[245] In insane subjects a dream not uncommonly forms the starting point of a delusion, and many illustrative examples could be brought forward.
[246] Marro, La Pubertà, pp. 286-92.
[247] Freud, Die Traumdeutung, p. 13. Elsewhere (p. 135) Freud remarks: 'The deeper we go in the analysis of dreams the more frequently we come across traces of childish experience which form a latent source of dreams.' The same point had been previously emphasised by Sully, 'The Dream as a Revelation,' Fortnightly Review, March 1893.
[248] C. M. Giessler, Die Physiologischen Beziehungen der Traumvorgänge, ch. iv.
[249] Jewell, who gives illustrations in evidence, concludes (American Journal of Psychology, January 1905, pp. 25-8) that 'the confusion of dreams with real life is almost universal with children, and quite common among adolescents and adults.'
[250] Hans Gross, the distinguished criminologist, refers (Kriminalpsychologie, p. 672) to two cases of children who brought criminal charges which were apparently based on dreams. Gross mentions that this may often be suspected when the child says nothing at the time, and shows no excitement or depression until a day or two after the date of the alleged event. For confusion of dream with reality, see also Gross, Gesammelte Kriminalistische Aufsätze, vol. ii. p. 174.
[251] Thus Rachilde (Mme. Vallette) writes that as a young girl her dreams were so vivid that 'I would often ask myself if I had not an existence in two forms: my waking personality and my dreaming personality. Sometimes I was deceived and imagined that my real life was dreams.' She instinctively began to write at the age of twelve, and it was by completing her dreams that she became a novelist (Chabaneix, Le Subconscient, p. 49). George Sand's early day-dreams, of which she gives so interesting an account (Histoire de ma Vie, part III. ch. viii), developed around the central figure of Corambé, first seen in a real dream. Corambé was, at the same time, a divine being, to whom she erected an altar. So that of the child it may be said, as Lucretius said of primitive man, that the gods first appear in dreams.
[252] 'In sleep,' says Sully (Fortnightly Review, March 1893), 'we have a reversion to a more primitive type of experience.' 'Dreaming,' says Jastrow (The Subconscious, p. 219), 'may be viewed as a reversion to a more primitive type of thought.'
[253] This tendency is notably represented by Durkheim ('Origines de la Pensée Religieuse,' Revue Philosophique, January 1909) and Crawley (The Idea of the Soul, 1909).
[254] Hill Tout, Journal, Anthropological Institute, January-June 1905, p. 143; Sidney Hartland, in his presidential address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, in 1906, emphasised the significance of dreams in Shamanism, and Sir Everard im Thurn, in his Among the Indians of Guiana, shows how practically real are dreams to the savage mind.