(Loewenfeld quotes a passage to this effect from the Oupnek'hat,
_Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_, 2d ed., p. 114.) Even savages
recognize the occurrence of erotic dreams in women as normal, for
the Papuans, for instance, believe that a young girl's first
menstruation is due to intercourse with the moon in the shape of
a man, the girl dreaming that a man is embracing her. (_Reports
Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v., p. 206.) In the
seventeenth century, Rolfincius, in a well-informed study (_De
Pollutione Nocturna_, a Jena Inaugural Dissertation, 1667),
concluded that women experience such manifestations, and quotes
Aristotle, Galen, and Fernelius, in the same sense. Sir Thomas
Overbury, in his _Characters_, written in the early part of the
same century, describing the ideal milkmaid, says that "her
dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them," clearly implying
that It was not so with most women. The notion that women are not
subject to erotic dreams thus appears to be of comparatively
recent origin.
One of the most interesting and important characters by which the erotic
dreams of women--and, indeed, their dreams generally--differ from those of
men is in the tendency to evoke a repercussion on the waking life, a
tendency more rarely noted in men's erotic dreams, and then only to a
minor extent. This is very common, even in healthy and normal women, and
is exaggerated to a high degree in neurotic subjects, by whom the dream
may even be interpreted as a reality, and so declared on oath, a fact of
practical importance.
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