Parents could testify to the illustrator’s knowledge of the childish soul. Children like to dream and Freud’s statement that every dream contains the fulfilment of some wish is confirmed by the dreams of healthy children.
Children attain in their sleep visions the simple pleasures which are denied them in their waking states.
Freud’s little daughter, three and a half years old, being kept one day on a rather strict diet, owing to some gastric disturbance, was heard to call excitedly in her sleep: “Anna Freud, strawberry, huckleberry, omelette, pap.”
On one occasion she was taken across a lake and enjoyed the trip so much that she cried bitterly at the landing when compelled to leave the boat. The next morning she told the family a dream in which she had been sailing on the lake.
Freud’s little nephew, Hermann, aged twenty-one months, was once given the task of offering his uncle, as a birthday present, a little basket full of cherries. He performed that duty rather reluctantly. The following day he awakened joyously with the information which could only have been derived from a dream: “Hermann ate all the cherries.”
The London Times of Nov. 8, 1919, had a report of a lecture by Dr. C. W. Kimmins, chief inspector of the London Education Committee, on the significance of children’s dreams. He based his statements on the written records of the dreams of 500 children between the ages of eight and sixteen years.
Up to the age of ten, dreams of eating predominated, but their number fell off after ten, when dreams of visits to the country began to increase. Dreams of presents and eating at all ages from eight to fourteen, were much more frequent with children of the poorer classes that with those from well-to-do districts and there was an appreciable increase of their number about Christmas time. Retrospective dreams were very uncommon among all children.
Obvious wish fulfilment dreams were less common among boys than among girls, the proportion being respectively twenty-eight and forty-two per cent.
Boys below ten had more fear dreams than girls of the same age. In both sexes it was some “old man” who terrified the dreamers. Both sexes suffered equally from the fear of animals, lions, tigers and bulls in the case of the boys, dogs, rats, snakes and mice in the case of the girls.
From ten to fifteen a falling off in the number of fear dreams was very noticeable among boys, whereas among girls it rather increased.