Of course this procedure had two glaring defects: hypnotism is a neurotic phenomenon which should not be applied to the treatment of a neurosis and, secondly, sleep in the daytime is generally enjoyed at the expense of the night’s sleep.
At the same time, the sleep which patients enjoyed in Wetterstrand’s “Grotto of Sleep,” as it was called at the time, must have been of a somewhat curative kind; for the house was as silent as a grave. Thick carpets deadened all sounds and all the lights were dimmed. No stimuli were allowed to produce in the sleepers any fear reactions.
What Wetterstrand really supplied to his patients was an ideal bedroom and an opportunity for an absolutely uninterrupted sleep of several hours. We do not know, however, how many of them were robbed of the effect of such an ideal environment by the anxiety dreams which the quietest bedroom cannot exclude.
The conclusion to be drawn from what has been said in the preceding chapters is that the real mission of sleep is to free the unconscious, to relieve the tension due to repressions and to give absolutely free play to the organic activities which build up the individual.
Hence the goal is sleep of sufficient duration, sleep undisturbed by physical stimuli, sleep FULL OF DREAMS but FREE FROM NIGHTMARES.
No more potent curative agent could be found than that kind of sleep, whether the ills to be remedied are of a “mental” or of a “physical” nature. Not until all the fear-creating complexes have been disintegrated by psychoanalysis, however, can the insomniac hope to enjoy that perfect form of “rest.”
CHAPTER XVII: DREAM INTERPRETATION
Dream interpretation is not an idle pastime or a mysterious performance. Carried out in accordance with certain scientific rules based on common sense and not on mere theory, it has a positive value in health as well as in sickness.