THE WORLD OF DREAMS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE SOUL OF SPAIN.
AFFIRMATIONS. Second Edition.
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS.
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS. Second Series.
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE.
THE
WORLD OF DREAMS
BY
HAVELOCK ELLIS
'Sleep has its own world'
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1922
PREFACE
There are at least four different ways of writing abook on dreams. There is, for instance, the literarymethod. In this way one goes to books or to thememories of other people for one's material, and socollects a great number of more or less wonderfulstories. I have rejected this method, for it is entirelyuntrustworthy. Dreams are elusive at the best; onlya very careful observer can set down a dream faithfully,even directly after it has occurred, and no one cansafely entrust a dream to memory.
There is, again, what I may call the clinical methodof studying dreams by the personal observation andcollection of facts, with summation and analysis of theresults. On a large scale, with the aid of the questionnaire,this method has been especially carried on in the UnitedStates, notably at Clark University under the inspirationof Dr. Stanley Hall. A strict and scientificadherence to the clinical method of studying dreamshas resulted in Professor Sante de Sanctis's book I Sogni(first edition 1899), which is, on the whole, the bestbook on dreams published in recent years.
Then there is the experimental method, which, notcontent with mere objective study of the phenomena,endeavours to interfere with them and to find out the[vi]results of interference. This method may be combinedwith other methods of studying dreams. In its pureform it has in recent years been especially practised bythe late Mourly Vold. Its results are not withoutinterest, but they do not cover a large part of the field,and they are not altogether reliable. Dreaming activityis so fluid and suggestible—and this is notably so whenexperimenter and subject are the same person—thatinterference with the phenomena deforms them, and wecannot be sure that by experiment we have reallylearned much about the life of dreams.
There is, finally, the introspective method. This maybe said to be the earliest of the more scientific methodsof studying dreams. Maine de Biran was here apioneer, and Maury, in his famous book, Le Sommeil etles Rêves (1861), which inaugurated the modern studyof dreams, adopted a mainly introspective method,though he was not always quite successful in avoidingthe fallacies of that