New Britain herald., 1916-06-05
WHAT OTHERS SAY
Views on all sides of timely questions as discussed in ex- changes that come to the Herald Office.
The Mirror of the Night.
(NeW York Sum-

From a reader, "R. $. w. who half asks pardon for presenting very foolish'' question, comes the cry, "Why do we dream?" And he officers some personal details in ex- pl&nation of the query. He has been ill for nearly eight months, sometimes suffering severe pain; three-quarters of the night he lies awake and the rest of it he sleeps lightly; when he is sleeping he dreams, and his successive dreams are all of them filled with terror. misfortune and disaster" He has had to work while i'll. His wife has been in a hospital over two years. The father sent his boys out West to their grandm others; she has died and they are boarding. He misses them. and he finds he can- not stop worrying.
 It is to be feared that the latest explanation of dreams, that of Freud will not carry conviction to this man. It will be hard to make "R. $. w." believe that there can be any desire of his personified by the dark images that haunt his exhausted repose The presence of physical pain is itself enough to explain these nightly ter
 
 so far as can be judged, mainly in the stimulation of some of the senses. Of these the chiefest is the sense of sight, and every phase of a dream tends powerfully to raise up a pie ture. A slight pain takes the shape of a dagger thrust in the ribs, and the mortified dreamer sees quite clear ly the dagger and the man who wields it. The identity of his assailant is a matter of association of ideas, and not the reasonable association that we exercise in our waking hours but a connection that may be as curiously logical as it is preposterous- a ratio cination worthy of G. K. Chesterton proving black better than white or love really a form of hate.
 Why do we accept in dreams these outlandish events that we would re- ject instantly in our full conscicous- ness? Because only a small area of that part of the brain called the cor tex is stimulated. Therefore the dream has no "depth.' It has none of the compleXity of waking lifer but consists of a thin and lively process sion of images, which are, however, excessively vivid and yield eXperi- ences of tremendous intensity. But since these images and experiences have no depth or background they stand alone, unrelated to anything else. Thus we have nothing to com pare them with and cannot test their reasonableness, accepting them with out hesitation like bewildered chil- dren among enchanted creatures in a strange. exciting land.
 The method of Freud consists in comparing dream ideas with the ideas of reality. The revelation of some hidden wish or craving of which the dreams are fantastic embodiments is the interpretation he puts upon the terrors, the delights and the gray toned visions of our troubled s1um- bers. But is he right in believing that a single method is adequate for the interpretation of dreams? If he is, there exists a great world where the secret thoughts and longings of all men live and move, each in the habilim ents of his iailer's infancy. Perhaps they meet. Perhaps they con- verse without repression or intricate m otive, these beings whom we behold reflected in the mirror of the night.