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Can a long dream occur
within a fraction of a second ?
This is unlikely. However, read the following spectacular dream report of
the 19th century psychologist Maury as recounted by Sigmund
Freud:
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"He was ill and lying in his room in bed, with his mother sitting beside
him, and dreamt that it was during the Reign of Terror. After witnessing
a number of frightful scenes of murder, he was finally himself brought before
the revolutionary tribunal. There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville
and the rest of the grim heroes of those terrible days. He was questioned
by them, and, after a number of incidents which were not retained in his
memory, was condemned, and led to the place of execution surrounded by an
immense mob. He climbed onto the scaffold and was bound to the plank by the
executioner. It was tipped up. The blade of the guillotine fell. He felt
his head being separated from his body, woke up in extreme anxiety - - and
found that the top of the bed had fallen down and had struck his cervical
vertebrae just in the way in which the blade of the guillotine would actually
have struck them."
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How long does a dream last?
Dement and Wolpert attempted to mark a certain point in the passage
of dreaming time by spraying sleeping subjects with water.
A portion of the subjects did in fact incorporate this sensory stimulation
into their dreams. For example, a subject who had dreamed he was acting in
a play related the following narrative when he was awakened thirty seconds
after the cold water had been sprayed on his back:
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"I was walking behind the leading lady when she suddenly collapsed and water
was dripping on her. I ran over to her and water was dripping on my back
and head. The roof was leaking. I was very puzzled why she fell down and
decided some plaster must have fallen on her. I looked up and there was a
hole in the roof. I dragged her over to the side of the stage and began pulling
the curtains. Just then I woke up."
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The experimenters compared the length of time elapsed between the
stimulation and waking of subjects with the length of the reported dreams.
Once again the results indicated that the events of a dream corresponded
approximately to the actual passage of time.
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