Psychology and parenthood

by H. Addington Bruce

That the inspirations of genius are really nothing more than spontaneous upsurgings from the depths of the subconscious, is indeed demonstrable from the recorded statements of men of genius themselves. To the modern psychologist one of the most impressive proofs of the actuality of subconscious mental processes, is the occasional solution in dreams of problems that have long baffled the waking consciousness. In this way abstruse mathematical problems have sometimes been worked out after all hope of solving them had been abandoned; and troublesome clerical errors, the perpetual dread of book-keepers, have been cleared away during sleep, as in the following typical instance, reported by a successful business man to the Society for Psychical Research:

“I had been bothered since September with an error in my cash account for that month, and, despite many hours’ examination, it defied all my efforts, and I had almost given it up as a hopeless case. It had been the subject of my waking thoughts for many nights, and had occupied a large portion of my leisure hours. Matters remained thus unsettled until December 11. On this night I had not, to my knowledge, once thought of the subject, but I had not been long in bed, and asleep, when my brain was as busy with the books as if I had been at my desk. The cash-book, banker’s pass-book, etc., appeared before me, and without any apparent trouble I almost immediately discovered the cause of the mistake, which had arisen out of a complicated cross-entry.

“I perfectly recollect having taken a slip of paper in my dream and making such a memorandum as would enable me to correct the error at some leisure time; having done this, the whole of the circumstances had passed from my mind. When I awoke in the morning I had not the slightest recollection of my dream, nor did it once occur to me during the day, although I had the very books before me on which I had apparently been engaged in my sleep. When I returned home in the afternoon, as I did early for the purpose of dressing, and proceeded to shave, I took up a piece of paper from my dressing-table to wipe my razor, and you may imagine my surprise at finding thereon the very memorandum I fancied had been made during the night.

“The effect on me was such that I returned to our office and turned to the cash-book, when I found that I had really, when asleep, detected the error which I could not detect in my waking hours, and had actually jotted it down at the time.”

The modern psychological explanation of all this would be that in his many hours of searching through the books he had, though without being in the least aware of it, gradually brought together the data necessary to the solution of his problem; and that in this case this happened to be first definitely formulated in his mind while he slept, thus giving rise to the dream that caused him such astonishment. Or he might from the outset have subconsciously been aware of the cause of his error, but without being able to profit from the knowledge until a favouring condition in sleep permitted its emergence above the threshold of his consciousness.

Now, suppose that instead of being a business man he had been a novelist, artist, or musician, and had been preoccupied with some special or general problem peculiar to his art. If in that event he had had a dream in which was presented to his sleeping consciousness a plot or subject or theme, which, being afterward given permanent form on paper or canvas, proved to have the qualities of a “work of genius,” would it not be logical to infer that precisely the same mental processes were operant in the second instance as in the first, the only difference being in the character of the product? This is what, from their own statement, has happened to not a few men of high achievement.

Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” was a dream composition. So was the sonata by which the composer Tartini is best known, and to which he appropriately gave the name of “The Devil’s Sonata,” in recognition of the fact that he owed it to a dream of selling his soul to the devil, and being rewarded by hearing the latter play on a violin the music out of which grew what Tartini himself regarded as his best piece of work. Benjamin Franklin was another man of genius who gained something from his dreams, as was Condillac. But the most striking illustration is afforded by Robert Louis Stevenson, whose marvellous “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was only one of several novels and stories that he conceived in dreams. Stevenson, it is worth adding, in his delightful “Chapter on Dreams,” frankly recognises and acknowledges the debt he owed to his subconsciousness, which, with characteristic felicity and whimsicality, he personified as “Brownies” and “little people.”

“This dreamer, like many other persons,” is the way he puts it, “has encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune. When the bank begins to send letters and the butcher to linger at the back gate, he sets to belabouring his brains after a story, for that is his readiest bread-winner; and, behold! at once the little people begin to bestir themselves in the same quest, and labour all night long, and all night long set before him truncheons of tales upon their lighted theatre. No fear of his being frightened now; the flying heart and the frozen scalp are things bygone; applause, growing applause, growing interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness—for he takes all the credit—and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry ‘I have it; that’ll do!’ upon his lips—with such and similar emotions he sits at these nocturnal dramas; with such outbreaks, like Cassius in the play, he scatters the performance in the midst.

“Often enough the waking is a disappointment. He has been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people; they have gone stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the play, to the wakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. And yet, how often have these sleepless Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than he could fashion for himself.

“The more I think of it,” Stevenson goes on, “the more I am moved to press upon the world my question, ‘Who are the little people?’ They are near connections of the dreamer’s, beyond doubt; they share in his training; they have plainly learned, like him, to build the scheme of a considerable story, and to arrange emotion in progressive order. Only, I think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond doubt—they can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and keep him the while in ignorance of where they aim.