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.

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    immediately upon the moment of falling asleep. There is no dream,—or at least, there is no consciousness of dream. The^physiology of dream, then, is a partial slumber of the brain. Some parts of it only are sleeping, other parts are more or less wakeful, that is to say, more or less in action, and brain action means the performance of the function of conveying impressions to the Conscious Self and receiving impressions from it. But this condition is immensely complicated by the fact of our having two brains. Save in such rare cases as above referred to, it is not probable that the entire of both brains would be asleep together, and this brings me to the problem, what bearing upon the production of dreams has this fact of a double brain ? It is a fundamental fact which has not been sufficiently recognised as an element in the psychology of dreaming by any of the numerous thinkers who have treated of this most interesting and important mental process. If dream occurs only when a portion of the brain is waking—the question at once presents itself whether the problem of partial sleep may not be solved by reference to the double action of the two brains. It is difficult to accept as an explanation of dream that parts only of the brain are asleep while other parts are awake. Although Professor Feeriee has proved to demonstration that the whole brain is not employed in each mental act, but that different parts of the brain have different functions, we do not as yet know what are those parts, nor what are the precise functions of each part. But we know that the parts must be many and compacted together closely, and it is difficult to imagine one of these parts being asleep while its neighbours are awake, which must be the case if that be the explanation of dream. But may not the difficulty be removed by taking into con- sideration the fact that we have the two brains and sup- posing the condition of sleep to be the slumber either of [170]