DREAMS 185 



A man who is happy and not overtired, who is meeting 

 his obligations with reasonable ease and success, is likely, 

 when he goes to sleep, to encounter persons and scenes 

 quite other than those he has lately known. Unexpected- 

 ness is the foremost quality of his dreaming experiences. 

 If he is skilled in unravelling the composition when he 

 reviews it after waking, he may be able to detect many 

 of the sources and to convince himself that they belong to 

 relatively distant periods in his career. It will usually be 

 his impression that he has not been thinking at all of the 

 matters which have been brought before him in his 

 dreams. 



If he is seriously tired, anxious, and overwrought, he 

 may be compelled to attend to visions of an entirely 

 different class. Such a man may continue, in dreams, to 

 pursue the interests of his daily life. The same problems 

 which he had to face when waking confront him in his 

 sleep. The chess-player who has finished a hard game 

 shortly before going to bed may find the board again set 

 before him and be forced to consider the possible results 

 of each move through a long series. When he rouses 

 himself he feels that he has not rested well. In the same 

 way one in grief or fear may still entertain these feelings 

 and ponder their causes while he sleeps. Now, all dreaming 

 is partial insomnia, but there can be no question that it is 

 better to be awake to novel and diverting thoughts than to 

 find no release from the pressing concerns of one's routine 

 existence. "Recent representative" dreams clearly consti- 

 tute an unprofitable overtime performance on the part 

 of some of the brain mechanisms. 



The statement just made suggests that it may not be 

 wholly whimsical to claim that dreams of the other (re- 

 mote) order afford some of the elements of a vacation. 

 The body does not find the same wholesome change of 

 environment and exercise as though an actual outing 

 were taken, but the purely mental content may be much 

 the same. Dreams may be at least as beneficial as a mov- 

 ing-picture show, which, in fact, they greatly resemble. 



