“A man took me in a canoe to the middle of a lake and upset the canoe, saying: ‘Now you belong to me.’”
She woke up shivering.
The lake, the canoe upset and the man in the dream were associated with many conscious thoughts and memories of hers. But this was mainly a convenience dream, which endeavoured to explain away the chilliness of the night through an appropriate scene. When the unavoidable awakening took place it was dramatized, as it is in so many cases of awakening, through a fall accompanied by a certain fear of death.
The few examples I have given and which could be multiplied, tend to show that the dream, far from being a disturber of sleep, is sleep’s best protector.
It seeks to explain away physical stimuli which might cause the sleeper to awake and it visualizes many reasons for not experiencing the fear usually connected with a certain stimulus.
In every convenience dream which I have analysed, I have found a close connection between the image conjured up by the dream work and the ideas generally occupying the dreamer’s mind in his waking states.
In almost every case it could also be noticed that the convenience dream made use of some experience or observation of the previous waking state, which increases the plausibility of the dream’s visualization.