dramatisation, symbolism and vivid imagery.*

* Quoted in Papers on Psycho-Analysis, p. 143.

As we have seen, the dominant Freudian conception of the dream (so far as the dream has meaning at all), is that of a means of experiencing in fancy the fulfilment of repressed wishes, now buried in the unconscious. We have added the further idea that the dream may see the com-pletion of any mental process begun in waking life, but interrupted before coming to a satisfactory conclusion, or perhaps more particularly before being brought into unified relation with other impulses and thoughts, but without any further kind of repression; and the completion takes place through the energy, frustrated for the time, of that mental process itself.

* See W. H. R. Rivers' Dreams and Primitive Culture.

The tendency in the Freudian view is to emphasise the dream as a means of fulfilling childish impulses repressed through training and social convention. The formula I have suggested gives it a wider scope, and makes way for Jung's conception of the significance of dreams for present and future life. They may, he believes, indicate the struggling upwards in the self of partially neglected impulses of a higher order. But here, again, it does not seem that any actual repression, conscious or unconscious, is a necessary condition for the causing of the dream. The dream may be simply the ideal completion, or fuller carrying out, of processes begun and still active in waking consciousness.

Of this kind may be such dreams as that of an adolescent boy, in whom profound religious feelings were stirring, and who, at a critical juncture of his life, had an intensely vivid dream of the figure of Christ, illuminated by a light which seemed to shine from Heaven. This dream seems to have expressed the craving and struggling in his mind for a "clearer vision" of Christ. The records in his diary, which he showed me, suggest that at the time he was earnestly desiring a more complete religious life, and the dream not only satisfied some of his religious cravings, but had a decided effect upon his subsequent career.

Higher Impulses in Dreams.

In some such way dreams may on rare occasions have a decided influence on the life of a man through emphasising the higher impulses calling for satisfaction. Of such a type would seem to be the famous dream of the cowherd poet Caedmon. "Though well advanced in years, Caedmon had learnt nothing of the art of verse, the alliterative jingle so common among his.fellows, wherefore, being sometimes at feasts, when all agreed for glee's sake to sing in turn, he no sooner saw the harp coming towards him than he rose from the board and turned homewards. Once, when he had done thus, and gone from the feast to the stable, where he had that night charge of the cattle, there appeared to him in his sleep one who said, greeting him by name, 'Sing, Caedmon, some song to me.' '1 cannot sing,' he answered; 'for this cause left I the feast and came hither.' He who talked with him answered, 'However that be, you shall sing to me.' 'What shall I sing?' rejoined Caedmon. 'The beginning of created things,' replied He. In the morning the cowherd stood before Hilda and told his dream. Abbess and brethren alike concluded 'that heavenly Grace had been con-ferred on him by the Lord.' They translated for Caedmon a passage in Holy Writ, 'bidding him, if he could, put the same into verse.' The next morning he gave it them composed in excellent verse, whereon the abbess understanding the divine grace in the man, bade him quit the secular habit and take on him the monastic life.' "*

Theoretically, it seems reasonable to suppose that if dreams arise through primitive impulses being repressed because they are too bad, dreams might also arise from higher impulses and thoughts repressed because they are too ideal or make too great a claim upon us. Such repressions, no doubt, occur in most persons; but they hardly seem to have any influence on many dreams - a further suggestion as to the primitive nature of our dream life, its intimate association with marked characteristics of earlier rather than later stages in our mental development.

To sum up, it seems to the writer that we cannot, in the present state of knowledge, regard most dreams as of great significance for the understanding of normal indviduals, useful as they undoubtedly are in the interpretation of some cases of nervous disease. Freud, himself, calls attention to the fact that his study of dreams is almost entirely based upon the dreams of neurotics.

* J. R. Green, History of the English People, p. 26.

Evidence is slowly accumulating that occasionally the dreams of a "normal" individual may be very illuminating. We have not, however, adequate evidence that dreams have any biological function of appreciable importance, and if that is so it is not surprising that the mechanism of the dream is irregular and incomplete. Much of the dream activity is probably due to chance associations of parts of the brain still partially active, and so many dreams may be of no real significance.

Yet the new study of dreams affords us enough evidence that in many cases of nervous disease and mental disturbance, and occasionally in normal individuals, the dream may give a clue to many activities still surging in the unconscious, and to their mode of influencing the waking consciousness. While the striking resemblance between some parts of dreams to myths and primitive symbols, and the uprising in dreams of deep-laid impulses, tamed and controlled in waking life, suggests that, in a fuller sense than hitherto understood, so far as the subconscious self is concerned we are, indeed, "Such stuff as dreams are made of."