31 CHAPTER XLVII. ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT. § 1. WE have been occupied hitherto in tracing lines of the development of states of consciousness as they proceed, normally evolving the ordinary and common varieties of redintegration, emotional states and volitional exercises. But there are some abnormal exhibitions of consciousness which require treatment at our hands. § 2. We need not stop to consider extraordinary developments of mental powers occurring along the course of normal growth. There have been prodigies in respect to memory, reasoning, and imagination-abnormal growths of normal powers. It is not intended to include such under the present head, since these cases do not exhibit any conditions or exercises of consciousness not the outcome of natural and regular exercise of ordinary faculties. § 3. Nor is it designed to regard common errors and illusions occurring in the ordinary exercise of mental faculties as instances of abnormal development. There are illusions of perception arising from confusion of impressions or from misinterpretation of the sense-impression, as in perceptions of distance and solidity, and all kinds of optical illusions; there are illusions coming from vivid expectation; there are errors of memory and erroneous beliefs as to our own experience; there are illusions of all sorts coming from the employment of the reasoning powers and the imaginative also. But all these occur in what may properly be considered normal consciousness. Hence we will exclude them from our present consideration.' DREAMS. § 4. The most common instance of extraordinary consciousness is found in dreams. Indeed, we can hardly call their production a matter of abnormal development at all; but they, nevertheless, show consciousness subsisting under conditions different from those of its ordinary existence. (See Chap. XXXIII. § 5 ff.) Those conditions are chiefly a diminished susceptibility to epi-peripheral stimuli, and a suspension of voluntary attention to a great degree, 1 See Illusions, by James Sully. arising from the state of interrupted consciousness which we call sleep. § 5. The result of such conditions is to induce a form of consciousness in which the automatic activities produce a series of representations, according to the laws of redintegration, which are uncontrasted with and hence uncorrected by present sensational influences from the external world. The dreamer has his sole conscious life in the things which the automatic activity represents. To the dreamer, what appears in consciousness is real and the only reality; his dream world is the only world. § 6. The peripheral sense-organs are not wholly inactive during sleep, but a more powerful stimulus is required to make a conscious impression. A bright light suddenly introduced, a loud or unusual sound, touches upon various points of the surface though not sufficient to awaken, will often affect the dreams of the sleeper. Olfactory and gustatory impressions will usually become transformed into visual percepts in dreams. Ento-peripheral stimuli have a more marked effect upon dreams than epi-peripheral, for the reason that a greater degree of the former may subsist without waking the sleeper entirely than in the latter case. The influence of indigestion and of turgescence of the reproductive organs are perhaps the two most conspicuous illustrations of the effects of organic conditions. The modifications of dream-consciousness wrought in diseased conditions of the body are also very remarkable. § 7. The subject-matter of dreams is thus controlled to a considerable extent by peripheral influences. Aside from these, the course of redintegration in dreams is largely governed by the determinations of activity of the more recent waking hours; we dream of that which was upon our mind on going to sleep. Business cares, perplexing problems, great sorrow, engrossing the attention in the former waking state, continue to occupy the mind in dreams. Unconscious redintegration goes on in profound sleep, and when consciousness is partially roused, the results of these unconscious processes appear in dreams. A man may then dream that he has solved the puzzle over which he has distressed himself, and may solve it in his dream. Instances of this character are abundant. Dr. Carpenter records several. Condorcet saw in his dreams the final steps of a difficult calculation which had puzzled him during the day. Condillac tells us that he frequently developed and finished a subject in his dreams which he had broken off before retiring to rest. Coleridge's dream-poem 'Kubla Khan' is another instance.' § 8. Visual images are the most prone to occur in dreams. Frequently even auditory impressions are transformed into visual. Next to these in point of frequency come movements. We are doing or trying to do something. Talking is a common form of this motor activity. § 9. The absence of sensational correctives causes not merely an impression of reality in our dreams, but occasions an exaggeration in the effect produced far beyond the normal order of things. The nightmare is a case in point. This very distressing phenomenon usually gives rise to, or ensues from, dreams of the most startling and hideous character, all springing from an external pressure or an internal uneasiness, which in waking moments would disturb the ordinary course of thought and action in a degree vastly inferior to that produced in sleep. Dr. Reid tells that having had his head blistered on account of a fall, and a plaster put on which pained him during the night, toward morning he dreamed that he had fallen into the hands of Indians and been scalped. The experience of every one bears witness that the most trivial and insignificant impressions often produce the most distorted and exaggerated dream-experiences. § 10. The loss of power to correctly gauge and estimate the relations of things is further shown in erroneous appreciations of time. Images pass through the mind in trains which cover successions of events represented in dreaming as then filling hours or days, I do not know but years; but which in truth occupied only a few minutes or seconds of time in the dreamer's consciousness. Ideas of the time originally occupied by the events recalled in dreaming are correct if they were originally fixed correctly in the mind, but the relations to the present time of the conscious subject are wrongly apprehended, because there is no longer an objective measure of time by which rectification can be effected. 6 § 11. The laws of redintegration are sufficient to explain the connection and coherence of dream-images, while the incompleteness of the consciousness accounts for their incoherence. Mr. Sully thus sums up his treatment of dream-associations: As to the form of dream-combinations, the least perfect and passive dreams owe their peculiar incongruity to the number and variety of the wholly disconnected sources of stimulation which simultaneously 1 Mental Physiology, Chap. XV. Sec. 482 ff. supply images to consciousness. More particularly the various degrees of irritability of the cerebral elements at the time serve very much to complicate and confuse the grouping of images and to explain why the ordinary paths of association traversed in waking hours are so seldom followed. In the case of the more elaborate and closely-connected dreams much of the verisimilitude arises from the action of organic dispositions or general tendencies of association which serve as so many rough forms of dream-thought. Such a general disposition would account for our attributing some kind of words and actions to the image of a man or woman which presents itself, though what the particular words are to be depends on the co-operation of the several existing causes already spoken of. Hence the mixture of a general reasonableness with a particular incongruity which marks so many of these dreams. Next to these influences, one must reckon the play of attention under the sway either of an impulse for rational unity, or of a dominant emotional tone somehow excited at the time, which tends to harmonise all inflowing images with itself. In the act of fixing attention on the internal imagery of our dreams we unconsciously modify it, selecting, adapting, and fusing according to the pre-existent ideas or emotional tone. The emotional key which dominates so many of our dreams is fed (sic) by the effect of previous images, and still more largely by the pleasurable and painful organic sensations of the time.'' § 12. It remains to be noticed that with respect even to our most coherent dreams, there is a complete suspension, or at least a considerable retardation of the highest operations of judgment and thought; also a great enfeeblement, to say the least of it, of those sentiments, such as the feeling of consistency and the sense of the absurd, which are so intimately connected with these higher intellectual operations.' 2 SOMNAMBULISM. § 13. Where efferent activity follows the dream-consciousness, somnambulism occurs. In dreams generally, the muscular system is affected only slightly, momentarily, or spasmodically. In somnambulism there are combined and connected movements. Sleeptalking and sleep-walking with other attendant movements are the characteristic forms of this abnormal state. 1 Mind, No. V. p. 111. See also Illusions, Chap. VII., for more amplifie presentation of the same ideas. See also Carpenter, op. cit., and Maudsley's Physiology of Mind. 2 Illusions, Chap. VII. § 14. In addition to motor action in obedience to the prevailing course of redintegration, there is a greater sensibility to afferent impression than in the case of ordinary dreams, but usually this sensibility is only in lines which develop experiences coincident with and collateral to the existing current of ideas. No ordinary sights or sounds, odours or tastes, pricks, pinches or blows make themselves felt; and yet if anything is addressed to the sleep-talker through either of his senses which is in harmony with the notion that occupies his mind at the time, he may take cognisance of it and interweave it (as it were) with his web of thought which may receive a new colour or design therefrom.' In many cases, however, the entire current of thought may be altered in the mind of the somnambulist by some external impression not sufficient to restore the normal conditions of consciousness. § 15. The somnambulist on awaking does not remember his actions, and if he has any remembrance of his dream-state it is only that of an ordinary dream. But frequently on a recurrence of the somnambulistic condition he remembers what occurred in the former dream-state, but without any memory of an interval, however considerable it really may have been. § 16. It is evident that there is no arbitrary line to be drawn between dreaming and somnambulism. In fact the latter is only an extension of the redintegrating activity of the dream consciousness to efferent activity. Every dream is liable to have some extension of this sort. The tendency of ideas to act themselves out is no less conspicuous in partially or abnormally conscious redintegration than in the ordinary states. HYPNOTISM. § 17. A general state of consciousness having many features in common with the somnambulistic can be induced artificially, thus giving rise to hypnotic consciousness. Hypnotism is a peculiar condition of the nervous system induced by a fixed and abstracted attention of the mental and visual eye on one object not of an exciting nature.' The following is the general method of inducing it, with some of the chief symptoms: Take any bright object between the thumb and fore and middle fingers of the left hand; hold it from about eight to fifteen inches from the eyes, at such a distance above the forehead as may be necessary to produce the greatest possible 6 1 2 Braid. |