case, that if called upon to describe how we guide our writing, many would be as much at a loss to reply as if questioned how we know which is the right hand; and while realizing that eye and hand both contribute to the writing reaction, would we be unable to apportion the manner of dependence that exists towards each of these sensation-groups.
Automatic Conduct: The Motor Dream.
I have introduced these considerations at this juncture in order that the rationale of the motor aspects of these lapses and confusions may be succinctly appreciated. We return to the more characteristically intellectual activities with prominent motor factors, to note the persistence of such occupations when the directive influences are removed. An important type of such removal occurs nightly in the condition of sleep. If regulated and complex groups of movements, organized pieces of conduct, may be performed without arousing consciousness or leaving a trace in the waking memory, then the thoroughness with which the motor habit may be aroused without arousing the awareness which its original acquisition required, becomes the more completely established; and though this is not in the strict sense a lapse, it does illustrate the nature of the tree and of the soil on and in which lapses grow. Though such occurrences demand a predisposed temperament or temporary condition of excitement, they occur quite frequently, and particularly in youth.[1] They appear as active dreams, of which sleep-walking (somnambulism) is but one type. The simplest type is that in which a lively dream passes over into action. A little girl who had spent several hours of a day in jumping into a sand pile, makes a similar leap in her sleep from the landing to the hall below, awaking with sobs and bruises and the explanation, 'I thought it was the sand pile.' A sleeping boy is aroused by the firm clutch of a hand upon his feet, and hears his younger brother call out, 'I've got you now.' These words proved to be the reaction to a dream of the younger lad that some one had stolen his stockings, that he had left his own bed to pursue the offender, and that in seizing his brother's feet he had just reached the dénouement, the arrest of the culprit. A high-school athlete, on the eve of a contest in which he had entered for the broad jump, awakes to find himself upright in bed, his knees under him, ready to jump; and is able to recall his dreaming of the contest, the trials of his competitors and the calling of his own number, to which he was respond-
- ↑ The number of instances of this character which my students record of themselves as children, or of their young sisters and brothers, suggests that early youth is the favorable period for active, somnambulistic, dramatic and somniloquent dreams. It is not that these habits are more automatic in youth, but that the intensity with which interest demands expression in action is then more pronounced.
