Psychotherapy Part 79

Hazlitt, a century ago, tried the same thing for a prolonged period and notes that whenever he was waked, and immediately recollected himself as to possible dreaming, he was always aware that he had been dreaming. Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l himself has tried this same experiment on himself and for a considerable time has scarcely ever failed to put to himself this question about dreaming when he awoke and always got a satisfying affirmative answer. Personally, for several years, I have been interested enough in this subject to recur frequently to it immediately on awaking and I cannot say that I have ever, under those circ.u.mstances, failed to find that there had been some vague dream fancies at least running through my mind before I was fully awake.

This opinion as to the constancy of dreaming during sleep has many authorities in its support. Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l has quoted a number, some of them distinguished physicians, who add the weight of their testimony to this view:

It is not a new thing to hold that there is no sleep without dreaming--in other words, that dreaming goes on unceasingly all through sleep. I have stated my own {673} opinion strongly, but the same opinion has been nearly as strongly expressed by others. Sir Benjamin Brodie, for instance, may be said to express it when he writes, "I believe that I seldom if ever sleep without dreaming."

Sir Henry Holland expresses it still more plainly when he says: "No moment of sleep is without some condition of dreaming." Goodwin says much the same thing when he a.s.serts that "sleep is not a suspension of thought"--in other words, that dreaming is sleep-thinking. Dr.

John Reid still more clearly holds the opinion, though he does not furnish me with a short apt quotation. Hazlitt, too, may be taken as holding that there is no such thing as dreamless sleep.

Descartes and his followers may, perhaps, be regarded as holding that the mind is unceasingly at work in sleep--even in the "profoundest sleep," though "the memory retains it not," and Isaac Watts says that "the soul never intermits its activity," and that we may "know of sleeping thoughts at the moment they arise, and not retain them the next moment."

Hippocrates, Leibnitz, and Abercrombie have also been quoted as holding that there is no dreamless sleep, and so far as they express themselves on the subject they appear to do so.

A strong weight of opinion in all ages favors the view that during sleep dream-thoughts are constantly running through our mind, though we recollect only those which are impressed upon us at the moment of awaking. We do not even recall those unless, for some reason, we have paid special attention to them. That is just exactly what is true of day dreaming. After it is over we have no idea at all of the thoughts that occupied our minds for hours, though we are all aware that at any given moment, if we turned our consciousness inwards we found that there was something that we were thinking about.

Short Duration of Dreams.--This view of the constant occurrence of dreams during sleep is confirmed by other things that we have come to know as to dreams and dream states. Probably the most interesting of these is with regard to the length of dreams. As our memory of dreams is only such as we have from the thoughts of sleep getting into our consciousness just at the moment of awaking, dreams are never as long as they sometimes seem to be. As a matter of fact, they occupy but a few moments, though in that time a long story may seem to unroll itself. Probably nothing gives more a.s.surance to people who are persuaded that they are losing much rest because of their dreams than this explanation of the brevity of the phenomena. Nervous people wake frequently. Whenever they wake they find themselves dreaming. As a consequence, they acquire the persuasion that they have been dreaming "all the night long," and it is not hard for them to suggest to themselves in the early morning that they are not rested. Nervous people seldom feel rested in the early morning, it is their worst time, and with the occurrence of dreams as a suggested reason for this, they exaggerate the feeling of tiredness with which they get up.

A frank discussion of this question of the duration of dreams is often the best possible therapeutic auxiliary for such cases. It gives them a new series of suggestions and, above all, relieves them of unfavorable suggestions.

Prof. Maury of the University of Paris tells a striking story of a very brief dream of his own which shows how short may be the time occupied by what seems surely a long dream. He had been reading before going to bed a very striking book on the Reign of Terror. He dreamt that he himself was arrested during the Terror, taken to prison, that his name was called on the list of the condemned, that he was carried to the guillotine, fastened to the {674} board, pushed beneath the knife and that he woke just as the knife struck his neck. Of course he awoke with the usual sense of thankfulness and relief that comes at such times. When he awoke he found that a light curtain rod had fallen from the bed above him and had struck just across his neck. His dream evidently had all come to him during the extremely short time necessary for him to become fully awake after the rod had hit him. His mind was occupying itself with the history that he had read before going to bed. When the rod struck him the long story of his arrest and imprisonment, the journey to the place of the guillotine and the preparations for execution, all came to him as a series of rapid ideas during his coming to consciousness.

It is probable that most of our dreams are not much longer than this.

One of my earliest recollections is of an old gentleman coming into the country school during my first year as a pupil and telling us the story of a dream of his of the night before quite as brief as that of Professor Maury. He had fallen asleep after dinner in his chair and, having a cold that stopped up his nose and his mouth being shut, he had the usual dream of being out of breath from running. It took him back to the story of the ma.s.sacre of Wyoming, near the scene of which the school was situated. He dreamt that for hours he had been running away from the Indians and seemed at last utterly unable to escape them because he was out of breath. He made such efforts in his chair that his wife awakened him and then he found that he had been asleep altogether only a very few minutes.

Significance of Dreams.--Many people are quite sure that their dreams have a definite significance quite apart from any mere wandering of the mind or the suggestion of half-waking and the ideas that gather round sensations not fully in the consciousness. A number of people, for instance, have dreams of events that are happening at a distance at the moment that they dream. The Psychic Research Society of England has gathered a number of these and it is indeed difficult to understand many of them. There seems no doubt, however, that in many cases there is an illusion of memory, by which, after an event, dreams that might be taken to refer in some vague way to the happening, are clothed with a wealth of detail which appears to make them wonderful premonitory representations of future events or repet.i.tions of simultaneous events. One of the most familiar of this form of dreams is what has been called a phantasm of the dying. People dying at a distance seem to have some wonderful power of making themselves appear to very near friends, especially brothers and sisters, and, above all, twins, and to friends with whom they have been very intimately a.s.sociated. Occasionally such phantasms are seen during waking hours, or what are supposed to be waking hours, though it must not be forgotten that dreams may come very easily and almost unconsciously in short naps, but much more frequently in what are known to be dreams.

Nearly always these partake of the nature of the ordinary dream, as can be seen by a careful a.n.a.lysis of their conditions, and are mere coincidences occupying a very brief s.p.a.ce of time. A typical example of this is to be found in one of the stories told by Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his book "The Unknown." A young man who had fallen in love with a young woman was deeply grieved to be parted from her by the injunction of parents. Separated by a long distance, they kept up a clandestine {675} correspondence for more than a year. For a considerable period, however, he had not heard from her, and he was beginning to be anxious lest anything had happened to her. One night she appeared to him in a dream in his room in white garments with a pale face and, placing her cold hand in his, she bade him good-bye. He awoke with a start. He found it difficult to sleep and was very anxious about her. The next day he learned that she had died the night before and concluded that his dream was a last message from her. The end of the story, however, as it is told, spoils this nice sentimental conclusion. When he awoke he found he had in his hand a gla.s.s of ice water which had been standing on the table beside him.

The grasping of this had awakened him. During the awakening process the thoughts of her in his mind gathered round the cold sensation in his hand and gave him the dream of her and the last farewell.

There are many instances in which dreams of future events seem to come true. Indeed, so many of these stories have been told that it is hard to persuade some people that dreams have no meaning and can have no meaning. By this we mean that they can by no possibility represent prophetic foresight. What patients need to be made to understand is that dreams represent only straggling sensations trying to get into our consciousness, just barely succeeding, and then arousing trains of ideas unconnected in themselves, but which we connect afterwards when we recollect our dreams. This whole subject has been studied so thoroughly in Maury's work on _"Le Sommeil et les Reves"_ about the middle of the last century and Freud _"Ueber den Traum"_ and Sante de Sanctis' _"I Sogni"_ Turin, 1899, at the end of the century, that there can be no further doubts about the matter for those who are open to conviction. Most people, however, want to believe that their dreams mean something. They like to think that they are in some way picked out from the mult.i.tude and that their dreaming has a significance more than is accorded to other people. It is, indeed, this self-centeredness that makes for the belief in premonitions and prophetic dreams and, as in all cases, these feelings work out their own revenge.

If they will listen to reason, however, most people may be rather readily convinced that their dreams cannot have any serious significance. In the chapter on Premonitions we have already called attention to the situation that exists with regard to the possibility of future events giving information of themselves in advance of their happening. Simultaneous events may perhaps in some way give warnings.

The possibility of action on the mind at a distance, especially where minds are involved, has been discussed and admitted. The cases in which it is supposed to have happened are, to my mind, all dubious and are mere coincidences. For future events, however, there is no possible physical explanation. When we turn to explanations in the borderland between spirit and matter we find nothing satisfactory. The future event exists nowhere. No spirit even knows it; it is dependent on human free will. To the Creator it is known only as a contingent possibility dependent on free will. The information does not come from Him, for then there would be more design in these incidents. Such dreams would effect some serious purpose, while usually they have but minor significance in the stories as told and they often concern only the most trivial things.

What is thus true of premonitions can readily be applied to dreams.

{676} There is no reasonable source of information with regard to future events. What, then, are we to say of the dreams that come true?

There is no doubt that dreaming is extremely common. Probably, as was said, we never sleep without dreams. There are a billion dreams at least, probably many billions of dreams every night, then, in this little world of ours. When these are startling they cling to us. It would be surprising if some of them did not come true. Indeed, it is inevitable, according to the theory of probabilities, that some of them will connect themselves directly with future events. We have a few thousands of such startling coincidences in the history of the race. Out of these have been made all the data supposed to underlie the teaching that dreams have a prophetic significance. It is much easier to understand with regard to dreams than even with regard to telepathy coincidence explains all the supposedly wonderful warnings of events that actually happen after we have had apparently premonitory dreams.

An interesting example of a premonition that did not come true, the subject of which was sure that it was a waking premonition and not a dream, though it seems more likely that it was as suggested by the narrator a sleep vision, is told by Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l in his "Dreaming, Laughing, Blus.h.i.+ng" (London, 1905). A number of scientists who discussed the story declared that if it had only come true it would have been one of the most startling manifestations of premonition and of the clairvoyant power of dreams, or at least of their telepathic significance, that we have ever had. It involved so many distinguished scientists that there could have been no doubt about it. It was so detailed and those details were known to so many authorities in science, that it would have carried great weight and it would have been extremely difficult to have people accept it as a mere coincidence. It is easy to see now after the event that, if it had been fulfilled, it would have been, in spite of its startlingness, a mere coincidence. Since it was not fulfilled, however, it represents one of the best evidences that we have for the insignificance of premonitory or telepathic dreams.

Sir William T. Gairdner, K. C. B., whose interesting typhus delirium experience appears in the paper by Professor Coates on "Sleep, Dreams and Delirium" (_Glas. Med. Jour.,_ Vol. x.x.xviii, 1892, pp.

241-261), has written to me about his dreams generally, and he concludes his letter with the narrative of a dream, which, as he correctly says, "if it had only fulfilled itself, might have become famous." He prefaces the narrative by this statement: "In all my individual experience, now extending over more than the usual term of life, I have never met with anything suggestive in the remotest degree of telepathy or second sight, or of dream prophecies or any other fact bearing on the marvellous." He then goes on to tell the dream to which I have referred. "In crossing the Atlantic In 1891,"

he says, "in delightful weather and perfect bodily health, and without a shade of anxiety on my mind so far as I was aware (in waking consciousness), I was suddenly aroused in the very early morning, say, three or four a. m., out of a perfectly sound, and, as I should call it, dreamless sleep, by the apparition of a telegram written on the usual paper, and presumably from home, in these words: 'Miss Dorothea died at ----,' all the rest being blurred and indistinct, but these words having a startling distinctness and a vivid sense of reality. I was not, I think, in the least degree alarmed at first, and certainly had no superst.i.tion about it on discovering that it was only a dream; but, failing to get any more sleep, I rose early, took my bath as usual, and went on deck, where I had to repeat the story of my dream to each one of some three or four companions who were on board, of whom I will only mention Sir.

John Batty Tuke, Professor Young of Owens College, and Professor {677} Cunningham, then of Trinity College, Dublin. Any of these gentlemen will confirm my saying that I attached no special importance to this dream in the way of a scare or a superst.i.tion, but in this way it got abroad to a certain extent within a small circle on board in such a way as would have ensured it a widespread fame had it only come true. In discussing the matter at breakfast I remarked (alluding to telepathy) that the telegram was clearly, judging from its terms, not from my wife or any member of my immediate family, and could only have been despatched by a servant or some one with whom I could not be supposed to be in telepathic rapport. From this point of view it clearly refuted itself, and yet the effect upon my mind was such that, upon arriving at New York, I at once despatched a telegram announcing my arrival and making inquiry, the reply to which showed that the family were pursuing a quite undisturbed course at St. Andrews."

Sir William describes himself as aroused out of sound sleep by the apparition of a telegram, but I think this only means that he became suddenly awake on seeing the telegram during sleep. He does not say whether he knew in his dream that he was a pa.s.senger on a great s.h.i.+p on the mid-ocean, but he says that the telegram was written on the usual paper by which I take it that he means the paper used here on sh.o.r.e.

If it happened that the death of Miss Dorothea took place about the time of the appearance of the telegram to so distinguished a man as Sir William in his sleep, I scarcely think there would be any more startling record of a so-called telepathic message. But most happily the death did not take place, so that the story of the dream will be forgotten. Tens of thousands of similar dream stories have that fate.

Children's Dreams.--There is an old tradition that to tell our dreams causes them to come back, or at least to recur in some other form.

This tradition is so old and so universal that probably there is more in it than might at first be thought. This emphasizing of certain forms of unconscious cerebration probably encourages their repet.i.tion, or, at least, the repet.i.tion of further processes of the same kind.

There seems to be no doubt, too, that the reading of certain kinds of imaginative writing and the looking at exciting pictures sometimes leads to dreams about them. Certainly children should not be told terrifying stories and the more nervous they are and the more affected they are by such stories, which to some people make renewed temptations to tell them, the more should they be avoided.

Any physician who has had much experience with city children, especially in New York City, is likely to know how exciting, tragic and, above all, melodramatic scenes serve as the basis for disturbing dreams and night terrors. They will not, of course, in vigorous, healthy and strong-minded children, but these are the ones who are most p.r.o.ne to play out of doors and so are likely to be less bothered.

Just the nervous, old-fas.h.i.+oned, delicate children who prefer the theater to sports of other kinds, are likely to be most affected in this unfortunate way. The scenes become so real to children that they impress them very deeply and are readily rehea.r.s.ed in the unconscious cerebration of sleep. Many a child sees in its dreams someone, often a near relative, fastened on the carriage of a sawmill and inevitably approaching a buzz-saw, or fastened inextricably to the rails while an express train thunders down on them. That they should wake up with a start and a scream of terror and lose most of their night's sleep and disturb that of others, is not surprising. It is well known how witnessing actual danger, as of an automobile accident, or a railroad wreck, disturbs a child's imagination for long after; and its theater experiences are almost as actual as the reality.

{678}

Many of the colored supplements of Sunday newspapers seem to be particularly undesirable literature for children in this respect, though, of course, there are many other reasons why children should not be encouraged to look at them. It is not unusual for the newspapers to give lurid pictures of wonderful dreams or things that happen in dreams. This is undoubtedly a suggestion that acts in causing nearly all children, but especially those of nervous organization, to dream much more than would ordinarily be the case. It recalls the old warning about telling dreams. These sets of pictures certainly serve to develop the imagination of the child along undesirable lines. Possibly some of them which emphasize the fact that after eating certain very undesirable foods, dreams are much more likely to come than at other times may not be without their prophylactic sanitary value, but this is a doubtful advantage compared to the psychic harm that they bring. I am not of those who would limit the fairy stories and other pleasant essays in imagination which delight children so much and form a desirable part of their education, but artistic effort that is terrifying or deterrent, whether with pen or brush, should be kept away from them until after their mental control is well established. Children will probably dream anyhow, and, therefore, should have a pleasant fund of imaginative material as a basis for their dreams.

CHAPTER X

DISORDERS OF MEMORY

Many patients suffering from various nervous symptoms insist that they are losing their memory or that it is becoming notably deficient in some ways. If they are a little on in years they are sure that their memory is not as good as it used to be and that they now forget many things that were formerly remembered without difficulty. Especially are they likely to a.s.sert that the names of people and certain words will not come to them when they want them, that they often have to seek for facts and dates that should be quite familiar, that they fail to remember acquaintances and the like. These symptoms of which they complain are often sources of considerable worry and serve to emphasize in them the idea that there is something serious the matter with their general health, or some pathological condition developing in their brain. They have heard much of loss of memory as a sign of degenerative nervous diseases and they are p.r.o.ne to think that their own special loss of memory, be it real or imaginary, must be a forerunner, or perhaps even an early symptom, of some important organic lesion.

This idea of progressive memory disturbance as a preliminary of nervous breakdown often becomes so firmly fixed as to be of itself a profound source of anxiety to patients, and an almost unspeakable dread. So it is important to make them understand what the real nature of their condition is and what their loss of memory, supposed or real, is due to. As a matter of fact, what many of these patients need is not treatment for a diseased memory, but rea.s.surance from what we know about the psychology of memory, that their troubles are only quite natural incidents in the life history of their particular memory {679} faculty. Many a man who is worrying about his supposed loss of memory or, at least, impairment of it in some way, is not suffering from a true pathological condition, but is usually the victim only of some functional disturbance of the nervous system with the neurotic anxiety and heightened introspection that accompanies such a condition.

Reasons for Memory Difficulties.--Nervous patients particularly complain that they do not remember what they wish to as easily as they used to a few years before. They say that it is much more difficult for them to impress things upon their memories and, in addition, that it is much easier for them to forget. There are three quite natural reasons for these phenomena as far as they actually exist, which should be pointed out to these patients. The first and most important is that they are incapable of that concentration of mind which they had in earlier years and which enabled them to give themselves up so completely to the consideration of a particular subject that it could not help but be impressed on their minds. They are now so much occupied with many other things, and, above all, most of these patients are so preoccupied with themselves that they cannot hope to have the concentration of mind that was comparatively easy when they were younger and is now impaired, but which is so necessary for the enduring remembrance of things. Secondly, their over-anxiety to remember things sometimes acts as an inhibitory motive in securing that deep, impression that will enable them to remember details very well. Thirdly, their supposed impairment of memory is due to a false judgment with regard to themselves. They are not comparing their power of memory now with what they used to have, but owing to anxiety about themselves they have taken to comparing themselves with others and, after all, the faculty of memory acts very differently for different people and it is well known that what one man remembers with ease another recalls with difficulty, or only because of special attention.

_Attention and Memory_.--The first of these causes for supposed impairment deserves to be discussed further. It is often said that as we grow older our memory is not so retentive as it used to be, and that while we remember the events of boyhood and the things we learned in the early years of school life, our recollection of recent events and things learned in later years is much less vivid. This is all very true, but the reason usually given, that in the meantime our memories have failed in power is inconclusive. What we learned in early childhood came to us with the surprise of novelty and for this reason we paid close attention, it was new and impressed us with its importance, it was dwelt upon for long periods and often, because there was little else to think about, has been frequently recalled since and, of course, is indelibly impressed upon our memories. The same thing is true with regard to early acquaintances. We got to know them so well that, of course, we cannot forget them. What we have learned in later life, however, has come in the midst of many other things, has not been dwelt on very long, has not been often recalled and, of course, occupies much less place in the memory than the things of earlier life. That is not, however, because of any defect in memory, but because of lack of attention and repet.i.tion that means so much for memory.

_Age and Memory_.--It is often said that people do not learn so readily when they get older. This is, of course, a truth of common experience, but {680} it is not because of dullness of the faculty of memory, but failure to concentrate the attention sufficiently for memorizing. I have known old men who could learn things just as well as any young man and indeed better than most of them. They were men who had been accustomed all their lives to concentrate attention on the subject they had in hand and who did not allow the cares and worries of life to intrude on their studies. Cato learning Greek at eighty is often quoted as an exceptional example, but I have had some dear old friends who could learn things quite as readily as younger men and whose minds were just as bright and clear. Whenever they devoted as much attention to anything that they wanted to remember as they did when they were younger men, I am sure that they remembered quite as well. It is a question of attention and not of any loss of faculty that makes the difference between the memory of the young and the old until, of course, senile impairment actually comes.

_Solicitude and Memory_.--Everyone who has had to depend much on his memory knows that over-anxiety with regard to the recollection of anything may seriously inhibit the power to recall it. Public speakers know that to hesitate is to be lost. If they want a particular name or word which they know often escapes them, they must with confidence begin the sentence in which it is to occur, though perhaps wondering all the time whether the word will be on hand or not for them to use it. Occasionally it will not come, but as a rule it turns up just in time. If they allow themselves to be disturbed by the thought that the word or expression may not come, then they know the hopeless vacant blank that stares them in the face when they want it. They have to make a circ.u.mlocution in the hope that it may turn up. Some let it go at that, but many start another sentence in the hope to tempt it to come and often it will eventually come, but sometimes it persistently refuses to come. That is not a loss of memory but a failure of neuron connections. There are some of us who know that certain words will always do that with us. Archimedes has bothered me for years and his name will often not come when I want it. Then there are certain words with regard to which transposition is likely to take place. We involuntarily and unconsciously subst.i.tute one word for another. We call one man by another's name. We have done it before and we know that we are likely to do it again. Somehow the connections in memory exist along these wrong lines and are constantly mismade. The name of something a man has written comes up instead of his name. This heterophemia is often noted in men of excellent memory.

Peculiarities of Memory.--Memory is an illusive and elusive function at best. All of us have had the sensation of having a word, and particularly a name, on the tip of our tongues. We often know the first letter and sometimes the first syllable of it. What memory brings to us, however, may not always be the first syllable of a word or name, though we are p.r.o.ne to think it must be, and we may go looking for it in the dictionary of names only to discover after a time that we are many letters away from its beginning. Very often we have to give up seeking in sheer inability to get a hint of it and then of itself it will come a little later. Sometimes it will come when we no longer want it. As a rule, words that have escaped us once in this way are p.r.o.ne to do so again. Over and over again the experience will be that {681} a particular word or group of words escapes our memory, or at least fails to be at our command, as most other things are. Those of us who are not much given to introspection take no notice of these difficulties which are common-place experiences enough, but the man or the woman who is looking for symptoms, who is p.r.o.ne to believe for some reason or other that his or her memory is failing, will take these hints of the more or less natural fallacy of memory as confirmations, strong as direct proof of the fact that memory is seriously deteriorating.

Such pauses and lapses of memory are much more likely to occur if we are nervous and over-anxious about possible loss of memory. I was once asked to attend for a few hours before the time fixed for his oration one of the greatest orators of this country, who was about to talk at a university commencement. What surprised me was that this practiced speaker, who had often appeared before very large audiences, took a very light meal in considerable trepidation, immediately after asked to have certain books brought to him and certain facts looked up for him, took notes in a hurried, feverish way and generally displayed all the over-excitement of the schoolboy about to make his first oration.

He was a magnificent occasional speaker, often called upon, yet he a.s.sured me that it was always thus with him and that the reason for it was that in spite of previous preparation--and the finish of his orations made it clear that he had devoted much thought to them beforehand--certain of his facts and names and dates had the habit of slipping from him in the midst of the development of his theme, unless he had refreshed his memory with regard to them immediately before, and that he feared that sometime he would find himself in the midst of an address with an absolute blank before him and that he would be compelled to sit down in disgrace. He had never done so and never did in the many years that he, lived afterwards, though always with this dread, never trusting his memory as most people do.

_Name Memory_.--There are certain circ.u.mstances in which memory may fail and yet no significance of a pathological nature can be attributed to the fact. All of us probably have had the disturbing experience of undertaking to introduce two friends whom we had known for many years and yet having to ask at least one of them for his name before we could make the introduction. It is not that we did not know the name, but at the moment we were utterly unable to recall it. After this has happened once or twice it is p.r.o.ne to happen again, because when we set about introducing people the thought of the previous unfortunate occurrences of this kind comes to our mind and acts as an inhibition of memory, making it impossible for us to recall names. Not infrequently if we are brought to the pa.s.s of having to ask one of the parties for his name we have to ask the other, though it was on the tip of our tongue a moment before, because in the meantime the disturbance of mind incident to having to ask has interfered with the train of recollection. Men have been known to forget their own names under circ.u.mstances of great excitement and such a forgetting is not pathological, but only a physiological disturbance of function because of secondary trains of a.s.sociation set to work in the brain which disturb ordinary recollection. Of course, some people have an excellent memory for names and never have such experiences, but they are very rare, though practice in recalling names does much to keep {682} people from such embarra.s.sing situations. On the other hand, there are some people especially gifted with name memories. Napoleon could recall all his soldiers' names.

Fatigue and Memory.--Occasionally it happens quite normally that when we are very tired certain portions of our memory at least become vague and indefinite and may even fail to respond to any excitation on our part. Under these circ.u.mstances we seem to be able only with considerable effort to exert the effort necessary to bring about such connections of brain cells as will facilitate recollection and reproduction and we may fail entirely. In a foreign country it is, as a rule, much more easy to talk the language in the morning when we are fresh than in the evening when we are tired. Especially is this true if we are asked to pa.s.s from one foreign language to another, which always requires a special effort. Everyone who has traveled must have had the experience that on crossing the frontier suddenly to be addressed in German after he has been talking French for weeks, may quite nonplus the traveler, even though he knows German as well or even better than French. This is especially true if much depends on the answers, if he has been addressed by a railway official or customs inspector. Apparently there must be a momentary wait until some s.h.i.+fting operation takes place in the brain before the German memory can get to work to establish the connections necessary to enable him to talk German. After a man has been talking to a number of people in one foreign tongue he is likely to be quite lost for words for a moment if he has to use another. The effects of fatigue and excitement and unusualness upon memory then must be remembered in order to be able to rea.s.sure patients who pervert the significance of the phenomena.

Ribot gives an excellent personal ill.u.s.tration of this peculiarity of memory in his "Diseases of Memory," which is worth recalling here. He says:

I descended on the same day two very deep mines In the Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours underground in each. While in the second mine, and exhausted both from fatigue and inanition, I felt the utter impossibility of talking longer with the German inspector who accompanied me. Every German word and phrase deserted my recollection; and it was not until I had taken food and wine, and been some time at rest, that I regained them again.