Day-dreaming is dissociation carried further. "Leading lady" and "chorus belle" change places for a while—imaginary success keeps us from worrying about real failure. Dissociation, day-dreaming, and mental epilepsy are but few of the many milestones on a road, the end of which is insanity, or complete and permanent dissociation, instead of the partial and fleeting dissociation from which we all suffer. The lunatic never "comes to", but in a world of dreams dissociates himself forever from realities he is not mentally strong enough to face.
The writing of "spirits" through a "medium" is an example of dissociation, and though shown at its best in neuropaths, is common enough in normal men, as can be proved by anyone with a planchette and some patience.
If the experimenter puts his hands on the toy, and a friend talks to him, while another whispers questions, he may write more or less coherent answers, though all the time he goes on talking, and does not know what his hand is writing. His mind is split into two smaller minds, each ignorant of the other, each busily liberating memory-prisoners from its own block of cells in the gaol of the subconscious. The writing often refers
to long-forgotten incidents, the experiment sometimes being of real use in cases of lost memory.
Dreams are dissociations in sleep, while the scenes conjured up by crystal-gazing are only waking dreams, in which the dissociation is caused by gazing at a bright surface and so tiring the brain centres, whereupon impressions of past life emerge from the subconscious, to surprise, not only the onlookers to whom they are related, but also the gazer herself, who has long "forgotten them".
It is childish to attach supernatural significance to either dreams or crystal-gazing, both of which mirror, not the future, but only the past, the subject's own past.
It is noteworthy that women dream more frequently and vividly than men. When a dreamer has few worries, he usually dreams but forgets his dream on waking; when greatly worried, he often carries his problems to bed with him, and recent "representative dreams" are merely unprofitable overtime work done by the brain. Occasionally, dreams have a purely physical basis as when palpitation becomes transformed in a dream into a scene wherein a horse is struggling violently, or where an uncovered foot originates a dream of polar-exploration; in this latter type the dream is protective, in that it is an effort to side-track some irritation without breaking sleep.
Since Freud has traced a sex-basis in all our dreams, many worthy people have been much worried about the things they see or do in dreams. Let them remember that virtue is not an inability to conceive of misconduct, so much as the determination to refrain from it, and it may well be that the centres which so determinedly inhibit sexual or unsocial thoughts in the day, are tired by the very vigour of their resistance, and so in sleep allow the thoughts they have so stoutly opposed when waking to slip by. The man who is long-suffering and slow to wrath when awake, may
surely be excused if he murders a few of his tormentors during sleep.
Epileptiform Seizures are convulsions due to causes other than epilepsy, and only a doctor can tell if an attack be epileptic or not and prescribe appropriate treatment. To give "patent" medicines for "fits", to a man who may be suffering from lead poisoning or heart disease, is criminal.