This section is from the book "Dream Psychology", by Maurice Nigoll. Also available from Amazon: Dream psychology.
Now there is some relationship between the kind of accident the rider experienced and the accident that forms the nucleus of the dream. As a rider he was nervous, and his nervousness causes him to take too extreme measures. In the dream he finds himself in a position that he has long viewed with nervousness. The dream shows him some strangers accosting his wife. He at once goes towards them, but in so violent a manner that he flies up into the air and a note of ridicule is struck. Owing to his too extreme manner of approach, his purpose miscarries, and he finds himself momentarily in an absurd and awkward predicament. The dream winds up with the picture of his wife regarding him with a startled expression, which he is quite familiar with, and this expression follows the extreme and grotesque behaviour of the dreamer. This link suggests that the startled expression in the wife is called forth by a too extreme and violent behaviour on the husband's part. Of this he is not conscious, as far as his associations go. Irritability causes interest to be deflected in a particular manner on to particular objects. The patient did not consider himself irritable. He thought he was controlled. A controlled man approaches an unusual situation quietly. The dream shows the patient approaching an unusual situation in an extraordinary manner. Of what is this symbolical 1 How can the act of leaping high into the air be interpreted ?
It is possible to interpret it as a representation in graphic form of an explosion of energy, so violent that it defeats its own purpose, and carries the man off the surface of the earth. It suggests a typical experience. The patient, however, denied that he was irritable, or that he gave way to temper. This denial was contradicted by personal contact with him. The situation, therefore, was as follows : the patient constantly expressed himself in certain directions, in irritable outbursts of temper, and of these he was unaware; the dream portrays in symbolism what the value of these outbursts was. It shows them as valueless, in that they did not effect their purpose, and put the dreamer in an absurd and dangerous position. Now we-can sum up the situation under the phrase that it was a non-realization of expressed interest.
This brings us to a consideration of what can be meant by non-realization in general. In the above case a man was constantly thinking in a certain direction and acting in a certain manner without realizing it. He did not realize how he expressed himself in the eyes of other people. That, in some degree, is characteristic of everyone. What I have called the non-realization of expressed interest is, for example, typical of people some of whose interest drains off in peculiar mannerisms. They are unaware of them. A man's estimate of himself is usually faulty; it is often totally erroneous as far as he appears to others. Particularly does this tend to be the case when the man has some extreme bias.
The man's interest runs strongly into the bias and finds expression through it, but the man remains unaware that this is so. Objective minds frequently show this to a very great degree.
There is another kind of non-realization. It is the non-realization of unexpressed interest. This may sound paradoxical at first, but it concerns that attitude of mind that is found in an undeveloped person. It is detected, as in the former case, by the observer. The unexpressed interest may be any typical development that is lacking. A youth may remain indifferent to the other sex and grow into the age of manhood in this state. His interest in women has never been awakened : it is unexpressed interest. Now he may, and in such case usually does, remain unaware that there is anything unusual about him. This is the non-realization of unexpressed interest.
The two possibilities of non-realization continually form motives for the dream. They form the motive of the unconscious, or, in a briefer phrase, the unconscious motive. In the case of the insomnia patient the non-realization of his emotional outbursts forms the unconscious motive of the dream.
The second example of the non-realization of expressed interest is the case of a young man who began to take morphia. He was not a morphino-maniac. He merely took morphia. The reasons for this were complex and in part imitative, but this does not concern us here. The point that is im-portant is that he denied he was in any way a slave to the drug. He was certain that his position was not dangerous. He experienced a dream shortly before he was sent for treatment, and the dream is interesting because it illustrates the fine shades of meaning that are included under the heading of the non-realization of expressed interest. In the grossest sense it indicates what has been shown in the previous example—that is, a complete non-realization of a mode of expression that was habitual. In this case the issue is more subtle, but it is included under the same category.
The dream was short and vivid, and had remained in the patient's mind, so that when asked if he had experienced any dreams within recent times, he recorded it at once.
" I was hanging by a rope a short way down a precipice. Above me on the top of the cliff was a small boy who held the rope. I was not alarmed, because I knew I had only to tell the boy to pull, and I would get to the top safely."
It so happened that the discussion of the dream with the patient gave rise to a difficulty which might as well be recorded at this point, because it touches on interpretation. He gave no associations. The boy was unknown to him. The precipice he had never seen. He made no connection himself between the symbols of the dream and any facts of his experience.
What course, then, is to be pursued when associations are not forthcoming ? One can simply make a note of the fact and attribute it to intense resistances. Mere stupidity and lack of imagination will then come under the heading of an intense resistance, and a man whose mind resembles a piece of wood will be regarded with grave suspicion as a person concealing a mass of highly sexual material. It is simpler, and perfectly legitimate, to see in such a case an inabihty to link up the abstract with the concrete. A literal, narrow mind has this constant difficulty. Correspondences make no comprehensible appeal. Allusion and metaphor is not caught. He argues, for example, that he has never hung over a cliff, and therefore the dream has nothing to do with him. Of course, you may take the view that this way of arguing is all due to inner complexes and repressions. In some cases it certainly is. But when a man with a perfectly flat occiput, a high narrow forehead, and small bright eyes that rarely move, sits before you, it is possible that one is dealing with a type that has natural limitations. We are at liberty, then, to take the dream into our own hands, and see how it can be applied to the patient's situation. I have said the patient was not what is called a morphino-maniac. He took morphia partly because of a spell of insomnia induced by war-strain. But he refused to give it up, not seeing the slightest danger in his position. He had used morphia for about a couple of months, and the nightly dose had not increased. What is the unconscious motive in the dream ? I propose to discuss the dream at greater length than the preceding one, as it bears on the theory of interest, and might seem possibly to illuminate, in some degree, the problems of free will and necessity.
 
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