Chapter 10

[160]Thus A. Wiggam ('A Contribution to the Data of Dream Psychology,'Pedagogical Seminary, June 1909) records a great many wish-dreams, mostly in the young.[161]Laud,Works, vol. iii. p. 144.[162]Havelock Ellis,Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii., 'Love and Pain.'[163]The dramatic element in dreaming was dealt with at length by Carl du Prel (Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. i. ch. iii.), but he threw little light on it.[164]Thus in the Psychical Research Society's 'Report on theCensus of Hallucinations,' the case is given of an over-worked and worried man who, a few moments after leaving a tram car, had the vivid feeling that some one touched him on the shoulder, though on turning round he found no one near. He then remembered that on the car he had been leaning against an iron bolt, and that, therefore, what he had experienced was doubtless a spontaneous muscular contraction excited by the pressure (Proceedings, Society for Psychical Research, August 1894, p. 3). Touches felt on awakening, in correspondence with a dream, are not so very uncommon. Thus Wagner, when in love with Mathilde Wesendonk, wrote, in the private diary he kept for her, how, after a dream, 'as I awoke I distinctly felt a kiss on my brow.'[165]Various pressures lead to dreams of blood. Thus a friend with a weak heart tells me that when he sleeps on his left side he dreams of blood. In some of these cases it is possible that there are retinal sensations of red.[166]In theCensus of Hallucinations(chapter ix.) it was pointed out by the Psychical Research Society's Committee that hallucinations are specially apt to occur on awakening, or in the state between sleeping and waking; and Parish in his very searching study,Hallucinations and Illusions(Contemporary Science Series), has further developed this fact and insisted on its significance.[167]Dr. Johnson's remark on this point has often been quoted. He dreamed that he had been worsted in a verbal argument, and was thereby much mortified. 'Had not my judgment failed me,' he said, 'I should have seen that the wit of this supposed antagonist, by whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me as that which I thought I had been uttering in my own character' (Boswell'sJohnson, ed. by Hill, vol. iv. p. 5).[168]Maury,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, 1861, p. 118.[169]Delbœuf,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, pp. 24,et seq.[170]Foucault,Le Rêve, p. 137.[171]Giessler, 'Das Ich im Träume,'Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1905, Heft 4 and 5, pp. 300et seq.[172]See especially Pierre Janet's works, and also those of Morton Prince, Albert Wilson, etc. Flournoy's very elaborate study of Mlle. Helène Smith (Des Indes à la Planète Mars, 1900) is noteworthy. A summary of some important cases of multiple personality will be found in Marie de Manacéïne'sSleep, pp. 127et seq., and some bibliographical references,ib.p. 151.[173]J. Milne Bramwell argues ('Secondary and Multiple Personalities,'Brain, 1900) that such cases are not invariably hysterical.[174]See G. Stanley Hall, 'The Early Sense of Self,'American Journal of Psychology, April 1898. Cooley ('The Early Use of Self-Words by a Child,'Psychological Review, 1909, p. 94) finds that the child distinguishes between itself as (1) body and as (2) self-assertion united with action; it refers to the former as 'Baby,' and to the latter as 'I.'[175]See,e.g., Havelock Ellis,The Criminal, 4th ed., 1910, p. 367.[176]In the existing traditions of law and police, it is still possible to find many survivals of this tendency to objectify subjective impressions. Thus Mr. Theodore Schroeder has shown (Free Press Anthology, 1909, pp. 171et seq.) that the prosecutions which have in various so-called civilised countries pursued many estimable and even noble works of literature, science, and art are based on the primitive notion that 'indecency' resides in the object and not in the person who experiences the feeling, and who ought, therefore, alone to be suppressed, if suppression is called for. This psychological fallacy continues to subsist, though it was unmasked in the clearest manner even by St. Paul (e.g.Romans xiv. 14). It is somewhat analogous to the mediæval conception of the criminality of animals.[177]I may refer to the very interesting discussion by Professor G. F. Stout (Analytic Psychology, vol. ii. p. 145) of the conflict of systems in apperception, and of the suspense and deadlock which occur when two or more systems come into conflict in such a way that the success of one is the defeat of the other. The discussion is full of interest from its undesigned bearing on the phenomena of dreaming.[178]Foucault, for instance (Le Rêve, p. 25), discusses and illustrates dreams of this type. I am not here concerned with the causation of this type of dream. Perhaps, as Wundt believes, it is due to some physical discomfort of the sleeper, such as a cramped position, expressing itself symbolically.[179]It may be added that dreams of returning to the school scenes of early life are not necessarily always of the type here described, as may be illustrated by the dream already brought forward on p. 83, which, it is worth while noticing, occurred after a day on which I had been thinking over the dreams of this class.[180]I reproduce these two series in the same form as first published (Havelock Ellis, 'On Dreaming of the Dead,'Psychological Review, September 1895) since they have formed the starting point of my own and others' investigation into this type of dream.[181]It is well known, and has often been pointed out (by Weygandt, Sante de Sanctis, Jewell, etc., and perhaps first by T. Beddoes in hisHygeia, 1803, vol. iii. p. 88), that while in childhood all the emotions of the past day are at once echoed in dreams, after adolescence, this is not so in the case of intense emotions, which do not emerge in dreams until after a more or less considerable interval. Marie de Manacéïne and Sante de Sanctis attribute this to exhaustion of the emotion which needs a period of repair and organic synthesis before it can repeat itself. Vaschide believed that we dream of recent events in shallow sleep and of remote events in deep sleep; this sounds plausible, but will scarcely account for all the phenomena.[182]Since the publication of my paper 'On Dreaming of the Dead,' several psychologists have returned to the subject. Thus Binet (L'Année Psychologique, 2nd year, issued in 1896, p. 848) gave a dream of his own, very similar to mine of the editor, in which a doctor, dead a month previously, is talking to him in his room. On Binet expressing surprise at seeing him, the doctor explains that he had only sent news of his death in order to see how many people would come to his funeral. Binet has also had two dreams, similar to that described on p. 200, in which he is walking in the country with a dead friend, who seems in good health, though the dreamer knows he will soon die. Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 128), who, in accordance with his own theory, regards my dream of the editor as belonging to the period of awakening, brings forward a dream of his own in which he saw his father, dead six months before, sitting in a chair; at first this seems to him a hallucination, but he finally accepts the vision as real. I have had a number of letters from people who have had dreams of this type. One correspondent, an anthropologist and folk-lorist of note, says that his dreams of dead friends are of the type of Mrs. F.'s. Professor Näcke writes that he has had such dreams (and see also his articles in theArchiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, p. 307, and theNeurologisches Centralblatt, 1910, No. 13). One young lady states that, thirteen years after her mother's death, she still dreams of her as coming to life again or never having really died. I may add that this type of dream is admirably illustrated in a series of dreams concerning a dead friend, published in a letter from a lady toBorderland, January 1896, p. 51.[183]Gassendi,Syntagma Philosophicum, 1658, pars. 71, lib. viii. (Opéra Omnia, vol. i.).[184]Maury,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, p. 145.[185]American Journal of Psychology, July-October, 1903, p. 18.[186]Chabaneix,Le Subconscient chez les Artistes, les Savants et les Ecrivains, 1897, pp. 45-8. Chabaneix was in touch with various persons of distinction, and one is inclined to identify the poet-philosopher with Sully-Prudhomme, at that time still living. Du Maurier's remarkable novel,Peter Ibbetson—which records similar serial dreams of union with a beloved woman after death, and seems to be based on real experience—may also be mentioned in this connection.[187]Unconscious dream suggestions of this kind resemble, as R. MacDougall has remarked (Psychological Review, March 1898, p. 167), post-hypnotic suggestions.[188]This type of dream—in which the emotion of the day is inverted in sleep, depressing emotions giving place to exalting emotions, and so on—is by some (Griesinger, Lombroso, Sante de Sanctis, etc.), termed the contrast-dream. The dream is in such a case, Sante de Sanctis remarks, complementary, having the same significance as a complementary after-image and indicating a phase of anabolic repair. Thus A. Wiggam (Pedagogical Seminary, June 1909), gives the case of a girl of twenty, who when tired and restless always has good dreams, while her dreams are bad when she is well and free from care. It should be added that, as understood by Näcke ('Ueber Kontrast-Träume'Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1907), a contrast-dream is one that is in striking contrast to the dreamer's ordinary character. In this type of contrast-dream it is not quite clear that the mechanism is the same, and the contrast may sometimes be accidental. Thus a dream of being a soldier on a battlefield, with shells bursting around me, was merely suggested by a passage of Nietzsche, read in the evening, which contained the words 'the thunders of the battle of Wörth,' and the question of contrast or resemblance to my character and habits was irrelevant.[189]Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July-December 1904, p. 339.[190]See Herbert Spencer,Principles of Sociology, 3rd ed., 1885, vol. i. ch. x., especially pp. 140, 182, 201, 772. Spencer believed that Lubbock was the first to point out this factor in primitive beliefs, which has been chiefly developed by Tylor. It is, of course, by no means the only factor. Seepost, p. 266.[191]Thus Professor Beaunis (loc. cit.) considers that dreams furnish the only rational explanation of the belief in survival after death. Jewell, again (American Journal of Psychology, January 1905), also considers that dreams are responsible for primitive man's inability to conceive of death as ending our association with our friends; he brings forward evidence, highly significant in this connection, to show that children, on dreaming of the dead as alive, are influenced in waking life to doubt the reality of their death. Ruths, also writing since the publication of my first paper (Experimental-Untersuchungen über Musikphantome, 1898, pp. 438et seq.), considers that the conception of an under-world is founded on dreams of the dead coming to life.[192]It is as well to bear in mind that this dream occurred when Maury was a student, long before he began to study dreaming, and (as Egger has pointed out) was probably not written down until thirteen years later. On these grounds alone it is not entitled to serious consideration.[193]As Sir Samuel Wilks once remarked ('On the Nature of Dreams,'Medical Magazine, Feb. 1894), 'The dreamer merely forms a mental picture, and thedescriptionof it he calls his dream.'[194]Egger, 'La Durée apparente des Rêves,'Revue Philosophique, Jan. 1895, pp. 41-59; Clavière, 'La Rapidité de la Pensée dans le Rêve,'ib.May 1897, p. 509; Piéron, 'La Rapidité des Processes Psychiques,'ib.Jan. 1903, pp. 89-95; Foucault,Le Rêve, pp. 158et seq.;Tobolowska,Etude sur les Illusions du Temps dans les Rêves du Sommeil Normal:Thèse de Paris, 1900.[195]Thus Freud tells (Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, vol. i. part ii. p. 387) of a man who was obsessed by the idea that he should never pass money until he had carefully cleaned it, for fear he might be infecting other people, but was quite unaware that this obsession sprang from remorse due to his own sins of sexual impurity. In such a case there is, of course, not only a crumpling of consciousness, but a definite dislocation and transference of the parts.[196]We also see here an interesting dissociation of the motor (speech) centre from the visual centre; it is the latter which is in this instance most closely in touch with facts.[197]The 'selvdrolla' dream, recorded in a previous chapter (p. 43), illustrates the same point with the difference that the crumpled up portion of consciousness never became visible in the dream.[198]R. L. Stevenson, 'A Chapter on Dreams,' inAcross the Plains, 1892.[199]In most cases the missing memory, after making itself felt outside the conscious area, seems to reach that area, not so much by its own spontaneous unconscious movement as by a tentative search for clues. Thus I read one day the words 'the breaking of a goblet by a little black imp,' and immediately became conscious that I was reminded of something similar in recent experience, but could not tell what. I asked myself if it could have been in a dream. In a few moments, however, the memory recurred to me that two hours previously I had noticed a broken vase, and casually wondered how it had become broken. Under such circumstances we are for a time thinking of something, and yet have no conscious knowledge as to what we are thinking of.[200]Jastrow remarks, somewhat in the same way (The Subconscious, p. 93), that 'a letting down of the effort, a focusing of the mind upon a point a little or a good deal to one side of the fixation point, distinctly aids the mental vision.' The process seems, however, to be most effective when it is automatic, for attention cannot easily relax its own tension. A large number of the discoveries and solutions of difficulties effected in dreams are due to this dispersal of attention over a wider field, so enabling the missing relationship to be detected. See, for instance, some cases recorded by Newbold (Psychological Review, March 1896, p. 132), as of Dr. Hilprecht, the Assyriologist, who discovered in a dream that two fragments of tablets he had vainly been endeavouring to decipher, were really parts of the same tablet.[201]Hypermnesia, or excessive memory, is found in waking life in various abnormal conditions. It is not uncommon in men of genius; Macaulay is a well-known example. It scarcely seems, however, an especially favourable condition for keen intellectual power; the mental machine that is clogged with unnecessary and unimportant facts can scarcely fail to work under difficulties. 'Hypermnesia,' remarks Stoddart ('Early Symptoms of Mental Disease,'British Medical Journal, 11th May 1907), 'occurs most frequently in certain cases of idiocy, and in some cases of chronic mania. One such patient could enumerate all the occasions when any given medical officer had played tennis since he entered the institution.' Hypermnesia in dreams has been dealt with by Carl du Prel,Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. ii. ch. i.[202]This delay is worth mentioning, for it is conceivable that, in the case of a weak recollection, transference to the subconscious sphere of sleep might involve a temporary disappearance from the conscious waking sphere.[203]There is a possible interest in the exact length of the interval. Swoboda (Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus in ihrer psychologischen und biologischen Bedeutung, 1904) believes that the recurrence of memories tends to obey a law of periodicity, so that, for instance, a melody heard at a concert may recur at a regular interval. I cannot say that I have myself found evidence of such periodicity, though I have made several observations on the recurrence of such memories.[204]Similarly, Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 79) records the dream of a lady concerning a place called Brétigny, near Dijon, though when awake she was not aware there is such a place there. Elsewhere (p. 214) Foucault also gives examples of sensations, not consciously perceived in the waking state, but revived in dream. Beaunis, in his interesting 'Contribution à la Psychologie du Rêve' (American Journal of Psychology, July-Oct. 1903) narrates a dream of his own in which a forgotten or unconscious memory revived. Many such dreams could easily be brought together. An often-quoted dream, apparently of this kind (seee.g.,British Medical Journal, 7th April 1900, p. 850), is that of Archbishop Benson who, like his predecessor, Laud, took an interest in his dreams. He dreamed that he was suffering severely in his chest, and that his doctor, on being called in, told him that he had angĭna pectoris. The archbishop in his dream exclaimed with indignation: 'Angǐna, angǐna!' The dream made such an impression on him that he looked the matter up, but only found the ordinary pronunciation, angīna, recorded. A week later he was at Cambridge, dining in hall at Trinity, and seated next to Munro, the Professor of Latin, who happened to ask him about the death of Thomas Arnold. 'He died of angĭna pectoris,' said Benson. Munro smiled grimly and said softly: 'Of angǐna, as we now call it.' There can be no doubt that Benson, who was closely in touch with the academic world, had met with this correction, which is accepted by all modern Latinists, and 'forgotten' it.[205]Xenoglossia, as well as the tendency to utter gibberish, are both classed under glossolalia. Seee.g.E. Lombard, 'Phenomènes de Glossolalie,'Archives de Psychologie, July 1907.[206]In the eighteenth century Lord Monboddo (Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii., 1782, p. 217) referred to a Countess of Laval who, during the delirium of illness, spoke the Breton tongue which she had known as a child, but long since forgotten.[207]In a somewhat similar manner the muscular contractions of the hysterical may disappear during sleep, as may their paralyses and their anaesthesias, as well as their losses of memory. (These phenomena have been especially observed and studied by Raymond and Janet,Névroses et Idées Fixes, vol. ii.) Such characteristics of the sleep of the hysterical may well be a manifestation of the same tendency which in the sleep of normal people leads to hypermnesia. In this connection reference may be made to the interesting opposition between attention and memory developed by Dr. Marie de Manacéïne ('De l'antagonisme qui existe entre chaque effort de l'attention et des innervations motrices,'Atti dell' XI. Congresso Internazionale Medico, 1894, Rome, vol. ii., 'Fisiologia,' p. 48). Concentrated attention, she argues, paralyses memory, and there is an absolute antagonism between motor innervation, or real movement, which favours memory, and the concentrated effort which favours attention. 'In psychological researches we must always separate the phenomena of memory from the phenomena of attention, for memory is only possible through muscular movement, and attention, on the contrary, is only active through the suppression of movement.' In sleep, it is true, there may be no actual movement, but there is relaxation of muscular tension and freedom of motor ideas. It should be added that not all investigators confirm Manacéïne's conclusion as to the antagonism between the conditions for memory and attention. Thus R. MacDougall ('The Physical Characteristics of Attention,'Psychological Review, March 1895), while finding that muscular relaxation accompanies the recall of memories, finds also, though not so markedly and constantly, a similar relaxation accompanying both voluntary and spontaneous attention.[208]The term 'paramnesia' was devised by Kraepelin, who wrote the first comprehensive study of the subject, though he offered no explanatory theory of it ('Ueber Erinnerungsfälschungen,'Archiv für Psychiatrie, Bd. xvii. and xviii.). A very clear and comprehensive account of the subject, up to the date of the article, was given by W. H. Burnham ('Paramnesia,'American Journal of Psychology, May 1889). In the following pages, together with much new matter, I have made use of my paper entitled 'A Note on Hypnagogic Paramnesia,' published inMind, vol. vi. No. 22, in 1896.[209]It has long been recognised by psychologists that paramnesia occurs in dreams. Thus Burnham refers to it as frequent, and Kraepelin mentions that he once dreamed of smoking a cigar for the fourth or fifth time, though he had never smoked in his life.[210]Inalcoholicinsanity, for instance, especially when it leads to the occurrence of Korsakoff's syndrome, there is a notable degree of mental weakness with a tendency to form false memories, both in the form of confabulation (or the filling by imagination of lacunae in memory) and pseudo-reminiscence. (Seee.g.John Turner, 'Alcoholic Insanity,'Journal of Mental Science, Jan. 1910, p. 41.)[211]Dr. Marie de Manacéïne, who has studied the phenomena of the hypnagogic state experimentally in much detail (Sleep, pp. 195-220), finds that in its deepest stage it is marked by echolalia, or the tendency to repeat automatically what is said, and in a less deep stage by abnormal suggestibility or the tendency to accept ideas and especially emotions. She considers that the hypnagogic state becomes abnormal when it lasts for more than fifteen seconds. It may last for more than six minutes, and is then of serious import. She shows reason to believe that the hypnagogic state is substantially identical with the hypnotic state, and she regards it as probably due to cerebral anaemia. She finds it especially marked in children under fifteen, the more so if they belong to the working-class, and rather common among adolescent girls and young women, especially if anaemic, but among adults rarer in women than in men, becoming more frequent in both sexes with old age; the phlegmatic are more liable to it than the sanguine or the nervous.[212]Sully,The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 317. Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 300), briefly notes that he has often had the illusion of seeming to remember a fact which does not exist, and of recollecting a person he has never seen.[213]F. W. Colegrove, 'Individual Memories,'American Journal of Psychology, Jan. 1899.[214]Seee.g.for such cases in sane persons, Hack Tuke, 'Hallucinations,'Brain, vol. xi., 1889. A man with chronic systematised delusions writes: 'I am obsessed at nights; that is, I am made the recipient of projected thoughts which become translated into dreams, and on several occasions I have found, just after waking, and while still in a very passive state, that some one was speaking to me in the ear.'[215]Hughlings Jackson (Practitioner, May 1874, alsoBrain, July 1888, andBrain, 1899, p. 534) applied this term to the intellectual aura preceding an epileptic attack and considered that 'pseudo-reminiscence' itself might indicate a slight epileptic paroxysm in persons who show other symptoms of epilepsy. Gowers also (Epilepsy, 2nd ed., p. 133) considers 'dreamy state' to be closely associated with minor attacks of epilepsy; and Crichton-Browne (Dreamy Mental States) holds the same view. It should be added that 'dreamy state' by no means necessarily involves pseudo-reminiscence; seee.g.S. Taylor, 'A Case of Dreamy State,'Lancet, 9th Aug. 1890, p. 276, and W. A. Turner, 'The Problem of Epilepsy,'British Medical Journal, 2nd April 1910, p. 805. Leroy found that pseudo-reminiscence is usually rare in association with epilepsy.[216]'The feeling of pre-existence,' writes Dr. J. G. Kiernan in a private letter, 'frequently occurs as a consequence of delusions of memory in epilepsy. The case on which George Sand built her story ofConsuelowas one reported of an epileptic who during the epileptic states had delusions of living in a distant historic past of which he retained the memory as facts during the normal state. I know of two epileptic theosophists who base their belief in transmigration on the memories of their epileptic period. In my judgment a large part of Swedenborg's visions were instances of delusions of memory.'[217]Professor Grasset ('La Sensation du "Déjà Vu,"'Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, Nov.-Feb. 1904) considers that a feeling of anguish is the characteristic accompaniment of a true paramnesic manifestation. This statement is too pronounced. There is usually some emotional disturbance, but its degree depends on the temperament of the person experiencing the phenomenon. Sometimes the sensation of pseudo-reminiscence may be accompanied, as a medical man subject to epilepsy (mentioned by Hughlings Jackson) found in his own case, by 'a slight sense of satisfaction,' as in the finding of something that had been sought for.[218]Revue Philosophique, November 1893.[219]Revue Philosophique, January 1894.[220]Heymans found that students liable to paramnesia tended to possess an aptitude for languages and an inaptitude for mathematics.[221]Paul Bourget, the novelist, in an interesting letter published by Grasset (loc. cit.) states that this experience has been habitual with him from as long back as he can remember, occurring in regard to things heard or felt more than to things seen, and accompanied by an emotional trouble similar to that experienced in dreams of dead friends who appear as living, though even in his dreams the dreamer knows that they are dead. Bourget adds that he is of emotional temperament, and that the phenomenon was more pronounced in childhood than it is now.[222]Paul Lapie,Revue Philosophique, March 1894; CharlesMéré, Mercure de France, July 1903; Sully, Tannery, and Buccola also considered that this is a factor in the explanation of the phenomenon. Freud (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben, 1907, p. 122) brings forward a modification of this theory, and believes that false recognition is a reminiscence of unconscious day-dreams.[223]For a minute and searching criticism of the theory of the duplex brain, see especially four articles by Bonne in theArchives de Neurologie, March-June 1907.[224]'Epilepsy' wrote Binns long ago (Anatomy of Sleep, 1845, p. 431), 'is a disease which in some of its symptoms strongly resembles abnormal sleep.' The conditions under which a paramnesic manifestation may really replace an epileptic fit are well described by a literary man with hereditary epilepsy whose case has been recorded by Haskovec of Prague (XIIIe. Congrès International de Médecine: Comptes Rendus, vol. viii., 'Psychiatrie' p. 125): 'One day at the theatre, under the influence of the heat and perhaps the music, I experienced extreme excitement and fatigue. I thought I was about to have an attack, and resisted with all my strength, and it failed to take place. But I found myself in a strange psychic state. On leaving the theatre I seemed to be dreaming. I saw and heard everything and talked as usual. But everything seemed strange. Nothing seemed to reach directlymeor to be a real impression, but merely the automatic reproduction of something learnt, only I felt that I had lived it all before and felt it; at that moment I simply seemed to be observing it.'[225]Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, April 1886. In some forms of insanity the false recognition of a person may become a fixed delusion. This question has been studied by Albès in his Paris thesis,De I'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, 1906.[226]E. Maitland,Anna Kingsford, vol. i. p. 3. Lalande (Revue Philosophique, November 1893, p. 487) gives a precisely similar case in a child.[227]As quoted by Jastrow,The Subconscious, p. 248.[228]Leroy,Etude sur l'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, 1898, with forty-nine new observations. Leroy states, however (in declared opposition to my view), that only a minority of his cases actually mention fatigue.[229]Heymans, 'Eine Enquête über Depersonnalisation und Fausse Reconnaissance,'Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, November, 1903; also a further paper in the same journal confirming his conclusions, January 1906.[230]Féré, 'Deuxième Note sur la Fausse Reconnaissance,'Journal de Neurologie, 1905.[231]Dromard et Albès, 'L'Illusion dit de Fausse Reconnaissance,'Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, May-June 1905.[232]Dugas, 'Observations sur des Erreurs "Formelles" de la Mémoire,'Revue Philosophique, July 1908.[233]A friend, liable to this form of paramnesia, wrote to me after the publication of my first paper on the subject: 'I find, as you foretold, that it is difficult to recall an experience of this kind in all its details. I feel sure, however, that it is not necessarily allied with an enfeebled or overwrought nervous system. It was commonest with me in my youth, at a time when my life was a pleasant one, and my brain not fagged as now. I still [aged 43] have it occasionally, but not so frequently as twenty years ago.' It may be added that my friend, of Highland family, was a man of keen and emotional nervous temperament, a strenuous mental worker—whence at one time a serious breakdown in health—and had published two volumes of poems in early life. The greater liability to paramnesia in early life, which is generally recognised, is comparable to the special liability of children to hypnagogic visions, both phenomena being probably due to the greater excitability and easier exhaustibility of the youthful brain.[234]For instance, by Allin, 'Recognition,'American Journal of Psychology, January 1896.[235]The explanation of paramnesia here set forth received on its first publication the approval of Léon Marillier, who considered it 'ingenious and seductive,' and as adequately accounting for the phenomena, provided we bear in mind that the loss of a clear feeling of time is characteristic of hypnagogic and allied states, the perception of each moment being immediately transferred into an ancient memory, and consequently recognised (L'Année Biologique, third year, 1897, p. 772). This necessity for taking into account the co-existence of perception and illusory remembrance has largely moulded several of the theories of paramnesia. Thus Jean de Pury (Archives de Psychologie, December 1902), while affirming that pseudo-reminiscence is due to ananteriorisationof actual perceptions, regards it as of the nature of a double refraction such as that simultaneously produced on two faces of a prism by the same image; under the influence of conditions he is unable to define, an image appears for the moment on the plane both of the past and of the present, and psychically we see double just as physically we see double when the parallelism of our visual rays is disturbed. Piéron, again, taking up a theory at one time favoured by Dugas, and previously suggested in one form or another by Ribot and Fouillée, assumes the formation of two images: one which, owing to distraction or fatigue, reaches consciousness after having traversed subconsciousness, and so takes on a dream-like and effaced character, and almost simultaneously with this a direct perception which has not thus changed its character; the shock of the conflict between these two produces the pseudo-reminiscence ('Sur l'Interpretation des Faits de Paramnésie,'Revue Philosophique, August 1902). Albès, in his Paris thesis, criticises this explanation, pointing out that a sequence of this kind very frequently occurs, but produces no pseudo-reminiscence.

[160]Thus A. Wiggam ('A Contribution to the Data of Dream Psychology,'Pedagogical Seminary, June 1909) records a great many wish-dreams, mostly in the young.

[161]Laud,Works, vol. iii. p. 144.

[162]Havelock Ellis,Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii., 'Love and Pain.'

[163]The dramatic element in dreaming was dealt with at length by Carl du Prel (Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. i. ch. iii.), but he threw little light on it.

[164]Thus in the Psychical Research Society's 'Report on theCensus of Hallucinations,' the case is given of an over-worked and worried man who, a few moments after leaving a tram car, had the vivid feeling that some one touched him on the shoulder, though on turning round he found no one near. He then remembered that on the car he had been leaning against an iron bolt, and that, therefore, what he had experienced was doubtless a spontaneous muscular contraction excited by the pressure (Proceedings, Society for Psychical Research, August 1894, p. 3). Touches felt on awakening, in correspondence with a dream, are not so very uncommon. Thus Wagner, when in love with Mathilde Wesendonk, wrote, in the private diary he kept for her, how, after a dream, 'as I awoke I distinctly felt a kiss on my brow.'

[165]Various pressures lead to dreams of blood. Thus a friend with a weak heart tells me that when he sleeps on his left side he dreams of blood. In some of these cases it is possible that there are retinal sensations of red.

[166]In theCensus of Hallucinations(chapter ix.) it was pointed out by the Psychical Research Society's Committee that hallucinations are specially apt to occur on awakening, or in the state between sleeping and waking; and Parish in his very searching study,Hallucinations and Illusions(Contemporary Science Series), has further developed this fact and insisted on its significance.

[167]Dr. Johnson's remark on this point has often been quoted. He dreamed that he had been worsted in a verbal argument, and was thereby much mortified. 'Had not my judgment failed me,' he said, 'I should have seen that the wit of this supposed antagonist, by whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me as that which I thought I had been uttering in my own character' (Boswell'sJohnson, ed. by Hill, vol. iv. p. 5).

[168]Maury,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, 1861, p. 118.

[169]Delbœuf,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, pp. 24,et seq.

[170]Foucault,Le Rêve, p. 137.

[171]Giessler, 'Das Ich im Träume,'Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1905, Heft 4 and 5, pp. 300et seq.

[172]See especially Pierre Janet's works, and also those of Morton Prince, Albert Wilson, etc. Flournoy's very elaborate study of Mlle. Helène Smith (Des Indes à la Planète Mars, 1900) is noteworthy. A summary of some important cases of multiple personality will be found in Marie de Manacéïne'sSleep, pp. 127et seq., and some bibliographical references,ib.p. 151.

[173]J. Milne Bramwell argues ('Secondary and Multiple Personalities,'Brain, 1900) that such cases are not invariably hysterical.

[174]See G. Stanley Hall, 'The Early Sense of Self,'American Journal of Psychology, April 1898. Cooley ('The Early Use of Self-Words by a Child,'Psychological Review, 1909, p. 94) finds that the child distinguishes between itself as (1) body and as (2) self-assertion united with action; it refers to the former as 'Baby,' and to the latter as 'I.'

[175]See,e.g., Havelock Ellis,The Criminal, 4th ed., 1910, p. 367.

[176]In the existing traditions of law and police, it is still possible to find many survivals of this tendency to objectify subjective impressions. Thus Mr. Theodore Schroeder has shown (Free Press Anthology, 1909, pp. 171et seq.) that the prosecutions which have in various so-called civilised countries pursued many estimable and even noble works of literature, science, and art are based on the primitive notion that 'indecency' resides in the object and not in the person who experiences the feeling, and who ought, therefore, alone to be suppressed, if suppression is called for. This psychological fallacy continues to subsist, though it was unmasked in the clearest manner even by St. Paul (e.g.Romans xiv. 14). It is somewhat analogous to the mediæval conception of the criminality of animals.

[177]I may refer to the very interesting discussion by Professor G. F. Stout (Analytic Psychology, vol. ii. p. 145) of the conflict of systems in apperception, and of the suspense and deadlock which occur when two or more systems come into conflict in such a way that the success of one is the defeat of the other. The discussion is full of interest from its undesigned bearing on the phenomena of dreaming.

[178]Foucault, for instance (Le Rêve, p. 25), discusses and illustrates dreams of this type. I am not here concerned with the causation of this type of dream. Perhaps, as Wundt believes, it is due to some physical discomfort of the sleeper, such as a cramped position, expressing itself symbolically.

[179]It may be added that dreams of returning to the school scenes of early life are not necessarily always of the type here described, as may be illustrated by the dream already brought forward on p. 83, which, it is worth while noticing, occurred after a day on which I had been thinking over the dreams of this class.

[180]I reproduce these two series in the same form as first published (Havelock Ellis, 'On Dreaming of the Dead,'Psychological Review, September 1895) since they have formed the starting point of my own and others' investigation into this type of dream.

[181]It is well known, and has often been pointed out (by Weygandt, Sante de Sanctis, Jewell, etc., and perhaps first by T. Beddoes in hisHygeia, 1803, vol. iii. p. 88), that while in childhood all the emotions of the past day are at once echoed in dreams, after adolescence, this is not so in the case of intense emotions, which do not emerge in dreams until after a more or less considerable interval. Marie de Manacéïne and Sante de Sanctis attribute this to exhaustion of the emotion which needs a period of repair and organic synthesis before it can repeat itself. Vaschide believed that we dream of recent events in shallow sleep and of remote events in deep sleep; this sounds plausible, but will scarcely account for all the phenomena.

[182]Since the publication of my paper 'On Dreaming of the Dead,' several psychologists have returned to the subject. Thus Binet (L'Année Psychologique, 2nd year, issued in 1896, p. 848) gave a dream of his own, very similar to mine of the editor, in which a doctor, dead a month previously, is talking to him in his room. On Binet expressing surprise at seeing him, the doctor explains that he had only sent news of his death in order to see how many people would come to his funeral. Binet has also had two dreams, similar to that described on p. 200, in which he is walking in the country with a dead friend, who seems in good health, though the dreamer knows he will soon die. Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 128), who, in accordance with his own theory, regards my dream of the editor as belonging to the period of awakening, brings forward a dream of his own in which he saw his father, dead six months before, sitting in a chair; at first this seems to him a hallucination, but he finally accepts the vision as real. I have had a number of letters from people who have had dreams of this type. One correspondent, an anthropologist and folk-lorist of note, says that his dreams of dead friends are of the type of Mrs. F.'s. Professor Näcke writes that he has had such dreams (and see also his articles in theArchiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, p. 307, and theNeurologisches Centralblatt, 1910, No. 13). One young lady states that, thirteen years after her mother's death, she still dreams of her as coming to life again or never having really died. I may add that this type of dream is admirably illustrated in a series of dreams concerning a dead friend, published in a letter from a lady toBorderland, January 1896, p. 51.

[183]Gassendi,Syntagma Philosophicum, 1658, pars. 71, lib. viii. (Opéra Omnia, vol. i.).

[184]Maury,Le Sommeil et les Rêves, p. 145.

[185]American Journal of Psychology, July-October, 1903, p. 18.

[186]Chabaneix,Le Subconscient chez les Artistes, les Savants et les Ecrivains, 1897, pp. 45-8. Chabaneix was in touch with various persons of distinction, and one is inclined to identify the poet-philosopher with Sully-Prudhomme, at that time still living. Du Maurier's remarkable novel,Peter Ibbetson—which records similar serial dreams of union with a beloved woman after death, and seems to be based on real experience—may also be mentioned in this connection.

[187]Unconscious dream suggestions of this kind resemble, as R. MacDougall has remarked (Psychological Review, March 1898, p. 167), post-hypnotic suggestions.

[188]This type of dream—in which the emotion of the day is inverted in sleep, depressing emotions giving place to exalting emotions, and so on—is by some (Griesinger, Lombroso, Sante de Sanctis, etc.), termed the contrast-dream. The dream is in such a case, Sante de Sanctis remarks, complementary, having the same significance as a complementary after-image and indicating a phase of anabolic repair. Thus A. Wiggam (Pedagogical Seminary, June 1909), gives the case of a girl of twenty, who when tired and restless always has good dreams, while her dreams are bad when she is well and free from care. It should be added that, as understood by Näcke ('Ueber Kontrast-Träume'Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1907), a contrast-dream is one that is in striking contrast to the dreamer's ordinary character. In this type of contrast-dream it is not quite clear that the mechanism is the same, and the contrast may sometimes be accidental. Thus a dream of being a soldier on a battlefield, with shells bursting around me, was merely suggested by a passage of Nietzsche, read in the evening, which contained the words 'the thunders of the battle of Wörth,' and the question of contrast or resemblance to my character and habits was irrelevant.

[189]Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July-December 1904, p. 339.

[190]See Herbert Spencer,Principles of Sociology, 3rd ed., 1885, vol. i. ch. x., especially pp. 140, 182, 201, 772. Spencer believed that Lubbock was the first to point out this factor in primitive beliefs, which has been chiefly developed by Tylor. It is, of course, by no means the only factor. Seepost, p. 266.

[191]Thus Professor Beaunis (loc. cit.) considers that dreams furnish the only rational explanation of the belief in survival after death. Jewell, again (American Journal of Psychology, January 1905), also considers that dreams are responsible for primitive man's inability to conceive of death as ending our association with our friends; he brings forward evidence, highly significant in this connection, to show that children, on dreaming of the dead as alive, are influenced in waking life to doubt the reality of their death. Ruths, also writing since the publication of my first paper (Experimental-Untersuchungen über Musikphantome, 1898, pp. 438et seq.), considers that the conception of an under-world is founded on dreams of the dead coming to life.

[192]It is as well to bear in mind that this dream occurred when Maury was a student, long before he began to study dreaming, and (as Egger has pointed out) was probably not written down until thirteen years later. On these grounds alone it is not entitled to serious consideration.

[193]As Sir Samuel Wilks once remarked ('On the Nature of Dreams,'Medical Magazine, Feb. 1894), 'The dreamer merely forms a mental picture, and thedescriptionof it he calls his dream.'

[194]Egger, 'La Durée apparente des Rêves,'Revue Philosophique, Jan. 1895, pp. 41-59; Clavière, 'La Rapidité de la Pensée dans le Rêve,'ib.May 1897, p. 509; Piéron, 'La Rapidité des Processes Psychiques,'ib.Jan. 1903, pp. 89-95; Foucault,Le Rêve, pp. 158et seq.;Tobolowska,Etude sur les Illusions du Temps dans les Rêves du Sommeil Normal:Thèse de Paris, 1900.

[195]Thus Freud tells (Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, vol. i. part ii. p. 387) of a man who was obsessed by the idea that he should never pass money until he had carefully cleaned it, for fear he might be infecting other people, but was quite unaware that this obsession sprang from remorse due to his own sins of sexual impurity. In such a case there is, of course, not only a crumpling of consciousness, but a definite dislocation and transference of the parts.

[196]We also see here an interesting dissociation of the motor (speech) centre from the visual centre; it is the latter which is in this instance most closely in touch with facts.

[197]The 'selvdrolla' dream, recorded in a previous chapter (p. 43), illustrates the same point with the difference that the crumpled up portion of consciousness never became visible in the dream.

[198]R. L. Stevenson, 'A Chapter on Dreams,' inAcross the Plains, 1892.

[199]In most cases the missing memory, after making itself felt outside the conscious area, seems to reach that area, not so much by its own spontaneous unconscious movement as by a tentative search for clues. Thus I read one day the words 'the breaking of a goblet by a little black imp,' and immediately became conscious that I was reminded of something similar in recent experience, but could not tell what. I asked myself if it could have been in a dream. In a few moments, however, the memory recurred to me that two hours previously I had noticed a broken vase, and casually wondered how it had become broken. Under such circumstances we are for a time thinking of something, and yet have no conscious knowledge as to what we are thinking of.

[200]Jastrow remarks, somewhat in the same way (The Subconscious, p. 93), that 'a letting down of the effort, a focusing of the mind upon a point a little or a good deal to one side of the fixation point, distinctly aids the mental vision.' The process seems, however, to be most effective when it is automatic, for attention cannot easily relax its own tension. A large number of the discoveries and solutions of difficulties effected in dreams are due to this dispersal of attention over a wider field, so enabling the missing relationship to be detected. See, for instance, some cases recorded by Newbold (Psychological Review, March 1896, p. 132), as of Dr. Hilprecht, the Assyriologist, who discovered in a dream that two fragments of tablets he had vainly been endeavouring to decipher, were really parts of the same tablet.

[201]Hypermnesia, or excessive memory, is found in waking life in various abnormal conditions. It is not uncommon in men of genius; Macaulay is a well-known example. It scarcely seems, however, an especially favourable condition for keen intellectual power; the mental machine that is clogged with unnecessary and unimportant facts can scarcely fail to work under difficulties. 'Hypermnesia,' remarks Stoddart ('Early Symptoms of Mental Disease,'British Medical Journal, 11th May 1907), 'occurs most frequently in certain cases of idiocy, and in some cases of chronic mania. One such patient could enumerate all the occasions when any given medical officer had played tennis since he entered the institution.' Hypermnesia in dreams has been dealt with by Carl du Prel,Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. ii. ch. i.

[202]This delay is worth mentioning, for it is conceivable that, in the case of a weak recollection, transference to the subconscious sphere of sleep might involve a temporary disappearance from the conscious waking sphere.

[203]There is a possible interest in the exact length of the interval. Swoboda (Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus in ihrer psychologischen und biologischen Bedeutung, 1904) believes that the recurrence of memories tends to obey a law of periodicity, so that, for instance, a melody heard at a concert may recur at a regular interval. I cannot say that I have myself found evidence of such periodicity, though I have made several observations on the recurrence of such memories.

[204]Similarly, Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 79) records the dream of a lady concerning a place called Brétigny, near Dijon, though when awake she was not aware there is such a place there. Elsewhere (p. 214) Foucault also gives examples of sensations, not consciously perceived in the waking state, but revived in dream. Beaunis, in his interesting 'Contribution à la Psychologie du Rêve' (American Journal of Psychology, July-Oct. 1903) narrates a dream of his own in which a forgotten or unconscious memory revived. Many such dreams could easily be brought together. An often-quoted dream, apparently of this kind (seee.g.,British Medical Journal, 7th April 1900, p. 850), is that of Archbishop Benson who, like his predecessor, Laud, took an interest in his dreams. He dreamed that he was suffering severely in his chest, and that his doctor, on being called in, told him that he had angĭna pectoris. The archbishop in his dream exclaimed with indignation: 'Angǐna, angǐna!' The dream made such an impression on him that he looked the matter up, but only found the ordinary pronunciation, angīna, recorded. A week later he was at Cambridge, dining in hall at Trinity, and seated next to Munro, the Professor of Latin, who happened to ask him about the death of Thomas Arnold. 'He died of angĭna pectoris,' said Benson. Munro smiled grimly and said softly: 'Of angǐna, as we now call it.' There can be no doubt that Benson, who was closely in touch with the academic world, had met with this correction, which is accepted by all modern Latinists, and 'forgotten' it.

[205]Xenoglossia, as well as the tendency to utter gibberish, are both classed under glossolalia. Seee.g.E. Lombard, 'Phenomènes de Glossolalie,'Archives de Psychologie, July 1907.

[206]In the eighteenth century Lord Monboddo (Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii., 1782, p. 217) referred to a Countess of Laval who, during the delirium of illness, spoke the Breton tongue which she had known as a child, but long since forgotten.

[207]In a somewhat similar manner the muscular contractions of the hysterical may disappear during sleep, as may their paralyses and their anaesthesias, as well as their losses of memory. (These phenomena have been especially observed and studied by Raymond and Janet,Névroses et Idées Fixes, vol. ii.) Such characteristics of the sleep of the hysterical may well be a manifestation of the same tendency which in the sleep of normal people leads to hypermnesia. In this connection reference may be made to the interesting opposition between attention and memory developed by Dr. Marie de Manacéïne ('De l'antagonisme qui existe entre chaque effort de l'attention et des innervations motrices,'Atti dell' XI. Congresso Internazionale Medico, 1894, Rome, vol. ii., 'Fisiologia,' p. 48). Concentrated attention, she argues, paralyses memory, and there is an absolute antagonism between motor innervation, or real movement, which favours memory, and the concentrated effort which favours attention. 'In psychological researches we must always separate the phenomena of memory from the phenomena of attention, for memory is only possible through muscular movement, and attention, on the contrary, is only active through the suppression of movement.' In sleep, it is true, there may be no actual movement, but there is relaxation of muscular tension and freedom of motor ideas. It should be added that not all investigators confirm Manacéïne's conclusion as to the antagonism between the conditions for memory and attention. Thus R. MacDougall ('The Physical Characteristics of Attention,'Psychological Review, March 1895), while finding that muscular relaxation accompanies the recall of memories, finds also, though not so markedly and constantly, a similar relaxation accompanying both voluntary and spontaneous attention.

[208]The term 'paramnesia' was devised by Kraepelin, who wrote the first comprehensive study of the subject, though he offered no explanatory theory of it ('Ueber Erinnerungsfälschungen,'Archiv für Psychiatrie, Bd. xvii. and xviii.). A very clear and comprehensive account of the subject, up to the date of the article, was given by W. H. Burnham ('Paramnesia,'American Journal of Psychology, May 1889). In the following pages, together with much new matter, I have made use of my paper entitled 'A Note on Hypnagogic Paramnesia,' published inMind, vol. vi. No. 22, in 1896.

[209]It has long been recognised by psychologists that paramnesia occurs in dreams. Thus Burnham refers to it as frequent, and Kraepelin mentions that he once dreamed of smoking a cigar for the fourth or fifth time, though he had never smoked in his life.

[210]Inalcoholicinsanity, for instance, especially when it leads to the occurrence of Korsakoff's syndrome, there is a notable degree of mental weakness with a tendency to form false memories, both in the form of confabulation (or the filling by imagination of lacunae in memory) and pseudo-reminiscence. (Seee.g.John Turner, 'Alcoholic Insanity,'Journal of Mental Science, Jan. 1910, p. 41.)

[211]Dr. Marie de Manacéïne, who has studied the phenomena of the hypnagogic state experimentally in much detail (Sleep, pp. 195-220), finds that in its deepest stage it is marked by echolalia, or the tendency to repeat automatically what is said, and in a less deep stage by abnormal suggestibility or the tendency to accept ideas and especially emotions. She considers that the hypnagogic state becomes abnormal when it lasts for more than fifteen seconds. It may last for more than six minutes, and is then of serious import. She shows reason to believe that the hypnagogic state is substantially identical with the hypnotic state, and she regards it as probably due to cerebral anaemia. She finds it especially marked in children under fifteen, the more so if they belong to the working-class, and rather common among adolescent girls and young women, especially if anaemic, but among adults rarer in women than in men, becoming more frequent in both sexes with old age; the phlegmatic are more liable to it than the sanguine or the nervous.

[212]Sully,The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 317. Foucault (Le Rêve, p. 300), briefly notes that he has often had the illusion of seeming to remember a fact which does not exist, and of recollecting a person he has never seen.

[213]F. W. Colegrove, 'Individual Memories,'American Journal of Psychology, Jan. 1899.

[214]Seee.g.for such cases in sane persons, Hack Tuke, 'Hallucinations,'Brain, vol. xi., 1889. A man with chronic systematised delusions writes: 'I am obsessed at nights; that is, I am made the recipient of projected thoughts which become translated into dreams, and on several occasions I have found, just after waking, and while still in a very passive state, that some one was speaking to me in the ear.'

[215]Hughlings Jackson (Practitioner, May 1874, alsoBrain, July 1888, andBrain, 1899, p. 534) applied this term to the intellectual aura preceding an epileptic attack and considered that 'pseudo-reminiscence' itself might indicate a slight epileptic paroxysm in persons who show other symptoms of epilepsy. Gowers also (Epilepsy, 2nd ed., p. 133) considers 'dreamy state' to be closely associated with minor attacks of epilepsy; and Crichton-Browne (Dreamy Mental States) holds the same view. It should be added that 'dreamy state' by no means necessarily involves pseudo-reminiscence; seee.g.S. Taylor, 'A Case of Dreamy State,'Lancet, 9th Aug. 1890, p. 276, and W. A. Turner, 'The Problem of Epilepsy,'British Medical Journal, 2nd April 1910, p. 805. Leroy found that pseudo-reminiscence is usually rare in association with epilepsy.

[216]'The feeling of pre-existence,' writes Dr. J. G. Kiernan in a private letter, 'frequently occurs as a consequence of delusions of memory in epilepsy. The case on which George Sand built her story ofConsuelowas one reported of an epileptic who during the epileptic states had delusions of living in a distant historic past of which he retained the memory as facts during the normal state. I know of two epileptic theosophists who base their belief in transmigration on the memories of their epileptic period. In my judgment a large part of Swedenborg's visions were instances of delusions of memory.'

[217]Professor Grasset ('La Sensation du "Déjà Vu,"'Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, Nov.-Feb. 1904) considers that a feeling of anguish is the characteristic accompaniment of a true paramnesic manifestation. This statement is too pronounced. There is usually some emotional disturbance, but its degree depends on the temperament of the person experiencing the phenomenon. Sometimes the sensation of pseudo-reminiscence may be accompanied, as a medical man subject to epilepsy (mentioned by Hughlings Jackson) found in his own case, by 'a slight sense of satisfaction,' as in the finding of something that had been sought for.

[218]Revue Philosophique, November 1893.

[219]Revue Philosophique, January 1894.

[220]Heymans found that students liable to paramnesia tended to possess an aptitude for languages and an inaptitude for mathematics.

[221]Paul Bourget, the novelist, in an interesting letter published by Grasset (loc. cit.) states that this experience has been habitual with him from as long back as he can remember, occurring in regard to things heard or felt more than to things seen, and accompanied by an emotional trouble similar to that experienced in dreams of dead friends who appear as living, though even in his dreams the dreamer knows that they are dead. Bourget adds that he is of emotional temperament, and that the phenomenon was more pronounced in childhood than it is now.

[222]Paul Lapie,Revue Philosophique, March 1894; CharlesMéré, Mercure de France, July 1903; Sully, Tannery, and Buccola also considered that this is a factor in the explanation of the phenomenon. Freud (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben, 1907, p. 122) brings forward a modification of this theory, and believes that false recognition is a reminiscence of unconscious day-dreams.

[223]For a minute and searching criticism of the theory of the duplex brain, see especially four articles by Bonne in theArchives de Neurologie, March-June 1907.

[224]'Epilepsy' wrote Binns long ago (Anatomy of Sleep, 1845, p. 431), 'is a disease which in some of its symptoms strongly resembles abnormal sleep.' The conditions under which a paramnesic manifestation may really replace an epileptic fit are well described by a literary man with hereditary epilepsy whose case has been recorded by Haskovec of Prague (XIIIe. Congrès International de Médecine: Comptes Rendus, vol. viii., 'Psychiatrie' p. 125): 'One day at the theatre, under the influence of the heat and perhaps the music, I experienced extreme excitement and fatigue. I thought I was about to have an attack, and resisted with all my strength, and it failed to take place. But I found myself in a strange psychic state. On leaving the theatre I seemed to be dreaming. I saw and heard everything and talked as usual. But everything seemed strange. Nothing seemed to reach directlymeor to be a real impression, but merely the automatic reproduction of something learnt, only I felt that I had lived it all before and felt it; at that moment I simply seemed to be observing it.'

[225]Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, April 1886. In some forms of insanity the false recognition of a person may become a fixed delusion. This question has been studied by Albès in his Paris thesis,De I'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, 1906.

[226]E. Maitland,Anna Kingsford, vol. i. p. 3. Lalande (Revue Philosophique, November 1893, p. 487) gives a precisely similar case in a child.

[227]As quoted by Jastrow,The Subconscious, p. 248.

[228]Leroy,Etude sur l'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, 1898, with forty-nine new observations. Leroy states, however (in declared opposition to my view), that only a minority of his cases actually mention fatigue.

[229]Heymans, 'Eine Enquête über Depersonnalisation und Fausse Reconnaissance,'Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, November, 1903; also a further paper in the same journal confirming his conclusions, January 1906.

[230]Féré, 'Deuxième Note sur la Fausse Reconnaissance,'Journal de Neurologie, 1905.

[231]Dromard et Albès, 'L'Illusion dit de Fausse Reconnaissance,'Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, May-June 1905.

[232]Dugas, 'Observations sur des Erreurs "Formelles" de la Mémoire,'Revue Philosophique, July 1908.

[233]A friend, liable to this form of paramnesia, wrote to me after the publication of my first paper on the subject: 'I find, as you foretold, that it is difficult to recall an experience of this kind in all its details. I feel sure, however, that it is not necessarily allied with an enfeebled or overwrought nervous system. It was commonest with me in my youth, at a time when my life was a pleasant one, and my brain not fagged as now. I still [aged 43] have it occasionally, but not so frequently as twenty years ago.' It may be added that my friend, of Highland family, was a man of keen and emotional nervous temperament, a strenuous mental worker—whence at one time a serious breakdown in health—and had published two volumes of poems in early life. The greater liability to paramnesia in early life, which is generally recognised, is comparable to the special liability of children to hypnagogic visions, both phenomena being probably due to the greater excitability and easier exhaustibility of the youthful brain.

[234]For instance, by Allin, 'Recognition,'American Journal of Psychology, January 1896.

[235]The explanation of paramnesia here set forth received on its first publication the approval of Léon Marillier, who considered it 'ingenious and seductive,' and as adequately accounting for the phenomena, provided we bear in mind that the loss of a clear feeling of time is characteristic of hypnagogic and allied states, the perception of each moment being immediately transferred into an ancient memory, and consequently recognised (L'Année Biologique, third year, 1897, p. 772). This necessity for taking into account the co-existence of perception and illusory remembrance has largely moulded several of the theories of paramnesia. Thus Jean de Pury (Archives de Psychologie, December 1902), while affirming that pseudo-reminiscence is due to ananteriorisationof actual perceptions, regards it as of the nature of a double refraction such as that simultaneously produced on two faces of a prism by the same image; under the influence of conditions he is unable to define, an image appears for the moment on the plane both of the past and of the present, and psychically we see double just as physically we see double when the parallelism of our visual rays is disturbed. Piéron, again, taking up a theory at one time favoured by Dugas, and previously suggested in one form or another by Ribot and Fouillée, assumes the formation of two images: one which, owing to distraction or fatigue, reaches consciousness after having traversed subconsciousness, and so takes on a dream-like and effaced character, and almost simultaneously with this a direct perception which has not thus changed its character; the shock of the conflict between these two produces the pseudo-reminiscence ('Sur l'Interpretation des Faits de Paramnésie,'Revue Philosophique, August 1902). Albès, in his Paris thesis, criticises this explanation, pointing out that a sequence of this kind very frequently occurs, but produces no pseudo-reminiscence.

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