Scalpel and Slumber

In the silent moments after surgery, Dr. Smith finds himself haunted not by blood or precision, but by dreams he can’t explain. This story explores the interpretation of dreams not as mysticism, but as a mirror to trauma, memory, and the psyche.

The variation in the value of the many dreaming theories since the human civilisation was assumed to be pre-mental activities before sleeping.

Dr. Smith the tremendous and prestigious surgeon in the same hospital with Dr. Lee, a psychiatrist, who interpreted the dark dreams of Dr. Smith after his each surgery he experienced. Before the era of Aristotle and yet still many thinks that dreams are truthful and valuable to warn or foretell the future from divine legacy. Who knew that the story was inside the walls of scientific institute to be interpreted by Dr. Lee, the literature lover?

Dr. Smith was once coming out from the Operating Room (OR) and coincidently meets with a friend from another dimensional with the same interest in literature and science. Dr. Smith pleased and sorry to Dr. Lee for the waste of his white coat and coffee with their incidental interaction, Dr. Smith mentioned that he might be still in a dream. Yet in a frank way Dr. Lee replied right after his mentioning that “the principle impression produced upon the waking mind in the morning by what is left of a dream in the memory, of something alien, arising from another dimension and contrasting with remaining content of mind is dream”

Dr. Smith laughed! And replied back, I think dreaming is actually something which leading us back to life instead of freeing us from it.

Both took off the white coats and went to the hospital backyard full of greenery and nature!

Dr. Smith offered cold coffee to Dr. Lee; no it’s fine I don’t take coffees usually, Dr. Lee replied to his offer. What was that outside the OR you mentioned “something about the dreams?”

It’s about something between the scalpel and dreams, yet after every dream I stuck to Church trying my best to find my answer about foretelling my future via vivid dreams, Lee!

Ahh! Dr. Smith I think you are experiencing some kind of medical setting traumas? Dr. Lee asked smith.

Content of dreams are invariably more or less determined by the individual personality and experiences, sometime not but mostly it can also be considered the dreamer age, sex class, and habitual way of living.

Yes Dr. Lee whenever I perform a surgery before that I experience a vivid kind of dreams in which feel I kind of indifferent and significant. Sometime I cut my body with scalpel instead of the patient in my dreams, sometime I cut another part of the patient in my dreams instead of the part to be diagnose. It’s not worth remerging but also indifferent and significant, it is I think the material produced of what is most important.           

Then why you always reach out to Church right after each dream instead understanding it in such way you explained? Dr. Lee asked him.

I think it’s because of the factual myths slumber in the heart which causes the sensations and repulsion to another kind of feelings lead me to Church and Divine agency.

Mr. Smith we must consider the school of philosophy before the bar of reasons in the divine agency we must admire what the divine agency suggests but we must also consider the school of Nature and Philosophy as well.

Dreams extinguish our normal memory of it and place us in another world and quite other life story which in essentials has nothing to do with our real one. In the matter of fact, the impressions with which waking thoughts are intensely occupied only appear in dreams after they have been pushed somewhat aside by working of day-time thoughts.

I think you are right Mr. Lee, but Lee, why does consciousness so often in dreams receives the impression of indifferent memory-images, while the brain cells, just where they carry the most sensitive matter of what have been experienced?

Mr. Lee replied, in the context of dreams stimulation the only source of dreams is objective sensory stimuli. They are considered the only source of the dreams whatever taken into account by laymen, Mr. Smith.

Lee continued, for your satisfaction, senses during sleep don’t appear to be in dream in its real shape but replaced by new one some way related to it, as we mentioned before. Mind receives stimuli that reach it during sleep under conditions favorable to formation of illusion. Philosophy of nature always bring back by modern psychology. In the context of dreamer’s body the main sensations such as Muscular, Respiratory, Gastric, peripheral and mainly the sexual classes are considered to be in the scientific phenomena of dreams.               

Lee I may mention that if morality extends to dreams thus one may not take full responsibility of it, yet in the phenomena of science dreams has different and insignificant interpretations. ‘When we are anxious to disown some unjust accusation, especially one that relates to our aims and intentions, we often use the phrase “I should never dream of such a thing.”    

Mr. Smith the reason why it is usually impossible to explain dreams is precisely because they are caused by sensory impressions of the preceding day which failed to attract enough of the dreamer’s attention. The material with which dream-imagination accomplishes its artistic work is principally provided by the organic somatic stimuli which are so obscure during the daytime. According to the physiological view, however, the mental reaction to the internal somatic stimuli is exhausted with the provoking of certain ideas appropriate to the stimuli; these ideas give rise to others along associative lines and at this point the course of psychical events in dreams seems to be at an end.

Mr. Lee I wonder if it is psychological disorder or any psychological problem, isn’t that something strange?

Well, Mr. Smith, there is no possibility of explaining dreams as a psychical process, since to explain a thing means to trace it back to something already known, and there is at the present time no established psychological knowledge under which we could subsume what the psychological examination of dreams enables us to infer as a basis for their explanation.

So, Mr. Lee, we shall be obliged to set up a number of fresh hypotheses which touch tentatively upon the structure of the apparatus of the mind and upon the play of forces operating in it, am I right?

Yeah! You are right Mr. Smith, but, we must be careful, however, not to pursue these hypotheses too far beyond their first logical links, or their value will be lost in uncertainties. Even if we make no false inferences and take all the logical possibilities into account, the probable in completeness of our premises threatens to bring our calculation to a complete miscarriage.

So, thereby, we must forget this like we forget the dreams right after we dream of it near early mornings?

Mr. Smith, the forgetting of dreams, too, remains inexplicable unless the power of the psychical censorship is taken into account.

Ahh! Alright, to achieve this result, it will be necessary to correlate all the established implications derived from a comparative study of a whole series of such functions, we are heading that way, am I right Mr. Lee?

Consequently, yeah somehow, but I am of opinion that the extent of this forgetting is as a rule overestimated; and there is a similar overestimation of the extent to which the gaps in a dream limit our knowledge of it. It is often possible by means of analysis to restore all that has been lost by the forgetting of the dream’s content; at least, in quite a number of cases one can reconstruct from a single remaining fragment not, it is true, the dream—which is in any case a matter of no importance—but all the dream-thoughts.

So I may lose hope in Church and work through scientific way right?

Yes of course, it’s better to realize earlier, in many cases you must consider these experiences in your dreams from day to day.

Although an observation which I have been able to make in the course of preparing the manuscript about the interpretation of dreams has shown me that dreams are no more forgotten than other mental acts and can be compared, by no means to their disadvantage, with other mental functions in respect of their retention in the memory. I had kept records of a large number of my own dreams which for one reason or another I had not been able to interpret completely at the time or had left entirely uninterested. And now, between one and two years later, I have attempted to interpret some of them for the purpose of obtaining more material in illustration of my views.

Mr. Lee if I am not wrong, you may be suggested that, no one, should expect that an interpretation of his dreams will fall into his lap like manna from the skies, am I heading in the right way?

Mr. Smith, obviously, one must not think that way, practice is needed even for perceiving entopic phenomena or other sensations from which our attention is normally withheld; and this is so even though there is no psychical motive fighting against such perceptions. It is decidedly more difficult to get hold of ‘involuntary ideas.’ Anyone who seeks to do so must familiarize himself with the expectations raised in the present volume and must, in accordance with the rules laid down in it, endeavor during the work to refrain from any criticism, any party pries, and any emotional or intellectual bias.

Moreover, it is only with the greatest difficulty that the beginner in the business of interpreting dreams can be persuaded that his task is not at an end when he has a complete interpretation in his hands—an interpretation which makes sense, is coherent and throws light upon every element of the dream’s content.

Therefore, for the same dream may perhaps have another interpretation as well, an ‘over-interpretation’, which has escaped him,  it is, indeed, not easy to form any conception of the abundance of the unconscious trains of thought, all striving to find expressions, which are active in our minds. Whenever one psychical element is linked with another by an objectionable or superficial association, there is also a legitimate and deeper link between them which is subjected to the resistance of the censorship.

Thereby, last not the least; two cases may here be distinguished, though in essence they are the same. In the first of these, the censorship is directed only against the connection between two thoughts, which are unobjectionable separately. If so, the two thoughts will enter consciousness in succession; the connection between them will remain concealed, but, instead, a superficial link between them will occur to us, of which we should otherwise never have thought.

Mr. Lee, that was amassing and amusing perspective on the interpretation of dreams, I was so colorist about my dreams, and always expecting something extinguish from the skies, yet who knew, that the dreams are interpreting inside the walls of science. I think we must always stay in touch for future foretelling of our own interest in literature.

Mr. Smith, that’s sounds great we must, by the way, I have to see my patients in ward B I think your heading towards OR so let’s grab a coffee and restart our buy life in this hospital, frankly replied and said bye to each other.

Ever wondered if your dreams are random or revealing something deeper? Step into the story of a surgeon haunted by vivid dreams and a psychiatrist who decodes them.
Read: Between Scalpel and Slumber →

Scalpel and Slumber: A Journey Through Dreams, Science, and Self

Scalpel and Slumber is a reflective narrative that explores the intersection of medicine, dreams, and the human psyche. Through the conversation between Dr. Smith, a renowned surgeon, and Dr. Lee, a thoughtful psychiatrist, the story delves into the mysteries of vivid dreams, subconscious fears, and the tension between science and spirituality. This piece invites readers to rethink the meaning of their dreams and consider how deeply personal experiences can be shaped by both logic and emotion.

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When a surgeon’s haunting dreams collide with psychological insight, a quiet dialogue unfolds between trauma, memory, and the mystery of the mind. Scalpel and Slumber explores how the space between surgery and sleep can reveal the deepest parts of our humanity.