Thus my contribution to the psychology of dreaming is simple and unpretentious; it deals only with the fundamental elements of the subject. I do not make this statement entirely in a spirit of humility. It seems to me that in the past the literature of dreaming has often been overweighted by bad observation and reckless theory. By learning to observe and to understand the ordinary nightly experience of dream life we shall best be laying the foundation of future superstructures. For, rightly understood, dreams may furnish us with clues to the whole of life.
The House of Dreams--Fallacies in the Study of Dreams--Is it possible to Study Dreams?--How Fallacies may be Avoided--Do we always Dream during Sleep?--The Two Main Sources of Dreams with their Sub-divisions, 1
The Spontaneous Procession of Dream Imagery--Its Kaleidoscopic Character--Attention in Dreams--Relation of Drug Visions and Hypnagogic Imagery to Dreaming--Colour in Dreams--The Fusion of Dream Imagery--Compared to Dissolving Views--Sources of the Imagery--Various types of Fusion--The Sub-Conscious Element in Dreaming--Verbal Transformations as Links in Dream Imagery--The Reduplication of Visual Imagery in Motor and other Terms, 20
All Dreaming is a Process of Reasoning--The Fundamental Character of Reasoning--Reasoning as a Synthesis of Images--Dream Reasoning Instinctive and Automatic--It is also Consciously carried on--This a result of the Fundamental Split in Intelligence--Dissociation--Dreaming as a Disturbance of Apperception, 56
All Dreams probably contain both Presentative and Representative Elements--The Influence of Tactile Sensations on Dreams--Dreams excited by Auditory Stimuli--Dreams aroused by Odours and Tastes--The Influence of Visual Stimuli--Difficulty of distinguishing between Actual and Imagined Sensory Excitations--The Influence of Internal Visceral Stimuli on Dreaming--Erotic Dreams--Vesical Dreams--Cardiac Dreams and their Symbolism--Prodromic Dreams--Prophetic Dreams, 71
Emotion and Imagination--How Stimuli are transformed into Emotion--Somnambulism--The Failure of Movement in Dreams--Nightmare--Influence of the approach of Awakening on imagined Dream movements--The Magnification of Imagery--Peripheral and Cerebral Conditions combine to produce this Imaginative Heightening--Emotion in Sleep also Heightened--Dreams formed to explain Heightened Emotions of unknown origin--The fundamental Place of Emotion in Dreams--Visceral and especially Gastric disturbance as a source of Emotion--Symbolism in Dreams--The Dreamer's Moral Attitude--Why Murder so often takes place in Dreams--Moral Feeling not Abolished in Dreams though sometimes Impaired, 94