rus
belle" change places for a while--imaginary success keeps us from worrying
about real failure. Dissociation, day-dreaming, and mental epilepsy are but
few of the many milestones on a road, the end of which is insanity, or
complete and permanent dissociation, instead of the partial and fleeting
dissociation from which we all suffer. The lunatic never "comes to", but in
a world of dreams dissociates himself forever from realities he is not
mentally strong enough to face.

The writing of "spirits" through a "medium" is an example of dissociation,
and though shown at its best in neuropaths, is common enough in normal men,
as can be proved by anyone with a planchette and some patience.

If the experimenter puts his hands on the toy, and a friend talks to him,
while another whispers questions, he may write more or less coherent
answers, though all the time he goes on talking, and does not know what his
hand is writing. His mind is split into two smaller minds, each ignorant of
the other, each busily liberating memory-prisoners from its own block of
cells in the gaol of the subconscious. The writing often refers to
long-forgotten incidents, the experiment sometimes being of real use in
cases of lost memory.

Dreams are dissociations in sleep, while the scenes conjured up by
crystal-gazing are only waking dreams, in which the dissociation is caused
by gazing at a bright surface and so tiring the brain centres, whereupon
impressions of past life emerge from the subconscious, to surprise, not
only the onlookers to whom they are related, but also the gazer herself,
who has long "forgotten them".

It is childish to attach supernatural significance to either dreams or
crystal-gazing, both of which mirror, not the future, but only the past,
the subject's own past.

It is noteworthy that women dream more frequently and vividly than men.
When a dreamer has few worries, he usually dreams but forgets his dream on
waking; when greatly worried, he often carries his problems to bed with
him, and recent "representative dreams" are merely unprofitable overtime
work done by the brain. Occasionally, dreams have a purely physical basis
as when palpitation becomes transformed in a dream into a scene wherein a
horse is struggling violently, or where an uncovered foot originates a
dream of polar-exploration; in this latter type the dream is protective, in
that it is an effort to side-track some irritation without breaking sleep.

Since Fr