Hot Feet
Dreamed c.1868 by a patient of Dr. Hammond
A patient related to me the particulars of a dream which occurred to him while he was asleep with a vessel of hot water applied to the soles of his feet. He had, just before going to sleep, read in the evening paper an account of the capture of an English gentleman by Italian brigands.
He dreamt that while crossing the Rocky Mountains he had been attacked by two Mexicans, who, after a long fight, had succeeded in taking him alive. They conveyed him very hurriedly to their camp, which was situated in a deep gorge....and awoke to find that the blanket which was wrapped around the tin vessel containing the hot water had become disarranged, and that his feet were in direct contact with the hot metal.Here they told him that unless he revealed to them the means of making gold from copper they would submit him to torture. In vain he plead ignorance of any such process. Pulling off his boots and stockings they held his naked feet to the fire till he shrieked with agony...
EDITOR'S NOTE
Hammond's not just telling a joke but making a point--that dreams incorporate physical sensations in sleep, dramatizing a bit, because why not, but basically not about your hopes or fears, (the inner world Freud emphasized) nor peering into the distance, the future, or others' lives (the outer worlds shamanism emphasized). Hammond's got a point--he just goes too far, claiming elsewhere in the book that all dreams do this--while they may pick up very subtle, subliminal things and thus look predictive or clairvoyant, they're all about here and now. Indigestion, blankets, rats in the attic! There is no royal road to the unconscious; there is no unconscious.
Even though any experienced dreamworker knows first-hand this is false, it was psychology's mainstream position for nearly a century; Hervey de Saint-Denys assumed it in his experiments in the 1840s, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal still assumes it in the 1920s. It's why Freud got so defensive--he really was fighting pervasive academic denial. With one foot stuck in the bog himself.
When I read this dream, I laugh. But I also wonder why the bandits wanted him to turn copper into gold--transmutation! The dream could've gone with easy and plausible--say, the location of a gold mine, or hidden loot from a stagecoach robbery--very Wild West, right? But alchemy? A really odd detail Jung'd sink his teeth into. But Hammond knows there's nothing to see, nothing to explain, move along folks...
--Chris Wayan
SOURCE: Sleep and its Derangements by Dr William A. Hammond, 1869, circa p.115 (see Gutenberg.org for online copy)
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