52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
dreams, but his lengthy study on the interpretation of dreams deals 
exclusively with the dreams of the neurotic.18 Stekel believes, more- 
over, that from the structure of the dream life conclusions may be 
drawn not only as to the life and character of the dreamer, but also as 
to his neurosis, the hysterical person dreaming differently from the 
obsessed person, and so on. If that is the case we are certainly justified 
in doubting whether conclusions drawn from the study of the dreams 
of neurotic people can be safely held to represent the normal dream- 
life, even though it may be true that there is no definite frontier be- 
tween them.? Whatever may be the case among the neurotic, in ordi- 
nary normal sleep the images that drift across the field of consciousness, 
though they have a logic of their own, seem in a large proportion of 
cases to be quite explicable without resort to the theory that they stand 
in vital but concealed relationship to our most intimate self. 
Even in waking life, and at normal moments which are not those 
of revery, it seems possible to trace the appearance in the field of con- 
sciousness of images which are evoked neither by any mental or physical 
circumstance of the moment, or any hidden desire, images that are as 
disconnected from the immediate claims of desire and even of association — 
as those of dreams seem so largely to be. It sometimes occurs to me— 
as doubtless it occurs to other people—that at some moment when my 
thoughts are normally occupied with the work immediately before me, 
then suddenly appears on the surface of consciousness a totally unre- 
lated picture. A scene arises, vague but usually recognizable, of some 
city or landscape—Australian, Russian, Spanish, it matters not what— 
seen casually long years ago, and possibly never thought of since, and 
possessing no kind of known association either with the matter in hand 
or with my personal life generally. It comes to the surface of con- 
sciousness as softly, as unexpectedly, as disconnectedly, as a minute 
bubble might arise and break on the surface of an actual stream from 
ancient organic material silently disintegrating in the depths beneath.*° 
8The special characteristics of dreaming in the hysterical were studied, 
before Freud turned his attention to the question, by Sante de Sanctis, “ I Sogni 
e il Sonno nell’ Isterismo,” 1896. 
1 See also Havelock Ellis, “ Studies in the Psychology of Sex,” Vol. L, 
Sd ed, 1910, “ Auto-crotism.” 
2 Gissing, the novelist, an acute observer of psychic states, in the most 
personal of his pooks, “ The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft,” has described 
this phenomenon: “ Every one, I suppose, is subject to a trick of mind which 
often puzzles me. I am reading or thinking, and at a moment, without any 
association or suggestion that I can discover, there rises before me the vision of 
a place I know. Impossible to explain why that particular spot should show 
itself to my mind’s eye; the cerebral impulse is so subtle that no search may 
trace its origin.” Gissing proceeds to say that a thought, a phrase, an odor, 
a touch, a posture of the body, may possibly have furnished the link of associa- 
tion, but he knows no evidence for this theory. 
