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Hammond

Dreams by (or collected by) Dr William A. Hammond, pre-Freudian dream researcher, author of Sleep and its Derangements, 1869 (he means derangements both ways: "stuff that disturbs healthy sleep" AND "whenever you dream you're a nut case".) He was what Freud was up against--dreams were essentially meaningless, triggered by night noises, itches, indigestion, etc. They were instantaneous, too, explaining away dreams that climax with some waking-world event they couldn't have predicted by the physics of the time. And dreams were so inherently irrational that Hammond claimed lucid dreamers were all mistaken--they had to be awake! Yet Hammond collected some fascinating cases--it's just that you can't trust his conclusions.

RELATED TOPICS: contemporaries Hervey de Saint-Denys - Alfred Maury - the next generation: Havelock Ellis, Frederick Greenwood, Freud

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FLAYED COLUMN: by Antoine Lavalette, fall 1815; a time-compressed nightmare
In prison, the midnight bell chimed. I dreamt I saw a cavalry column of men and horses skinned, gory, still marching.
Wagons of the dead passed for hours. As the guard changed, the gate crashed, waking me--just minutes after midnight!
CAUTION: PROVES NOT ALL DREAMS ARE REALTIME
HOT FEET: by Patient 2 of William Hammond, c.1868, a nightmare--but subliminal or mystical?
I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Gold-hungry Mexican bandits capture me and put my feet to the fire,
demanding "How do you transmute copper into gold?" I scream "I don't know!", waking to find...
CAUTION: TORTURE PLAYED FOR LAUGHS
ROWLAND'S DREAM: by R. J. Rowland, 1790s? a dream of a useful ghost.
DAY: Rowland needed papers for a legal case, but couldn't find where his father had stashed them.
DREAM: his long-dead dad told R.J. a lawyer R.J. he'd never heard of had them, 'but the man may need
some reminding', and gave details of Portuguese gold and a drinking bout. Next day, it worked. But how?
CAUTION: GHOST? E.S.P.?
SAVONAROLA: by Mrs C., circa 1867; a dream mocking excess self-criticism
Mrs C. dreamed she was the ascetic preacher Savonarola, who wanted to burn all vanities.
In her audience she saw... Mrs C! So she, Savonarola, aimed her barbs at all of C's flaws...
THUMBSUCKER!: by a patient of William Hammond, c.1868, an epic comic taste dream
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
VOLITION ON THE BRINK: by Dr William Hammond, c.1867.
I'm on a mesa, looking down in terror. I try to pull back but a compulsion
overrides my will--I crawl helplessly forward until I go over. As I fall...
CAUTION: PRE-FREUDIAN DISMISSAL OF WARNING
WHISTLE: by Dr William Hammond, c.1865; a self-flagging predictive nightmare
On a long steamboat voyag, a living skeleton swaps a warning for my watch; when the whistle
sounds, the boiler will blow. As it does, I dive in the river and wake to discover a real whistle...
CAUTION: UNCANNY SYNCHRONIZATION?


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