43 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



mally heightened in dreams. Every impression reaches sleeping con- 

 sciousness through this emotional atmosphere, in an enlarged form, 

 vaguer it may be, but more massive. The sleeping brain is thus not 

 dealing with actual impressions — if we are justified in speaking of the 

 impressions of waking life as " actual " — even when actual impressions 

 are being made upon it, but with transformed impressions. The prob- 

 lem before it is to find an adequate cause, not for the actual impression 

 but for the transformed and enlarged impression. Under these cir- 

 cumstances symbolism is quite inevitable. Even when the nature of 

 an excitation is rightly perceived its quality can not be rightly perceived. 

 The dreamer may be able to perceive that he is being bitten but the 

 massive and profound impression of a bite which reaches his dreaming 

 consciousness would not be adequately accounted for by the supposition 

 of the real mosquito that is the cause of it ; the only adequate explana- 

 tion of the transformed impression received is to be found (as in a 

 dream of my own) in a creature as large as a lobster. This creature is 

 the symbol of the real mosquito. 13 We have the same phenomenon 

 under somewhat similar conditions in the intoxication of chloroform 

 and nitrous oxide. 



The obscuration during sleep of the external sensory channels and 

 the checks on false conclusions they furnish is not alone sufficient to 

 explain the symbolism of dreams. The dissociation of thought during 

 sleep, with the diminished attention and apperception involved, is also 

 a factor. The magnification of special isolated sensory impressions in 

 dreaming consciousness is associated with a general bluntness, even an 

 absolute quiescence, of the external sensory mechanism. One part of 

 the organism, and it seems usually a visceral part, is thus apt to mag- 

 nify its place in consciousness at the expense of the rest. As Vaschide 

 and Pieron say, during sleep "the internal sensations develop at the 

 expense of the peripheral sensations." That is indeed the secret of the 

 immense emotional turmoil of our dreams. Yet it is very rare for 

 these internal sensations to reach the sleeping brain as what they are. 

 They become conscious not as literal messages, but as symbolical trans- 

 formations. The excited or laboring heart recalls to the brain no mem- 

 ory of itself but some symbolical image of excitement or labor. There 



13 The magnification we experience in dreams is manifested in their emo- 

 tional aspects and in the emotional transformation of actual sensory stimuli, 

 from without or from within the organism. The size of objects recalled by 

 dreaming memory usually remains unchanged, and if changed it seems to be 

 more usually diminished. " Lilliputian hallucinations," as they are termed by 

 Leroy, who has studied them (Revue de Psychiatric, 1909, No. 8), in which 

 diminutive, and frequently colored, people are observed, may occasionally occur 

 in alcoholic and chloral intoxication, in circular insanity and in various other 

 morbid mental conditions. They are usually agreeable in character, and con- 

 stitute a micropsia which is supposed to be due to some disturbance in the 

 cortex of the brain. 



