NOTES AND NEWS.

A STUDY OF TASTE DREAMS.

In a former issue of this JOURNAL (Vol. IX, pp. 413, 414) I gave the results of some experiments on the visual elements of the dreams of my students of psychology in the State Normal School at Westfield, Massachusetts. More recently I have experimented with my students for taste dreams. The conditions imposed by the test required that the mouth be washed out just before retiring, and that a clove be crushed and allowed to remain on the tongue. This was continued for ten successive nights and the details of the remembered dreams written out the morning following. Twenty women fulfilled the conditions of the test and reported a total of 254 dreams.

A strong visual element was reported in 123 of the dreams; a marked auditory element in 17, and a pronounced motor element in 36. Seventeen taste and eight smell dreams were reported. The significant fact in the study is the large proportion of taste and smell dreams. With three of the students cloves were involved-one of "tasting cloves very distinctly," and another of "eating cloves." One dreamed of reciting in school on the importation of cloves from the Molucca Islands. This, she thinks, may have been due to a recent lesson on commercial geography on spices and condiments. Several students reported dreams involving the tasting (and eating) of fruits, the orange being oftenest mentioned. One dreamed of eating nuts and one of eating spiced food. A student who dreamed of tasting wormwood thinks it may have been suggested by a discussion which took place in the psychology class just before the taste experiment was undertaken. I had asked the class to suggest some substance that might be used to induce gustatory dreams and one student had recommended wormwood. A brief discussion followed in which most of the students opposed the selection of wormwood and advocated instead cloves.

Equally interesting were the eight smell dreams. One student dreamed of "smelling and seeing spices." Another "a distinct smell dream of food cooking; can assign no cause, as it was impossible for the odor from the kitchen to reach me." One dreamed of inhaling the fragrance of a cowslip blossom, and she adds that the cowslip had been drawn in school the preceding day. One reports that she dreamed of modelling (in sand) the continent of Asia, and that some sweet-smelling peas grew from the sand. This dream may have been occasioned in part by the fact that she had modelled in sand a relief map of Asia the preceding day, and in part by the planting of some seeds in sawdust a few days before in the science department, in order to study processes of germination.

Several of the more remotely suggested taste dreams were curious. One student, for example, dreamed that the building in which she was sleeping was on fire. She attributes the dream to the last remark which she made to her room-mate before falling asleep: "I shall have to remove this clove; it is burning the mouth out of me."

Comparing the test in the present instance with that previously reported, the following percentages are obtained :

The close relation existing between the taste and smell senses and the comparatively large increase in the percentage of gustatory and olfactory dreams would seem to suggest the peculiar character of the experiment as the cause, especially since several of the dreams involved not merely gustatory and olfactory imagery (i. e., thinking about them), but real tastes and smells.

WILL S. MONROE.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

GROOS, KARL. Die Spiele der Menschen. Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1899. pp. 538. Price, Mk. 10.

GYEL, E. L'être subconscient. Felix Alcan, Paris, 1899. pp. 191. Price, Fcs. 4.

LAMPÉRIÈRE, ANNA. Le rôle social de la femme. Devoirs, droits, éducation. F. Alcan, Paris, 1898. pp. 175. Price, Fcs. 2.50. MUELLER RUDOLF. Das Hypnotische Hellseh-Experiment im Dienste der Naturwissenschaftlichen Seelenforcshung. II Band. Das normale Bewusstsein. Arwed Strauch, Leipzig, 1898. pp.

322. Price, Mk. 4.

RENOUVIER, CH., et PRAT, LOUIS. La nouvelle monadologie. Armand Colin et Cie, Paris, 1899. pp. 546. Price, Fcs. 12.

RIBERT, LÉONCE. Essai d'une philosophie nouvelle suggérée par la science. Felix Alcan, Paris, 1898. pp. 562. Price, Fcs. 6.

STERN, L. WILLIAM. Psychologie der Veränderungsauffassung. Preuss u. Jünger, Breslau, 1898. pp. 264. Price, Mk. 6.

TALBOT, EUGENE S. Degeneracy; Its causes, signs and results. (The Contemporary Science Series, Vol. 35.) Walter Scott, London, 1898. pp. 372. Price, 6 shillings.

By STELLA EMILY SHARP, Ph. D., Cornell University.

PART I. HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL.

§ 1. Individual Psychology.

The systematic consideration of the problems grouped under the name of "Individual Psychology" is of but recent date. Indeed, the only treatment of the whole subject for its own sake is that contained in a paper published in 1895,' by Mm. Binet and Henri. A great deal of work has, however, been done by others, outside of France, which properly belongs to this branch of Psychology; notably the investigations by Prof. Kraepelin and his followers in Germany, whose object is by psychological methods to study the mentally abnormal in comparison with mentally normal individuals. For the sake of this comparison the variations in the psychical processes of normal individuals must, Prof. Kraepelin says, first be studied; but the methods employed are such only as are demanded by the comparison that is the main object of the investigation.2

Many American psychologists have made researches in the

1 A. Binet et V. Henri : La psychologie individuelle. In L'Année psychologique, Vol. II, 1895, pp. 411 ff.

In a foot note to the article La mésure en psychologie individuelle (Revue philos., Vol. XLVI, p. 113), M. Binet makes the claim that he is the first French psychologist to employ the term "Individual Psychology."

E. Kraepelin: Der psychologische Versuch in der Psychiatrie. In Kraepelin's Psychologische Arbeiten, I, 1, pp. 1 et seq. See also Axel Oehrn: Experimentelle Studien zur Individual-Psychologie. Ibid., pp. 92 ff.

field of Individual Psychology; but there has been no unity of method among the investigators, nor have the results been systematized or their value estimated. An important characteristic of most of this work, however, is the large proportion of anthropometric tests, which are accorded an importance equal to those which are strictly mental.1 In the class of the more exclusively psychological investigations may be named the experiments of Prof. Jastrow concerning the community of ideas between men and women, made at the University of Wisconsin, and similar experiments made by Prof. M. W. Calkins at Wellesley College;2 as well as a brief study in Individual Psychology by Miss C. Miles, which makes use of the method of the questionnaire.3

It is clear, then, that any treatment of Individual Psychology almost necessarily involves a consideration, more or less complete, of the work done by Mm. Binet and Henri. For this purpose it is well to ask first of all what views these authors take of the scope and relations of Individual Psychology. Individual Psychology, they maintain, takes up the thread of investigation at the point where General Psychology leaves it. "General Psychology studies the general properties of psychical processes, those, therefore, which are common to all individuals; Individual Psychology, on the contrary, studies those psychical processes which vary from one individual to another: it seeks to determine the variable qualities, and the extent and manner of their variation according to the individual." Memory may very well illustrate the point. The law of memory is as follows: the time necessary to fix impressions in

1 Tests employed by Prof. Jastrow at the World's Fair of Chicago in 1893. Analyzed in L'Année psychologique, Vol. I, p. 532. See also J. McK. Cattell, Mental Tests and Measurements. Mind, 1890, Vol. XV, pp. 373 ff.; J. A. Gilbert: Researches on the Mental and Physical Development of School Children. Stud. Yale Laboratory, II, 1894; J. McK. Cattell and L. Farrand, Psych. Rev., Vol. III, 1896, pp. 610 ff.; J. Jastrow and G. W. Morehouse: Some Anthropometric and Psychologic Tests on College Students. Am. Jour. of Psychology, Vol. IV, pp. 420 ff.

2 The original account of these experiments appeared in an article entitled A Study of Mental Statistics, in the December, 1891, number of the New Review, under the heading "The Community of Ideas and Thought-Habits of Men and Women." It appeared also in the article Community and Association of Ideas: a Statistical Study, by J. Jastrow; Psych, Rev., I, p. 152 (1894). Similar experiments made at Wellesley College by C. C. Nevers, under the direction of M. W. Calkins, Psych. Rev., Vol. II, p. 363 (1895), gave a different result. A criticism of the latter by Prof. Jastrow appeared in the Psych. Rev., Vol. III, p. 68 (1896). A reply to this by Miss Calkins is found in the same volume of the Psych. Rev., p. 426; and a further reply by Prof. Jastrow, p. 430. Both investigations are discussed and criticised by Amy Tanner, Psych. Rev., Vol. III, pp. 548 ff.

Am. Jour. of Psychology, VI, p. 534.