THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 49* 



case, that if called upon to describe how we guide our writing, many 

 would be as much at a loss to reply as if questioned how we know 

 which is the right hand; and while realizing that eye and hand both 

 contribute to the writing reaction, would we be unable to apportion the 

 manner of dependence that exists towards each of these sensation- 

 groups. 



Automatic Conduct: The Motor Dream. 

 I have introduced these considerations at this juncture in order that 

 the rationale of the motor aspects of these lapses and confusions may be 

 succinctly appreciated. We return to the more characteristically intel- 

 lectual activities with prominent motor factors, to note the persistence 

 of such occupations when the directive influences are removed. An 

 important type of such removal occurs nightly in the condition of sleep. 

 If regulated and complex groups of movements, organized pieces of 

 conduct, may be performed without arousing consciousness or leaving 

 a trace in the waking memory, then the thoroughness with which the 

 motor habit may be aroused without arousing the awareness which its 

 original acquisition required, becomes the more completely established; 

 and though this is not in the strict sense a lapse, it does illustrate the 

 nature of the tree and of the soil on and in which lapses grow. Though 

 such occurrences demand a predisposed temperament or temporary 

 condition of excitement, they occur quite frequently, and particularly 

 ill 3 T outh.* They appear as active dreams, of which sleep-walking 

 (somnambulism) is but one type. The simplest type is that in which 

 a lively dream passes over into action. A little girl who had spent 

 several hours of a day in jumping into a sand pile, makes a similar 

 leap in her sleep from the landing to the hall below, awaking with sobs 

 and bruises and the explanation, ' I thought it was the sand pile.' A 

 sleeping boy is aroused by the firm clutch of a hand upon his feet, and 

 hears his younger brother call out, ' I've got you now.' These words 

 proved to be the reaction to a dream of the younger lad that some one 

 had stolen his stockings, that he had left his own bed to pursue the 

 offender, and that in seizing his brother's feet he had just reached the 

 denouement, the arrest of the culprit. A high-school athlete, on the 

 eve of a contest in which he had entered for the broad jump, awakes 

 to find himself upright in bed, his knees under him, ready to jump; 

 and is able to recall his dreaming of the contest, the trials of his com- 

 petitors and the calling of his own number, to which he was respond- 



* The number of instances of this character which my students record of 

 themselves as children, or of their young sisters and brothers, suggests that 

 early youth is the favorable period for active, somnambulistic, dramatic and 

 somniloquent dreams. It is not that these habits are more automatic in 

 youth, but that the intensity with which interest demands expression in 

 action is then more pronounced. 



