It was natural that after a time I should wonder what event of the day would be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering, will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to find. I see cows and am afraid.—This based on reality of a few days before.—At length by a stone I find a fern coiled as in spring. This becomes a squirrel, the male comes, and then they are lions. The male has a sprig of leaves which he lays at the feet of the female and which she eats. I want to know what the leaves are but fear to look closely because of the lion. I found it difficult to deliberately influence dreams by suggestion. The dream-self is not to be coerced and usually I over-did the matter. Most of my examples deal with flowers and perhaps the most apposite is the following:—I plucked a stem of blossoms of white everlasting and wore it inside my waist on my bosom all day, asking as I fastened it in,—How will this reappear in my dream? The following morning as consciousness returned, I had a vision of a baby's bottle filled with milk and beyond it, more faint, another similar bottle. It is fair to say that this outcome was entirely unexpected. Another night after watching Venus, low in the southwestern sky, I dream that I am molding a statue—strangely enough the arms as the reference is to the Venus de' Melos—and the figure is that of a young woman of immoral life.
My store of dreams is so great and varied that the forms of symbolism are by no means exhausted. The reception of mail is a favorite subject and here again one may say that this is the most natural of dreams and quite its own excuse for being. But strange things come in the mail,—pieces of turf in which are growing tiny plants, boxes of rice, jelly, breakfast food, cooked fish still warm; and once a sack of mail is emptied upon my door-stone—not by the postman but by a man who the day before drove past with a little child. Other recurring motifs are strawberries, yeast, Bologna sausage, ice cream— once poured over slices of clear, transparent fruit which I eat, this very plainly referring to the fertilization of the eggs of fish about which I read the preceding evening:—"As soon as the female finishes spawning the male will approach the eggs and eject a milky fluid over them to effect fertilization. If this is successful the spawn will have a clear, glassy appearance." The dream-self can turn anything to its use,—I read of certain suffrage activities in England and forthwith dream that I attend a suffrage meeting. But the house at which it is held is in reality the home of a woman nearly my age, who is pregnant.
I pass over all the dreams obviously of an infantile character, and likewise those of travelling and of packing for a journey. More unusual is the dream of a flight of birds which twice occurred under conditions which left no doubt as to its sexual character. A house having a wet sink and a dry one is the verdict of my dream-self regarding a home in which the woman can bear no more children because of physical disability; and a railway station where I go down the steps, pick from the floor a flower—wondering if it is all right,—reach a restaurant in which seventy have that night been served and where I lose my flower, symbolizes a house of prostitution mentioned in Chicago's famous report where one woman served sixty men in one night and was said to have seven thousand dollars in the bank. Beneath convention strange unconvention lurks. A young woman of irregular life appears in my dream as one with soiled skirts, and, very vaguely, some one's else skirts are soiled also. After seeing a print of Tompkins' painting, Hester Prynne, heroine of The Scarlet Letter, I dream that I go to a shop, where I have great difficulty because of darkness, to buy some dark green silk for embroidering a letter somewhere on my dress. Not to pander to the base in human nature are these details given but to make known life's realities to those who are blinded by theories. The frank and honest truth is never foul and monstrous. Society can be renovated only when all the facts are brought to light.
In conclusion I give the dreams of a single night:—First, a drunken man and girl in the same team; I think they should not be there. Then I am on a porch looking off at a headland with ice at the foot. Farther up the hill are quantities of ice—a sheet of it over the ground and in one place it is as if water had been poured and allowed to freeze. In the midst of this last, which is not on the hill, is a fine and shapely tree with the ice about it very smooth and shining and slanting somewhat. I think it is a good place for skating. In the morning as I recalled this dream, quite abruptly into my mind came the remark of Philina in Wilhelm Meister, after seeing a woman "great with child," "It were prettier if we could shake children from the trees." Next I see far off high mountains with sunlight on the summits. Then I am in a porch enclosed by a wire screen; by me is a woman. From the window of a building outside, which seems to be a hospital without funds, a woman looks at me. I want to see far off and shade my eyes with my hands. I think I must cut the screen in order to see clearly. Then I see a rampart and beyond it is the ocean. I hear a bird, a robin, on the rampart. Near it is another bird, large, gray and strange. Then it is a rooster. The key to this dream lies in the fact that the day before I received an appeal for financial aid from a hospital and the printed request showed the picture of a row of nurses each with a tiny baby in her lap. Finally I go into a bed-room. On the bed is a baby. I uncover it and it moves and cries. It wants its mother and I go to find her.
That the mind which dreams is not uncognizant of the hopelessness of its aspirations is strangely indicated by the following for which at the time I found no direct exciting cause:— I see two long lines of seeds planted and at the end of the rows tiny lettuce plants. Near by are apple trees in blossom. But it is autumn.
Bergson at the close of his essay on dreams hints that the mind may transcend its conjectured limits and be influenced in profound slumber by telepathy. This is but an hypothesis which must long await verification. My own dreams which apparently forecast the future are out-numbered by erroneous forecasts and one vivid dream of the death of a friend though coinciding as to the day, is not of great value as evidence as I had been expecting the news for weeks, and further, beyond the surface portent the dream is remotely allied in certain details with more personal and vital memories.
Though the dream process may to a certain extent be made verbally intelligible he who studies it most best realizes the attendant mystery. Dream-self, subconscious ideas, visual images,—these are but terms which bridge the abyss of our ignorance. Further exploration of the mystery is of value not only from the standpoint of pure science, to whose domain there is no limit, but also in the interest of education, health, sanity and morality. It is neither necessary nor wise for all persons to study their dreams, but for those who shape the growing thought and conduct of the world a knowledge of even the remotest outposts of human mentality is supremely important.
REMARKS UPON DR. CORIAT'S PAPER "STAMMERING AS A PSYCHONEUROSIS"[1]
[1] Dr. Isador H. Coriat's paper with this title appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Volume IX, No. 6, February-March, 1915.