Читать книгу Children's Dreams - C. W. Kimmins - Страница 8

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The universality of the dream is in itself evidence of its biological significance.

The Dream as the Guardian of Sleep.—The definition of the dream as the guardian of sleep is increasingly accepted. On the other hand, the attempt to bring all dreams into the category of fulfilled wishes needs such an extension of the normal meaning of words that the definition of a dream as a fulfilled wish would serve no useful purpose. This is especially the case in dealing with the dreams of children.

The part played by the dream as an antidote to the monotony of life is clearly shown in the present investigation, particularly with regard to the dreams of very poor children, and those for whom life offers very little variety and opportunities for enjoyment. The dream comes in as the Fairy Godmother and supplies to them the pleasures which the normal conditions of their lives have failed to provide. This is well illustrated by the dreams of industrial school children, who, as is pointed out, have far happier and more exciting dreams than those whose lives are full of interest and for whom the lines have fallen in pleasant places. The homeless, uncared-for child dreams of the happy home, supplied with every comfort, of rich relations from whom they receive costly presents, of continual change of scene, and, above all, of abundant success and prosperity in after life. The very elements which are so conspicuously lacking in their lives are those which figure most prominently in their dreams. The disappointments of the previous day are compensated by the wish fulfilments of the dream.

In young children there is far more overflow of the experiences of the day into the dream of the night than in the case of adults, in whom, as many observers have shown, the worries and anxieties which have filled their thoughts during waking hours find no place in their dreams. And thus again the dream acts as the guardian of sleep. Without doubt, life would be far more wearisome without dreams, and it is contended that the non-dreamer grows old more quickly than the dreamer.

Naturally, during the war there were many presentiment dreams of coming evil, as in the death of relatives of the dreamer. Even when such presentiments were confirmed, it was not infrequently stated in the record that the dream served a useful purpose in weakening the blow when the fatal news was received.

Effect of Environment on the Dream.—A certain amount of research, without very definite results, has been done on the influence of external conditions in influencing the nature of the dream. This may be divided into two classes—

(1) Where a particular stimulus causes a dream and influences its nature.

Some interesting results have been obtained in this connection in taste dreams, and those stimulated by odours.

(2) Where the general conditions are very similar, and have an effect in producing a greater similarity of dream material than is the case under normal circumstances.

As will be seen by the results obtained in this investigation in connection with the dreams of children in industrial schools, institutional life has a marked influence in affecting the type, diminishing the variety, and, in certain respects, reducing the differences between the girls’ and the boys’ dreams as compared with the dreams of children in ordinary schools. Of course, the greater similarity of the type of child also has an important influence. The conditions of institutional life also affect the amount of dreaming; e.g., it is well known that criminals dream far more when they are in prison than when they are at liberty.

During the year 1917 I kept a careful record of my own dreams, and they were undoubtedly affected by the general condition of the environment. The more important points noticed were the following:—

(1) The dreams in a quiet room in the country were far clearer and more vivid than those in London, with the noise of the streets in evidence during the greater part of the night, and, moreover, that with ears plugged with cotton wool in London the dreams corresponded more nearly to those in the country.

(2) Change of environment added to the frequency of dreams to a very marked extent until I became acclimatised to the new conditions.

(3) Hard mental work up to the time of going to bed seriously increased the tendency to dream.

(4) Sleeping in a badly ventilated room appeared to increase the frequency but diminish the clearness of my dreams.

The result of a heavy, indigestible meal just before retiring to rest is too well known in its effect on the dream to need any description. The blood supply to the brain in excess, as after mental work, or much reduced, as after a heavy meal, injuriously affects the tendency to interesting dreams. The normal blood supply appears to be the ideal condition.

The general impression among young children is that cheese is the source of every bad thing in dreaming, and many state that for pleasant dreams the best preparation is cocoa and bread and butter for supper. There was much evidence in the records of dreams that influenza, or any complaint involving a high temperature, has a most serious effect on the nature of the dream.

Another important instance of the influence of external conditions on the dream must be mentioned. During the years 1915-18 the air raid had an important effect on the frequency and terrifying nature of children’s dreams in centres visited by hostile air-craft. The bulk of the records of dreams analysed were written, as I have pointed out elsewhere, some months after the last air raid, and dreams, except those of older children, contain few references to them, but in those of an earlier date a very large proportion of the fear dreams were seriously affected by air raids. Air-raid dreams are of no special interest; they are mainly a description of raids in which the dreamer was an observer. In such cases the difficulty of separating the dreaming from the waking elements would be very great, and “secondary elaboration” would tend to make the dream fall into line with the events of the previous air raid actually witnessed.

It is clear from the records that the blind child suffered from air raids far more than any other type of child, and the deaf child the least of all.

The effect of the air raid upon the dream of the normal adult was slight, due partly to the principle referred to elsewhere, that matters which affect the emotional side of waking thoughts rarely trouble the adult dreamer, and partly to the fact that from the mathematical consideration that the chance of any personal inconvenience resulting from a raid to any particular dreamer, was very remote, and, therefore, did not enter the category of fears.

In looking through the records of my own dreams for 1917, although I was in central London during most of the raids, there is only one reference to air-raid experiences, and in that a comical element predominated. On one occasion, after having been kept awake for two hours by the noise associated with the raid, I had on regaining sleep a delightfully vivid, pleasant dream, absolutely unaffected by air-raid experience.

Dreams and Intelligence.—Many observers who have investigated the frequency of dreams in different classes of the community have reached the conclusion that people of well-developed intelligence dream far more than those of low culture. Agricultural labourers, ill-educated servant girls, and the lower types of criminals dream infrequently, and many have no memory of ever having had a dream. Some observers go so far as to say that, within certain limits, the frequency of dreaming among healthy people varies with the state of development of the intelligence.

In Jastrow’s work on the retention of visual impressions in the dreams of blind children, it was found that of those who became blind between the ages of five and seven, some permanently retained the power of visualising scenes, and others did not, the deciding factor being the state of mental development. The character of the dream also varies in the imagery employed in its structure with the standard of intelligence of the dreamer. The dream of the university professor is very different from that of the casual labourer.

In the case of children up to the age of seven, practically all dream, and the dull as frequently as the clever children. At certain ages children dream less frequently than at others. From the present investigation it appears that boys and girls of the ages of twelve and thirteen dream far less than before or afterwards. The age of maximum dreaming is given by different observers as between twenty and twenty-five years. Generally speaking, dreams increase with the variety and activity of the intellectual life.

Cause and Effect in Dreams.—One of the most remarkable characteristics of the dream is the entire absence of the relation of cause to effect. There is no reasoning in the dream, and nothing surprises the dreamer however inconsequent the juxtaposition of incongruous experiences. The extraordinary fascination of a fairy story for the child is due largely to its approach to the dream in this respect. The disappearance of anything in the nature of logical sequence gives scope for an infinite variety of grouping and gives a wealth of incident impossible in the affairs of everyday life. Many good examples of this are given in the selected dreams. For example, a girl who is swimming to save a friend from drowning meets a teacher in the water, who tells her to go back to school at once, because she has been selected to take the part of Julius Cæsar in the play. Another girl, in witnessing the funeral of her brother, sees the brother attending his own funeral, and during the procession her teacher goes through her sums with her to see how many mistakes she has made in her arithmetic. For wealth of incident one section of a dream which is quoted elsewhere may be mentioned in this connection. A girl’s father and mother are turned into cabbages and she prepares them for dinner. Just before putting them into the saucepan they turn again into father and mother, and ask her how she likes the aeroplane. She finds that she is in a Handley-Page. The aeroplane vanishes, and she finds herself swimming in the sea. The other two sections of the dream are equally full of incident.

In the record of many dreams conversations are given, but these are lacking in interest. Compared with the imagery, the grotesqueness and irrational grouping of incidents, the conversation, which obeys a certain logical order, appears commonplace. It is natural also that secondary elaboration should play more havoc with conversations than with the description of the other parts of the dream in bringing them more into touch with normal methods of speech. The absence of spatial relations adds to the weird sequence of events in the dream. The dreamer passes from the surroundings of the home to far distant scenes, has a variety of adventures and in an incredibly short space of time finds himself at home again. The change of the dreamer into animals, which occurs more frequently at certain ages than at others, is an additional element in separating the dream from any other type of experience.

The Kinæsthetic Dream.—The great variety of falling sensations, gliding, floating in the air or water, often accompanied by loss of muscular and speech control, are here included in the term Kinæsthetic Dream. The various explanations given of the cause of this type of dream are far from satisfactory. From the present investigation it appears—

(1) That children under the age of nine or ten years rarely experience it.

(2) That from ten years of age it increases in frequency fairly steadily up to the age of seventeen or eighteen.

(3) That well-fed children are more subject to it than those living under less favourable conditions.

(4) That regular institutional life tends to diminish this type of dream very considerably.

(5) That the deaf child scarcely ever has a kinæsthetic dream.

(6) That children who have had influenza or any type of malady accompanied by high temperature are particularly susceptible to it.

The differences between boys and girls of different ages in connection with the frequency and type of this kind of dream are discussed elsewhere.

The Book and the Dream.—There is abundant evidence that the dream of the child is much affected by the reading of an exciting book just before going to sleep. This type of dream has very definite characteristics of its own, and may not be so trustworthy in consequence of the obvious difficulty of separating the book story from the dream story. The child nearly always assumes the most attractive character in the book, not necessarily of the same sex, and the changes effected in the dream are sometimes very interesting, and if the dream could definitely be relied upon, might throw a light upon the dreamer’s character by the overemphasis of certain qualities of the hero or heroine.

Some children have a remarkable power of condensation and of giving an excellent abstract of a story in the dream. In other cases the general plot serves as a structure for a dream containing much material having no connection with the real story.

The book influences the blind child’s dream far more than that of other children, and the dreamer does not always take a part, but simply acts as the passive observer witnessing the unfolding of the story. The blind child generally has a far more accurate knowledge of the details of a book than the seeing child.

The Variation of the Type of Dream with Age.—As will be seen by the results of the analysis of children’s dreams, the content of the dream varies from age to age in the type of wish fulfilment, fear, main interest, and other particulars. It varies also with the state of health of the child. Certain elements appear practically at the same age with groups of children, and others disappear in equally regular order. A comparative study of wish fulfilments is most illuminating in showing the change of interest as age increases.

A series of dreams of the same child, recorded within a short time of each other, although they contain a variety of very different material, have certain characteristics of a constant nature which enter into the constitution of each dream and afford an excellent clue not only to the child’s chief interests, but give a certain amount of evidence as to the type of mental make-up to which it belongs.

Interpretation of Dreams.—The large amount of attention which has been given of recent years to the dreams of neurotics, together with the universal recognition of the great value of the dream in connection with the treatment of nervous diseases, has resulted, as has been pointed out, in a vast increase in our knowledge of dealing with the material of the unconscious.

It would be a great mistake to apply the methods which have proved so successful in these pathological cases to the dreams of normal, healthy children, though they may be of considerable value in investigating difficult cases among school children of unstable type, who do not respond to ordinary methods of instruction. The dream of the normal child may be invaluable in many directions, but it should always be borne in mind that the problem is a different one from the investigation of the dream of the neurotic. There is unquestionably a rich field for research in connection with the dreams of normal children, which may yield a harvest as abundant in educational procedure as that obtained by psycho-analysis in the realm of pathology.