Читать книгу Children's Dreams - C. W. Kimmins - Страница 6
ОглавлениеINTRODUCTION
The dream has from time immemorial been regarded with intense interest. In the sacred writings, the man who could interpret dreams was regarded with very special reverence, as being endowed with a power withheld from the ordinary mortal. Throughout the ages, the dream, with its atmosphere of mystery and frequently terrifying associations has been an object of wonder and has fascinated the investigator. It is only of recent years, however, that the value of the dream has been fully recognised as an important factor in the diagnosis of difficult cases of nervous breakdown. Among the human wreckage caused by the Great War, the interpreter of dreams in shell-shock hospitals has been of the greatest possible assistance in the investigation of war neuroses. In many instances, complete recovery has resulted from treatment based on a diagnosis of the mental trouble which has been revealed by the interpretation of the dreams of the sufferer.
With such a fascinating objective as that of the unravelling of dreams, it is only natural that when psychology joined the rank of the experimental sciences, expert investigators should be attracted to this particular field of research. Of these investigators, the most distinguished are Freud, the leader of the Vienna School, and Jung, the leader of the Zurich School.
According to Freud, what is known as the unconscious consists almost entirely of material which has been repressed because it is painful and repulsive to consciousness. This suppressed material may eventually become so dissociated from the normal content of consciousness that the ordinary laws of association have not the power of recalling it, as in the case of ordinary facts and experiences which are not repulsive to consciousness. To prevent the passage of the contents of the unconscious into the state of consciousness, there is a well-ordered mental adjustment, which Freud personifies under the name of the censor.
In the sleeping condition, however, the censor is less alert than in the normal waking state, and in dreams, material in a disguised form, a sort of camouflage, which makes it appear unoffensive, enables some of it to get through from unconsciousness to consciousness. The expert knowledge of the investigator enables him, by removing the camouflage, to lay bare the true material as it exists in the unconscious, and herein lies the skill of the interpreter of dreams. A dream which appears to the layman simply an absurd jumble of irrelevant material now becomes something which is full of meaning.
Opinions are divided as to the content of the unconscious. Jung maintains, and in this he is supported by many competent observers, that Freud over-stresses the part played by suppressed material of an unpleasant nature. He claims that the content is much richer, and contains instinctive elements which have become useless in our present state of civilisation but which may be of great value in the important crises of life and may come to our aid in overwrought and nervous states. The whole problem of the unconscious has recently received a great amount of attention, and has been so ably treated by distinguished psychologists that a most interesting and valuable mass of literature has resulted, in which the function and interpretation of the dream have been fully discussed. The discussion has, however, naturally been especially concerned with matters of pathological interest, and has centred around the dreams of neurotic adults in connection with the treatment of war and other neuroses.
It is evident, from the very considerable measure of success which has attended the psycho-analytic method in the treatment of mental diseases, that the dream, which is the most direct avenue to the unconscious, can no longer be regarded simply as an object of wonder and mystery to which no importance should be attached. The influence of the unconscious in practically every action of the waking life is now widely recognised, and will receive far more attention in the future than it has in the past. The dreams of normal, healthy school children have received comparatively little attention at the hands of skilled investigators since the researches of such workers as Sante de Sanctis, Marie de Manaceine and Miss Calkins, and even their researches consisted chiefly of the intensive study of a few cases, some of which were of abnormal type.
As pointed out by Freud (Traumdeutung) and others, the dreams of children differ very materially from those of adults. The manifest content tends to become identical with the latent content. In children’s dreams also, there is far more secondary elaboration than in the dreams of older people, and there is far more overflow from the experiences of the previous day, e.g., a child often gratifies in the dream some desire forbidden by his parents the day before. The dreams of children have, moreover, clearer relation to their everyday temperament, e.g., elaborate and fanciful dreams are common with imaginative children, nightmares are common with timid children, and vivid dreams are generally more frequent with those of unstable type.
In dreams referring to events of waking life the experiences may form an infinite number of new combinations, some of which are extraordinarily grotesque. It is these new combinations which give the dream such a bewildering, and at the same time, irresistible attraction.
In the investigation of children’s dreams, which will be referred to, those of very young children were related individually to skilled observers, but all dreams of children of eight years of age and over were recorded by the dreamers themselves in response to the request: “Write a true and full account of the last dream you can remember. State your age, and also say about how long ago you had the dream you have described.”
The numbers of dreams obtained from various sources were approximately—
150 boys and girls in Infants’ schools, of 5, 6, and 7 years.
2000 boys in elementary schools, of 8 to 14 years of age.
2000 girls in elementary schools, of 8 to 14 years of age.
300 boys and girls in central schools, of 10 to 15 years of age.
600 girls in secondary schools, of 10 to 18 years of age.
300 boys in industrial schools, of 10 to 16 years of age.
300 girls in industrial schools, of 10 to 16 years of age.
110 boys and girls in blind schools, of 10 to 16 years of age.
140 boys and girls in deaf schools, of 10 to 16 years of age.
In spite of fear dreams, children in normal health delight in dreaming, and it is an evident pleasure to them to talk about or record their dreams. It will be seen by the children’s accounts of their dreams that they have an abnormal power of graphic description of events in which they are intensely interested, such as those supplied by the dream material. This power so far exceeds their ability in ordinary essay writing on topics selected by the teacher, and is, moreover, so much in advance of their general standard of achievement, that it would appear as if some fresh mental element had come into play. The matter is worthy of further investigation.
In analysing the children’s dreams, the following, among other elements, have been considered: the various types of wish fulfilment and fear dreams; kinæsthetic dreams; references to fairy stories; dreams of bravery and adventure; school activities, cinemas, exciting books and death incidents; dreams in which conversations are recorded; the presence of other witnesses than the dreamer; and dreams in which the dreamer was absent.
Most of the dreams were recorded in November and December, 1918, but those from industrial schools were obtained in March and April, 1919, and those from the blind and deaf schools in June, 1919. The basis of classification was age, and not position in the school, and in the mixed schools, the boys’ were separated from the girls’ dreams.
An attempt was made to analyse on a similar plan the dreams of students of eighteen to twenty-two years of age, but the majority of them were so heavily camouflaged that it was impossible for anyone who was not a trained expert in psycho-analysis to deal with them satisfactorily. I have, therefore, confined my attention entirely to the dreams of school children.
