CHAPTER IX.THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM.
Dream is essentially a psychological condition and therefore an important study for the Psychologist, for in dream we learn, not only what is the mechanism of the Mind, but also much of the manner in which its operations are performed. Dream teaches us what recent physiologists have by their experiments confirmed—that the mind is not structured as one homogeneous entity, the whole of which is employed in every mental act; but that it is a machine composed of parts, each of which has its own special function, exhibited in the various expressions which we call ideas, sentiments and emotions.
For convenience we have given to the entity, of which these various faculties are parts, the collective name of “Mind.” But it may well be questioned if such an entity exists. Certainly we cannot find it, whether we observe the action of our own minds or that of others. All that we can discover by help of our senses and by reasoning upon their information is the existence of a wonderfulpiece of Mechanism—the brain—by which the functions of Mind are performed and whose structure regulates the entire character of the Mind.
It is conclusively established that the individual Self, in its normal state of relationship to the body, can receive and convey impressions only through the medium of the brain. Remove the brain andmindceases to be, although life may linger long. Extract a part of the brain and a part of “the mind” goes with it. This result is sometimes obscured by the fact, not sufficiently recognised by the Physician and the Mental Philosopher, that we havetwobrains—two organs of Mind—one of which can act alone when the other is wholly or partially disabled. If a Dream be analysed, it is not difficult to trace the action of each separate faculty. The imagination supplies the picture, which we mistake for a reality because we have lost the means by which, when awake, we distinguish the mere mental creation from the impressions borne to us by the senses. Hence mental action precisely as if the ideal picture had been real as it is believed to be. The other mental faculties are called into play by the drama of the dream as they would have been by a living drama. It is not an imagined anger, or fear, or hate, that we feel in dream. The passions, emotions and sentiments are actually excited as they would be by the same objects presented whenwe are awake, only they are kindled by shadows created within and not by substances existing without.
But Psychology will gather from the phenomena of dream some very important conclusions. In dream the Mind is awake and at work, but it works wildly, insanely, without self-control. Something is absent in sleep that controls its action when we are awake. That absent controlling and directing force is theWill.
What isthe Will?
TheWillis the expression of theSelf—of theindividual being. It is the “I”—theYou—that commands, controls and directs thought and action.
This Conscious Self, which possesses the power we call theWill, is not, and cannot be, the material brain, nor the product of the brain, as the Materialists assert; for we see that in Dream the brain is in part awake and working without the assistance or control of the Will; proving that the Self, of whom the Will is the expression, is not identical with the brain.
Moreover, the Conscious Self, although taking cognizance of the action of the mind in dream, is nevertheless unable to direct its action; thus affording another proof that the Conscious Self and the material mechanism are not identical.
The phenomena of Dream, then, are thefactsfirst presented in the scientific investigation of Psychology from which we derive physicalproofsof the existence of aSoul in Man, not as a vague theory merely, but as shown by the positiveevidenceof his mechanism in action.