[115] We have an analogous state of tactile anaesthesia in the early stages of chloroform intoxication. Thus Elmer Jones found that this sense is, after hearing, the first to disappear. 'With the disappearance of the tactile sense and hearing,' he remarks, 'the body has completely lost its orientation. It appears to be nowhere, simply floating in space. It is a most ecstatic feeling.'
[116] Lafcadio Hearn describes the fall as coming at the beginning of the dream. Dr. Guthrie (Clinical Journal, June 7, 1899), in his own case, describes the flying sensations as coming first and the falling as coming afterwards, and apparently due to sudden failure of the power of flight; the first part of the dream is agreeable but after the fall the dreamer awakes shaken, shocked, and breathless.
[117] The disagreeable nature of falling in dreams may probably be connected with the absence of rhythm usually present in dreams of flying. Most of the psychologists who have occupied themselves with rhythm have insisted on its pleasurable emotional tone, as leading to a state bordering on ecstasy (see e.g. J. B. Miner, 'Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms,' Monograph Supplement to Psychological Review, June 1903). The pleasure is especially marked, as MacDougall remarks, when there is 'a coincidence of subjective and objective change.' In dreams of flying we have this coincidence, the real subjective rhythm being transformed in consciousness to an objective rhythm.
[118] Féré, 'Note sur les Rêves Epileptiques,' Revue de Médecine, September 10, 1905.
[119] Sir W. R. Gowers has on several occasions (e.g. 'The Borderland of Epilepsy,' British Medical Journal, July 21, 1906) argued that dreams of falling have an aural origin, and are caused by contraction of the stapedius muscle, leading to a change in the ampullae which might suggest descent; he has himself suddenly awakened from such a dream and caught the sound of the muscular contraction. The opinion of so acute an investigator deserves consideration.
[120] Such sensations are, indeed, a recognised result of morphia. Morphinomaniacs, Goron remarks (Les Parias de l'Amour, p. 125), are apt to feel that they are flying or floating over the world.
[121] Jewell states that 'certain observers, peculiarly liable to dreams of falling or flying, ascribe these distinctly to faulty circulation, and say their physicians, to regulate the heart's action, have given them medicines which always relieve them and prevent such dreams' (American Journal of Psychology, January 1905, p. 8).
[122] Interesting evidence in favour of the respiratory origin of such visions is furnished by Silberer's observations on his own symbolic hypnagogic visions which are certainly allied to dream visions. He found (Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. 1., 1909, p. 523) that on drawing a deep breath, and so raising the chest wall, the representation came to him of attempting with another person to raise a table in the air.
[123] J. de Goncourt (Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii. p. 3) mentions that after drinking port wine, to which he was unaccustomed, he had a dream in which he observed on his counterpane grotesque images in relief which rose and fell.
[124] Chabaneix, Le Subconscient, p. 43.