Illusions : a psychological study.

  • Sully, James, 1842-1923.
Date:
1887
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illusions : a psychological study. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    priate dream-images. In this way, very slight disturb- ances which would hardly affect waking consciousness may make themselves felt during sleep. Thus, for example, an incipient toothache has been known to suggest that the teeth are being extracted.1 It is worth observing that the interpretation of these various orders of sensations by the imagination of the dreamer takes very different forms according to the person’s character, previous experience, ruling emotions, and so on. This is what is meant by saying that during sleep every man has a world of his own, whereas, when awake, he shares in the common world of perception. Bream-Exaggeration. It is to be noticed, further, that this interpretation of sensation during sleep is uniformly a process of exag- geration.3 The exciting causes of the feeling of dis- comfort, for example, are always absurdly magnified. The reason of this seems to be that, owing to the con- dition of the mind during sleep, the nature of the sensation is not clearly recognizable. Even in the case of familiar external impressions, such as the sound of the striking of a clock, there appears to be wanting that simple process of reaction by which, in a waking condition of the attention, a sense-impression is instantly discriminated and classed. In sleep, as in the artifi- 1 It is this fact which justifies writers in assigning a prognostic character to dreams. 1 A part of the apparent exaggeration in our dream-experiencos may be retrospective, and due to the effect of the impression of wonder which they leave behind them. (See Striimpell, Die Natur uuil Eulitehung der Tribune.)