On Sleep and Dreams

Appendix — On Sleep and Dreams

Sleep is a more or less perfect suspension of the activities of sentient life. Aristotle called it a binding up of the common sense (that is, of sentient consciousness). Since, in man’s earthly life, intellect is extrinsically dependent upon sentiency, the binding up of sentient consciousness involves the suspension of normal rational consciousness. Further: the sentient consciousness is that “awareness” which renders serviceable all activities of the interior and exterior senses, and these activities are a constant drain upon its resources. Therefore it is to be expected that a period, more or less protracted, should sometimes be allotted by nature to the restoration of force and vigor in this much-worked faculty. In addition to the fatigue which affects the central or common sense (consciousness) there is that of the sense-organs, nerves, and muscles, which is experienced in the sentient portion of the central axis. Now, the brain is the organ of the central sense and the focus, so to speak, of nervous and muscular activity. It is quite natural therefore that the brain should relax for rest and recuperation; and that this occurs in sleep is manifested by the fact that the head grows heavy and tends to fall forward when a person is sleepy.

Sometimes the senses other than sense-consciousness are active when a person sleeps, as the internal sense of imagination, and that of memory, are when we dream, and as outer senses are when we talk or walk or toss about in our sleep. Here again we have evidence that it is, first and foremost, the sense-consciousness or common sense which is affected by sleep. Sleep may rightly be said to consist essentially in the suspension of sense-consciousness.

Sleep is natural when it results from the fatigue of the sentient powers, nervous and muscular. It is artificial when the organ of sense-consciousness (the brain) is rendered inoperative by the action of drugs (ether, chloroform, alcohol, etc.) or is dulled by uniform sense-impressions continuously repeated, or is brought under the influence of suggestion and command as in the case of hypnosis.

Dreams are representations of imagination, and even of intellect, which occur (together with the pertinent stirring of appetencies) in sleep. Imagination may be said to take over the function of the outer senses, and, sense-consciousness being almost entirely suspended, to supply to the intellect impressions which are taken for reality. As St. Thomas points out, the intellect in its present state of extrinsic dependency on the senses, takes impressions which come through the imagination as real unless it has the “check up” of normal operative sentiency (i. e., wakeful consciousness) to prevent error. And, in sleep, imagination may be active, as may sentient memory which regularly works with imagination, and may produce images under the purely automatic course of a haphazard line of associations. From all this we understand how dreams may appear so very real, and, even though they present absurdities and impossibilities to the mind, how these are not fully recognized until the dream is recalled (if it be recalled) during wakefulness. Outer influences doubtless stir the imagination and contribute to the “associations” which guide its automatic progress during dreams. The external senses may be unconsciously operative, at least partially; a single sense-impression which makes its way to the imagination, in the absence of the crowding complexity of normal perceptions, is likely to be received in a wholly disproportionate and exaggerated manner: thus a slight snapping sound may enter our dream-experience as a great explosion; thus the pressure of an unaccustomed amount of bed-clothing may induce the dream-impression that one is caught under the weight of a falling building. Again, the matter of fact manner in which the dreamer accepts absurdities, such as the presence of persons long dead, or the activities of unheard of monsters, or the conducting of rational conversations with a dog or cat, are explained in the fact that the normal activity of intellect is thwarted by the absence of normality in sentient impressions; physiologically, we explain the matter, with Warren, thus:

. in sleep many of the centers are cut off from one another, and we are often unable to associate the given experience with our built-up store of memories/’ Dreams often proceed in a fairly logical manner, but more often they are tissues of amazingly unlike, and apparently disconnected, phantasms. I may dream that I am standing before a vast throng addressing them on some burning issue; immediately I may find myself in a small boat far at sea; then, without any recognized transition, I am impatiently wondering whether the train will be on time. I converse casually with persons never encountered, and with friends long years in their graves. I may meet with historical personages who lived centuries ago and go with them to a showing of the latest motion-picture. Wild and fantastic as these dream-experiences are, it will be interesting for most of us to compare them with the idle excursions of fancy during listless wakeful moments, or even with the astoundingly angular and disconnected course followed by the casual chat of a few talkative friends.

Dreams are singularly volatile, and unless they are remembered and attentively “gone over” soon after the dreamer wakes, they fade from his remembrance very rapidly. Some dreams, especially those of a fearsome character, may leave a lasting memory, but most do not. We are probably entirely justified in saying that everyone dreams, and the person who declares that he does not dream is merely one who does not remember his dreams. On the other hand, it seems certain that the more or less common notion that a sleeper “dreams all the time” is entirely false.

Sigmund Freud (1856-), Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist, makes dreams a most important element in his psychology of the subconscious. He teaches that when we are awake and in our normal state, we tend to remove from our attention, and our consciousness, thoughts that would be painful or distressing. But, he maintains, these thoughts are only “shoved under the surface”; they continue to be a part of our subconscious life. During sleep, the subconsciousness rises to the level which consciousness holds in wakeful hours; it asserts itself in dreams; it releases the inhibitions which it caused and held when consciousness was in command. Thus dreams are often expressions of “repressed desires,” and of the wishes or “complexes” that could not be realized in wakeful life. Freud’s studies of dreams are interesting and not without value. Unfortunately, he spoils what might have been at least a quasi-scientific investigation by reducing almost all complexes to some form of instinctive sexuality. His studies are therefore morbid, and become not so much the objective investigation of the minds of men as the portrayal of an ugly prepossession in the mind of Freud. The Freudian system of “analyzing” minds,— especially through the medium of studying and interpreting their dreams and reveries,—is known as psychoanalysis.