Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕

when once this first link of the imaginative chain is supplied, other links may be added in large numbers through the operation of the forces of association. One may, indeed, safely say that the large proportion of the contents of every dream arise in this way.

The very simplest type of dream excited by a present sensation contains these elements. To take an example, I once dreamt, as a consequence of the loud barking of a dog, that a dog approached me when lying down, and began to lick my face. Here the play of the associative forces was apparent: a mere sensation of sound called up the appropriate visual image, this again the representation of a characteristic action, and so on. So it is with the dreams whose first impulse is some central or spontaneous excitation. A momentary sight of a face or even the mention of a name during the preceding day may give the start to dream-activity; but all subsequent members of the series of images owe their revival to a tension, so to speak, in the fine threads which bind together, in so complicated a way, our impressions and ideas.

Among the psychic accompaniments of these central excitations visual images, as already hinted, fill the most conspicuous place. Even auditory images, though by no means absent, are much less numerous than visual. Indeed, when there are the conditions for the former, it sometimes happens that the auditory effect transforms itself into a visual effect. An illustration of this occurred in my own experience. Trying to fall asleep by means of the well-known device of counting, I suddenly found myself losing my hold on the faint auditory effects, my imagination transforming them into a visual spectacle, under the form of a path of light stretching away from me, in which the numbers appeared under the grotesque form of visible objects, tumbling along in glorious confusion.

Next to these visual phantasms, certain motor hallucinations seem to be most prominent in dreams. By a motor hallucination, I mean the illusion that we are actually moving when there is no peripheral excitation of the motor organ. Just as the centres concerned in passive sensation are susceptible of central stimulation, so are the centres concerned in muscular sensation. A mere impulse in the centres of motor innervation (if we assume these to be the central seat of the muscular feelings) may suffice to give rise to a complete representation of a fully executed movement. And thus in our sleep we seem to walk, ride, float, or fly.

The most common form of motor hallucination is probably the vocal. In the social encounters which make up so much of our sleep-experience, we are wont to be very talkative. Now, perhaps, we find ourselves zealously advocating some cause, now very fierce in denunciation, now very amusing in witty repartee, and so on. This imagination of ourselves as speaking, as distinguished from that of hearing others talking, must, it is clear, involve the excitation of the structures engaged in the production of the muscular feelings which accompany vocal action, as much as, if not more than, the auditory centres. And the frequency of this kind of dream-experience may be explained, like that of visual imagery, by the habits of waking life. The speech impulse is one of the most deeply rooted of all our impulses, and one which has been most frequently exercised in waking life.

Combination of Dream-Elements.

It is commonly said that dreams are a grotesque dissolution of all order, a very chaos and whirl of images without any discoverable connection. On the other hand, a few writers claim for the mind in sleep a power of arranging and grouping its incongruous elements in definite and even life-like pictures. Each of these views is correct within certain limits; that is to say, there are dreams in which the strangest disorder seems to prevail, and others in which one detects the action of a central control. Yet, speaking generally, sequences of dream-images will be found to be determined by certain circumstances and laws, and so far not to be haphazard or wholly chaotic. We have now to inquire into the laws of these successions; and, first of all, we may ask how far the known laws of association, together with the peculiar conditions of the sleeping state, are able to account for the various modes of dream-combination. We have already regarded mental association as furnishing a large additional store of dream-imagery; we have now to consider it as explaining the sequences and concatenations of our dream-elements.

Incoherence of Dreams.

First of all, then, let us look at the chaotic and apparently lawless side of dreaming, and see whether any clue is discoverable to the centre of this labyrinth. In the case of all the less elaborately ordered dreams, in which sights and sounds appear to succeed one another in the wildest dance (which class of dreams probably belongs to the deeper stages of sleep), the mind may with certainty be regarded as purely passive, and the mode of sequence may be referred to the action of association complicated by the ever-recurring introduction of new initial impulses, both peripheral and central. These are the dreams in which we are conscious of being perfectly passive, either as spectators of a strange pageant, or as borne away by some apparently extraneous force through a series of the most diverse experiences. The flux of images in these dreams is very much the same as that in certain waking conditions, in which we relax attention, both external and internal, and yield ourselves wholly to the spontaneous play of memory and fancy.

It is plain at a glance that the simultaneous concurrence of wholly disconnected initial impulses will serve to impress a measure of disconnectedness on our dream-images. From widely remote parts of the organism there come impressions which excite each its peculiar visual or other image according as its local origin or its emotional tone is the more distinctly present to consciousness. Now it is a subjective ocular sensation suggesting a bouquet of lovely flowers, and close on its heels comes an impression from the organs of digestion suggesting all manner of obstacles, and so our dream-fancy plunges from a vision of flowers to one of dreadful demons.

Let us now look at the way in which the laws of association working on the incongruous elements thus cast up into our dream-consciousness, will serve to give a yet greater appearance of disorder and confusion to our dream-combinations. According to these laws, any idea may, under certain circumstances, call up another, if the corresponding impressions have only once occurred together, or if the ideas have any degree of resemblance, or, finally, if only they stand in marked contrast with one another. Any accidental coincidence of events, such as meeting a person at a particular foreign resort, and any insignificant resemblance between objects, sounds, etc., may thus supply a path, so to speak, from fact to dream-fancy.

In our waking states these innumerable paths of association are practically closed by the supreme energy of the coherent groups of impressions furnished us from the world without through our organs of sense, and also by the volitional control of internal thought in obedience to the pressure of practical needs and desires. In dream-life both of these influences are withdrawn, so that delicate threads of association, which have no chance of exerting their pull, so to speak, in our waking states, now make known their hidden force. Little wonder, then, that the filaments which bind together these dream-successions should escape detection, since even in our waking thought we so often fail to see the connection which makes us pass in recollection from a name to a visible scene or perhaps to an emotional vibration.

It is worth noting that the origin of an association is often to be looked for in one of those momentary half-conscious acts of waking imagination to which reference has already been made. A friend, for example, has been speaking to us of some common acquaintance, remarking on his poor health. The language calls up, vaguely, a visual representation of the person sinking in health and dying. An association will thus be formed between this person and the idea of death. A night or two after, the image of this person somehow recurs to our dream-fancy, and we straightway dream that we are looking at his corpse, watching his funeral, and so on. The links of the chain which holds together these dream-images were really forged, in part, in our waking hours, though the process was so rapid as to escape our attention. It may be added, that in many cases where a juxtaposition of dream-images seems to have no basis in waking life, careful reflection will occasionally bring to light some actual conjunction of impressions so momentary as to have faded from our recollection.

We must remember, further, how great an apparent disorder will invade our imaginative dream-life when the binding force of resemblance has unchecked play. In waking thought we have to connect things according to their essential resemblances, classifying objects and events for purposes of knowledge or action, according to their widest or their most important points of similarity. In sleep, on the contrary, the slightest touch of resemblance may engage the mind and affect the direction of fancy. In a sense we may be said, when dreaming, to discover mental affinities between impressions and feelings, including those subtle links of emotional analogy of which I have already spoken. This effect is well illustrated in a dream recorded by M. Maury, in which he passed from one set of images to another through some similarity of names, as that between corps and cor. Such a movement of fancy would, of course, be prevented in full waking consciousness by a predominant attention to the meaning of the sounds.

It will be possible, I think, after a habit of analyzing one's dreams in the light of preceding experience has been formed, to discover in a good proportion of cases some hidden force of association which draws together the seemingly fortuitous concourse of our dream-atoms. That we should expect to do so in every case is unreasonable, since, owing to the numberless fine ramifications which belong to our familiar images, many of the paths of association followed by our dream-fancy cannot be afterwards retraced.

To illustrate the odd way in which our images get tumbled together through the action of occult association forces, I will record a dream of my own. I fancied I was at the house of a distinguished literary acquaintance, at her usual reception hour. I expected the friends I was in the habit of meeting there. Instead of this, I saw a number of commonly dressed people having tea. My hostess came up and apologized for having asked me into this room. It was, she said, a tea-party which she prepared for poor people at sixpence a head. After puzzling over this dream, I came to the conclusion that the missing link was a verbal one. A lady who is a connection of my friend, and bears the same name, assists her sister in a large kind of benevolent scheme. I may add that I had not, so far as I could recollect, had occasion very recently to think of this benevolent friend, but I had been thinking of my literary friend in connection with her anticipated return to town.

In thus seeking to trace, amid the superficial chaos of dream-fancy, its hidden connections, I make no pretence to explain why in any given case these particular paths of association should be followed, and more particularly why a slender thread of association should exert a pull where a stronger cord fails to do so. To account for this, it would be necessary to call in