I'm always interested in the blue highways of human intellect, in the also-rans and the almost-weres. Sometimes some interesting ideas get lost, in that Darwinian shuffle that goes on in academia. This week, I've been thumbing electronically through an old book, The Mind in Sleep, (Routledge, $225.00) written by the New Zealand psychologist Reo Fortune, also Margaret Mead's second husband of three, a man known to get a little combative about what academics claimed they knew. Fortune would no doubt have some pithy remarks about the price of this book, which virtually guarantees that nobody much will read his life's work. Some of it's interesting stuff:
The Dream of an Advanced Woman
The dreamer is walking with Z to whom she is engaged. Suddenly she seizes the end of a sheet hanging down from a telegraph wire. Instantly the sheet travels away with her with great rapidity. Soon she is far off, leaving Z far back in the distance. The dreamer had decided to attend a University extension class in literature. Mrs. A., her prospective mother-in-law, thought fit to object to this arrangement. Her future daughter-in-law would get far ahead of her son and look down on him in consequence. Advanced women made bad wives for ordinary husbands. The dreamer, who was a young lady with a fund of common sense, told Mrs. A that she though her fears foolish, and that she did not intend to yield to them. She would not get far ahead of Z.
In the dream Mrs. A’ suggestion is given full effect despite the dreamer’s waking dismissal of it.
The Dream of the Library Vandalism
I have secretly let into the college library certain students that I thought I could trust. But they remove several window panes and smash the stained and frosted glass in other places. Then they set ladders up to the gaps and climb out through them to the roof. After locking up the doors I meet in the passage two ladies, Professor K’s daughter and Professor T’s wife. As I pass down the stairs, Professor K, seated at the foot remarks loudly: ‘What’s F been doing in the library at this time of night?”
