To look at one's self is a late endowment. The kitten pursues its own tail but would chase that of its mother with equal ardor. I once saw a monkey searching industriously with eyes and hands upon its own body. The sight was startling. I had never before seen an animal look intelligently at itself. It was long before man distinguished his self from the world without, and longer still before he began to understand himself. Physical and mental phenomena, pain and pleasure, could not be tracked to their sources and so came to be expressed in terms of the world of nature, and for a reason precisely similar that portion of the self functioning in sleep makes use of symbolism. Occasionally the higher thought centers are involved but the typical dream is the product of a restricted, primitive self, lacking the resources of the complete personality and limited in power of expression. In dreams we are deficient in self-consciousness because it is only a partial self that dreams. Our wishes are rarely given clear and definite expression for the reason that the section of the mind then active is incapable of clear, definite and adequate concepts. Symbolism and reasoning by analogy are the resources of the mind until the power of knowledge dawns.
Predicating then a dream-self by its nature largely restricted to the use of symbolism and having at its disposal a vast store of images endlessly susceptible to influences which combine and alter their form, we reach the crucial question, what initiates the dream? This is by no means a mere purposeless thronging of visual images as occasionally happens in the period preceding sleep when faces, forms and scenes flit aimlessly before the mind's eye, some bare replicas of stimulations of the eye from without, others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. In the last example we come definitely upon a vision induced from within, an idea working downward upon the visual centers. Still nearer dreams, indeed if occurring in sleep they would be classed with them, are the purely imaginative pictures whose cause is as mysterious as that of the actual dream. Fire in the wall near the pantry door, a garden with a woman rising from a clump of bushes, high, rocky mountain tops, a perpendicular wall of rock and against it a man on a ladder reaching for a flower, a long vista ending with a pillared temple on a hill,—these are a few of my visions before sleep. But to return,—why the dream? Are all or most dreams sexual? Can we say with Freud that they express the fulfillment of repressed desires?
It is not my purpose to attempt a complete answer to this question as I am far from understanding even the majority of my own dreams. Broadly speaking I should say that considering the amount and complexity of the material on hand which the mind may use and the probable inconceivable number of dreams it is unlikely that all are concerned with this matter. This question may well be allowed to rest for the present. But certain convictions have arisen in my mind as the result of the study of hundreds of personal dreams, convictions which do not rest upon the arbitrary interpretation of accepted symbolism, though I am far from questioning the validity of this procedure. I venture little beyond the region illuminated by individual insight though examples are cited far exceeding my power of interpretation.
The sexual theory of dreams has by some authorities been characterized as greatly over-emphasized, as failing to take account of other factors and interests of human personality. To those critics let me present the matter briefly and simply. The very fact of a person's being alive today presupposes an ancestry stretching backward through uncounted ages, an ancestry whose chief function, up to very recent times, was sexual and reproductive. Modern interests, business, social, intellectual, religious, artistic and philanthropic, which today loom so large, are a recent innovation, occupying in comparison with the period when they were not but a moment of time. In a vertical section of man—both racial and individual, they are seen to constitute but a superficial layer, from a contemporary standpoint predominant and paramount but in the light of the ages secondary and unstable. Biologically a woman is only an agent for the reproduction of her kind; more than this, with mind, all save the conscious, socially and ethically restricted sections, set toward the same end and toward the means for its accomplishment. There is no gainsaying this fact and in my dreams which yielded to analysis it stands paramount. I am inclined to disregard the theory of a "censor" for the reason that after I had admitted to my thought and frankly considered certain facts, by a thousand devious hints, by a thousand subterfuges, my subconsciousness continued to express these same facts by means of obscure symbolism. As the savage seizes upon one link in a chain of events expecting thereby to repossess the whole, as the native of Borneo makes a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image melts, the enemy's body will waste away, as the women of Sumatra when sowing rice let the hair hang loose down their backs in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks, so this woman, this under-self, ignorant of the true law of cause and effect, and unable to form definite concepts, instinctively selects from the innumerable memories and visual images at her disposal those having relation to her unfulfilled function and forms a picture or weaves a tale, expecting through the performance of some remotely associated act the complete result.
To the events of an hour or so, supremely significant from a biological standpoint, are related a very large number of my dreams. Again and again events of that day and of the preceding days form the basis of dreams; trivial circumstances are revived one by one and fragments of the experience itself are seized, distorted and each woven into what I can no longer term "the baseless fabric of a vision." For instance the day preceding I broke my umbrella and found a shop where it was mended. In dream after dream appears that broken umbrella under various circumstances and when I ask the reason for its apparent importance I can not escape the conclusion that the article in question stands for a period of time, a series of events, in which the dream-self would again be placed. Apparently on that road opportunity lay in waiting, therefore by any means at her disposal must that path be regained. Involuntarily the language of metaphor is assumed in attempting to describe a process so far removed from actual knowledge. Still are we driven to avail ourselves of the expedient of primitive man.
Of the dreams presently to be cited only a part fall within the category of analogical reasoning. In none of the examples is a complete analysis attempted. The mind of each reader may carry the solution of the problem as far as it will. I am content merely to furnish a clue. That each dream is of great significance must not be assumed. But that each one, even though it appear a mere fanciful reverie, means SOMETHING can hardly be doubted. At the outset it is acknowledged that the dreams recorded followed a period of intense emotion when, through the exigencies of life the strongest instinct of humanity required control and repression. Further the writer is a musician and a botanist, and especially interested in biological and social problems. Study of the latter subjects was continued throughout the period in question. It must be confessed also that though loth to accept the sexual theory of dreams, once convinced of its at least partial truth I was on the watch for confirmation. I expected sexual symbolism. On the other hand each dream was absolutely spontaneous, an utter surprise, having no slightest likeness to any creation of my waking mind and seeming to rise from a region so remote as to be not myself. It should be noted also that the greater number of the nearly five thousand remembered dreams, all but very few in fact, would have remained in the limbo of the unconscious but for the persistent and trained effort which rescued them from oblivion. Neither by, nor apparently for my waking self were they formed.
Each individual mind, besides sharing in the symbolism common to mankind, has doubtless its own particular and special forms. For instance during the period covered by my study no less than ninety different varieties of plant life figured in my dreams, not including indefinite ferns, moss, grass, weeds and trees, and several plants noted somewhat in detail yet unlike any form known to me. Of the recognizable plants a number were used somewhat cleverly for their analogical significance. Of these may be mentioned the snowball and hydrangea whose flowers as every botanist knows are sterile, the size of the individual blossom being gained at the expense of loss of stamens and pistils. These plants were plainly used to indicate barrenness and the predominance of traits other than sexual. The keen critic will here interpose an objection. How is the primitive, unreasoning dream-self able to make use of symbolism whose import is known only to higher and developed states of mind? The force of the objection is granted and without attempting fully to answer it I will say that the likeness of the primitive mind of the race to that surviving in the highly evolved individual is only partial. Like tendencies exist but the influence of a great body of knowledge above inevitably alters the action of the latter. Maidenhair fern stood indubitably in several instances for the pubic hair, once surrounding a cluster of trailing arbutus when talcum powder of that fragrance had been used on the body. I dreamed of Linnaea borealis, the little twin-flower, in connection with a woman who a few days before when told of the birth of twins to a friend, said, "That is the way to have them come." Lettuce, for its milky juice obviously, appeared in two bunches on the front of the waist of a woman into whose house I had broken by leaning against a screen door, and a lawn bordered by cowslips, our common name for Caltha palustris, certainly represented a certain lawn that a friend told me had been kept mown by the cows feeding upon it when driven from pasture.
In each of the above instances the floral symbolism was part of an elaborate dream having wider significance leaving no doubt as to the accuracy of my conclusions. A particularly interesting and devious use of flowers occurs in the following dream—I am in front of a certain house over which, in the dream, is growing a vine having white, star-like, fragrant blossoms. I want one flower and the woman living there says I may have it. The name of the vine seems to be "Dyak." There is no plant having that name but a few months before I was reading of the Dyak girls of Borneo who "are very careful of their clothing, and often very vain, but when they are married they frequently become exceedingly untidy." I quoted the passage in an article thus fixing it in my mind. The link with the dream consists in the fact that the woman living in the vine-decorated house is, in reality, notoriously untidy. Her two daughters as they approached womanhood greatly improved in the daintiness of their garb, and one had become pregnant— outside marriage. Another dream:—I see a friend, by name Anna, stoop and pull from the ground a tiny lily-of-the-valley plant. It has no roots. I say, "What a pity." This dream had no meaning until into my mind came the thought of another Anna, a young girl who was led astray and who, I had just been told, had taken medicine to terminate her pregnancy. When I learned of this I had thought of the loss of the incipient life. The same night I dreamed of going upstairs in a shed or barn. At the top of the stairs something—a door—is in the way. I go by it. A child is there. Again:—I am crossing a level field and come upon little star-like flowers which I try to analyse. I find many with pistils but no stamens,—the pollen bearing organs which effect fertilization. I wonder if they will keep fresh until I reach home. Once more:—I approach a city. I see woods and two gardens, either flower or vegetable, from which comes music. On a mound wild flowers are growing, some white, some small and dark. I gather them. Then very remote and vague,—my brother is there. I see a long snake which my brother puts on(?) and covers my flowers. Still another vision was of a branch of beautiful; fragrant apple blossoms growing through the wall of a room. Some of the flowers were pistillate, some staminate,—a condition false to nature as regards the apple.
A dream, which in common with many others, seems not the fulfillment of a wish but the symbolical expression of a bodily and mental state, is the following:—After a day of very great physical restlessness I dream that I am walking in a path by a river. I can not see the water for the over-hanging trees beneath whose branches grow quantities of Impatiens fulva, the spotted touch-me-not,—named from the sudden bursting of the pod when touched. The plant in question I had not seen for some time and the fitness of the symbolism to the bodily state was too close to be accidental. After a walk in the spring when the ground was white with the cotton-tufted seeds of the poplar and I thought if all germinated how overwhelmed we should be with poplars, I dream that I am sweeping a floor upon which cotton is scattered, some of which flies and is caught in my hair. I dream of walking under pine trees whose pollen falls on me, and finally—though examples of the significant use of plants are by no means exhausted—I have upon awakening the vision of a pine tree growing from my nose. This strange anomaly becomes intelligible when I recall that a friend told me that the pores of her nose were enlarged, and I said mine were also; we had been talking of a quotation from Emerson relating to nature's fecundity; my friend was soon to be married; and a line from Emerson often in my thought is that in regard to pines "throwing out pollen for the benefit of the next century."
For a musician to dream of playing, or of trying to play, upon an organ or piano is apparently the most natural thing in the world and an attempt at interpretation is, to uninstructed common sense, a journey far afield. Yet the strange and striking variations introduced and the hindrances to my accomplishment of the act invest the dream with marked significance. For instance:—It is after church service and I want to play upon the pipe organ. I find my music. The stool is a kettle of water with a board over it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which kicks or bites me. Again:—I play on the piano to a friend who is a German scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is nonsense or otherwise according to the observer's point of view. Another dream:—Some children want me to play and I go to the piano and try to play the Spring Song. But the piano stops sounding; only a few bass notes respond. I dream that a table of sheet music is on fire. Sometimes the music is too far away or too high for me to see: the notes are flowers, or books, or animals, or "hanging objects," or queer figures; in the book from which I play are pictures of the sea, a ship, a person, and birds—sea gulls, among them. The bed becomes an organ upon which I try to play. I begin to play the Witches' Dance and there are not enough keys to the piano. Again the keys are covered by a cloth or there are no keys. An organ behind me is played and I see no organist, or I move the pedals of an organ and music begins before the instrument is open. I try to play and the stops are wrong. Often I search frantically for the hymn given out by the minister and can not find it. Once I picked flowers in its place, drooping racemes of sweet alyssum, which I gave to a woman. Oddest of all on the keys of a piano I see a small boy who salutes me. Lastly, I play for children to sing. At the top of the page of music are whole notes—easy to play; below there are whole notes in groups of two, joined like confluent living cells.