Some more phenomena of sleep and dream : paper read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Cox, Edward W. (Edward William), 1809-1879.
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some more phenomena of sleep and dream : paper read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    11/12 (page 11)
    In fact we find in severe cases of Hemiplegia affecting tlie whole or the greater part of one brain, or in cases of the destruction of one brain by disease or accident, the patient is unable to compare ideas and has consequently lost the power of correct reasoning, although the other mental facul- ties, that do not require double action, and especially the emotions, continue in vigour, the one sound brain sufficing, to do the work for them. Apply this state of things to sleep and dream and what phenomena should we look for ? If one brain be sleeping while the other is awake, we should thus be in the exact position of a person one of whose brains had been pai’alysed, that is to say, we should have lost the power of comparison of ideas, and, therefore, of reasoning upon them. Is not this precisely the condition of dream ? The self- produced ideas that then throng the mind are accepted by us as being not self-produced but as being brought to us by the senses. Why do we accept them implicitly as realities ? Because we are accustomed to rely upon our senses and are compelled to accept their intelligence as actualities. In waking life we try such impressions by comparison and reasoning and we thus discover if they are actual or ideal, possible or impossible. But when we dream it is as if one brain had been paralysed, although it is only asleep j and as the necessary consequence we are unable to compare those ideas and, therefore, we are unable to reason upon them and try their true value, as we are accustomed to do in waking life. Hence in dream our implicit belief that the shadows of the mind’s creation are substances and ideas realities •, hence in dream we have no sense of incongruity and no consciousness of the impossible. We believe implicitly that the self-produced pictures presented by the brain are brought by the senses from without and then the other mental faculties deal with them, [175]