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Dreaming Is Play: A New Theory of Dream Psychology

imagesThe scientific study of dreams has fallen on hard times.  In an era dominated by cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychoactive drugs, and computer models of the mind, dreaming seems less relevant to psychology today than at any time since Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900.

The problem, ironically, is not a lack of empirical evidence about the nature and function of dreams.  Rather, the problem is too much evidence that does not seem to add up to a coherent theory or a useful guide for therapeutic practice.

Psychoanalysts from Freud onwards have used clinical case studies to argue that dreams, despite their cryptic symbolism, are meaningful and can be tremendously helpful in therapy.  In the 1950’s, however, neuroscientists discovered that dreaming correlates with automatic processes in the brain during sleep, suggesting that dreams are in fact nothing but neural nonsense.  At about the same time, quantitative researchers began using statistical methods to analyze tens of thousands of dream reports.  Instead of bizarre symbols or random nonsense, these researchers found a large number of clear, straightforward continuities between dream content and people’s emotional concerns in waking life.

The results from each of these areas of research appear to contradict the other two, making the quest for common ground all the more difficult.

New developments in cognitive science offer a better way forward, by illuminating the evolutionary features of the human mind as they relate to the survival needs and adaptive challenges facing our species.  When we look at dreaming in this broader context, a simple yet powerful thesis emerges: dreaming is a kind of play, the play of the imagination in sleep.

Zoologists have found evidence of play behaviors in all mammals, especially among the youngest members of each species.  Play occurs within a temporary space of pretense and make-believe where actions are not bound by the same constraints that govern the normal, non-play world.  A major function of play, most researchers agree, is to practice responses to survival-related situations in a safe environment, so the young will be better prepared when they become adults to face those situations in waking reality.  Creativity, flexibility, and instinctual freedom are the hallmarks of play, in humans as well as other animals.

All of these qualities of play are prominent in dreaming, too.  Dreaming occurs within sleep, a state of temporary withdrawal from the waking world in which the imagination is given free reign to wander where it will.  Dreaming tends to be more frequent and impactful in childhood; young people experience dreams of chasing, flying, and lucid awareness much more often than do older people.  The contents of dreams often have direct references to survival-related themes like sexuality, aggression, personal health, social relations, and the threat of death.  Although dreams in general are not as wildly bizarre as often assumed, they do have the qualities of spontaneous creativity and rich variation that stimulate the mind to look beyond what is to imagine what might be.

Thinking about dreaming as a kind of play has many advantages, foremost of which is overcoming the conflicts between the different branches of dream research.  Dreaming is indeed rooted in natural cycles of brain activity, as neuroscientists have argued, but it no longer makes sense to treat dreams as meaningless by-products of a sleep-addled mind.  If we saw a group of children playing an imaginary game of house, would we be justified in assuming their brains are somehow malfunctioning?  Not at all.  In the same way, we should recognize the playful qualities of dreaming as integral to healthy cognitive functioning.  In the language of computer programming, dreaming should be appreciated as a vital feature of the mind, not a bug to be fixed or eliminated.

A dreaming-is-play perspective has clear benefits for the practice of psychotherapy.  Rather than laboring to uncover deep hidden messages, therapists can explore the imaginative dynamics of their clients’ dreams for useful clues to their emotional concerns and waking life challenges (while still pursuing deeper symbolic levels, if so desired).

This can be especially helpful in caring for trauma patients.  Research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has shown that during successful treatment the patients’ recurrent nightmares gradually become less fixated on the trauma and more open to an increasing variety of dream themes, characters, and scenarios.  In other words, the more playful their dreams become, the more progress the patients are making towards psychological health.

I once did a research project with a woman, “Nan,” who was nearly killed in a car accident and spent several days in intensive care with severe spinal injuries.  Her dreams following the accident were filled with fear, aggression, and misfortune, exactly what we would expect of someone with acute PTSD.  But Nan told me she put her hopes on one unusual dream, which came about four months after she was hurt.  In this dream there was a magical paintbrush that allowed her to paint the colors of the rainbow, just like a beloved character she remembered from a childhood story.  This was the first time since Nan’s accident that one of her dreams had so many references to colors, positive emotions, and good fortunes.  The green shoots of playfulness that emerged in this dream anticipated, and perhaps even stimulated, her eventual recovery of health.

The evolutionary success of our species is largely due to the tremendous flexibility and adaptive creativity of our minds.  Current scientific evidence is telling us that dreaming is a powerful, neurologically hard-wired process that strengthens precisely those distinctively human psychological abilities.  Our playful reveries during sleep function like mental yoga: stretching our cognitive abilities in new directions, exploring the boundaries and potentials of awareness, and preparing us for whatever the waking world may bring.

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Dreams and Healing in West Bengal

The close connection between dreaming and healing has a long and venerable history in Western civilization.  The ancient Greek healing god Asclepius was worshipped throughout the Mediterranean for many centuries, with people praying to the god for dreams to help cure their physical and psychological suffering.  The dream practices at the Asclepian temples became the deep spiritual basis for the Western medical tradition that many of us rely on today, although this fact is rarely acknowledged or appreciated.

Recently I had an opportunity to talk with Dr. June McDaniel, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston, about dreams and healing.  Dr. McDaniel has expertise in the study of Hinduism and mystical experience, and she has done extensive field work among Hindu worship communities in West Bengal.  We were both attending the recent conference of the American Academy of Religion, for a panel discussion of my Big Dreams book, and in her comments she offered a fascinating glimpse of her findings among contemporary West Bengali Hindus:

“One of the most famous dream incubation temples in India is in Tarakeshwar in West Bengal- it was even the subject of a Bollywood film.  Crowds of people visit this temple to have big dreams, and the major goal is the miraculous healing of disease or misfortune.  People fast and bring the Bengali equivalent of sleeping bags to sleep at the temple before the statue of the god Shiva Taraknath, who will appear in dreams to directly heal the person, or inform them of what to do (which is usually to find particular herbs or go on a pilgrimage).  I spoke with some people there who were coming to thank the god for appearing in their dreams and helping them.   Some people will go to ask the god for favors (such as having a son or getting a better job), and the god will appear in the dream to let them know his answer.  Some had a series of dreams in which the god appeared.”

Dr. McDaniel’s description has remarkable similarities to the dream practices performed at the temples of Asclepius.  This suggests a truly cross-cultural recognition of the potential value of dreaming in efforts to heal people of their ills.  In West Bengal these practices are still an active part of people’s lives, as Dr. McDaniel found in her interviews with numerous healers and religious leaders.  I will be talking with her in more detail about this over the coming year, because findings like hers highlight a vital point: the future of dreams and healing depends in large part on learning the lessons taught by religious and spiritual traditions for thousands of years.  We do not have to perform other people’s rituals or worship their gods to recognize in their engagements with dreaming a shared set of interests and a potential storehouse of accumulated wisdom.

 

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How to Misbehave in Other People’s Dreams

mv5bmjqwmju0njyyn15bml5banbnxkftztgwnde0mdcxmdi-_v1_ux182_cr00182268_al_What would you do if you could control not only your own dreams, but other people’s dreams, too?  What if you could enter other people’s dreams without their knowing it?  How would you use those powers?  Do the same ethical principles that guide our waking lives also apply in dreaming?

The new television series “Falling Water” has created a fascinating narrative world in which various characters explore these very questions, trying to make sense of amazing dream experiences that seem both radically anomalous and strangely natural.

The latest episode, titled “Three Half Blind Mice,” fills out several story lines that illuminate the many possibilities available to those who can enter into the realm of shared dreaming.

Without giving away specific plot twists, the motives that drive people in their shared dreaming are not much different from people’s motives in waking life.  One character seduces and sexually assaults another in her dreams.  Several characters are infiltrating other people’s dreams to make money, by generating unconscious fears that prompt them to make bad business decisions.  A scientist is using shared dreams to experiment with the powers of the mind.  A religious cult is using the dream world to gather, worship, and plan for a global spiritual revolution.  Everyone seems to have a ruthless determination to find and control a mysterious child blessed with special dream powers.

The three protagonists—Tess, Burton, and Taka—have mostly virtuous reasons for entering into the shared dream world.  Tess is seeking her child, Burton is trying to learn more about a recurrent woman in his dreams, and Taka is trying to help his catatonic mother.  These are morally good and virtuous reasons to explore the dream realm as they do.  But all three are quickly drawn into the more shadowy dimensions of shared dreaming, where right and wrong no longer seem so clear and nothing is as it appears.

So far, the challenges faced by the characters in the dream world are primarily posed by each other, humans versus humans.  There are no alien, transpersonal, supra-human forces at work, at least that have been revealed so far.  I’ll be curious to see if and when other forms of intelligence and intentionality enter into the dream world.  People who engage in a long-term study of their dreams often find they become more open to such possibilities, not less so—that’s been my experience from teaching and research, in any case.

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Climate Change Nightmares: A Sign of Things to Come

imgresThe front page of today’s New York Times newspaper includes an article about the impact of climate change on a remote village in Alaska.  The article, by Erica Goode, is titled “Climate Change Pushes Towns in Alaska to Wrenching Choice,” and it begins with a dream:

In the dream, a storm came and Betsy Bekoalok watched the river rise on one side of the village and the ocean on the other, the water swallowing up the brightly colored houses, the fishing boats and the four-wheelers, the school and the clinic.

She dived into the floodwaters, frantically searching for her son. Bodies drifted past her in the half-darkness. When she finally found the boy, he, too, was lifeless.

“I picked him up and brought him back from the ocean’s bottom,” Ms. Bekoalok remembered.

Ms. Bekoalok lives in Shaktoolik, north of Anchorage in a coastal region directly threatened by rising seas and worsening storms caused by climate change.  The article goes on to describe the daunting challenges facing the residents of Shaktoolik as they contemplate a terrible choice between moving the town to a safer place or staying put and building stronger defenses against the ocean.  The latter option would be folly, but the former choice is prohibitively expensive and would probably destroy the community just the same.

The dream shared by Ms. Bekoalok clearly expresses a reality-based anxiety about the dangers posed by climate change.  Dreams of water are fairly common; people typically dream of water more than of any other element (fire, earth, air).  But dreams of threatening water, such as floods or waves, are less common, and such dreams often include a heightened vividness and intensity that makes them unusually memorable.  Combine that with a theme of danger to one’s child (a classic parental nightmare), and the result is a hyper-realistic simulation of a dire threat looming in the dreamer’s future waking life.

The broader resonance of the dream, and the reason why it’s a powerful way to start the story, derives from its roots in the evolved nature of the dreaming imagination.  All humans have an innate propensity for nightmares that anticipate various threats to survival.  Nightmares are most common during childhood, an especially vulnerable time of life, and they tend to diminish in adulthood.  But whenever a serious danger arises (such as a work crisis, relationship break-up, illness, death, or a change in political regimes), frightening dreams often result.  When we hear a nightmare like Ms. Bakoalok’s, we can immediately empathize with her concerns because we know from personal experience what it’s like to fear something so much it gives us bad dreams.

Nightmares usually do more than simply mirror a person’s waking life concerns.  Most frightening dreams also include glimpses of possibility and alternative approaches to the threats and conflicts in waking life.  The creative, problem-solving capacities of the human mind are enormous, and dreaming is one of the main venues for those capacities to express themselves, providing a remarkable source of novel insights, useful innovations, and out-of-the-box thinking.

As climate change continues to unfold, more and more people are likely to have nightmares like Ms. Bekoalok’s.

 

 

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“Falling Water” and the Vasty Deep

imgresThe second episode of the excellent new TV series “Falling Water” (USA Network) starts with a creepy voiceover from a character who later reveals the frightening extent of his powers in the dream realm. He quotes from Shakespeare’s play “Henry IV Part I,” when two English lords plot a rebellion against the king:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

(III.i.57-59)

The episode takes its title from this quote, which poetically highlights the dangers inherent in exploring the “vasty deep” of lucid dreaming. Be careful what you wish for with dreaming, because it might become a more powerful and autonomous reality than you were expecting.

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed a similar insight in his 1886 work Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 146:

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

It has to be a great TV show if I’m quoting Shakespeare and Nietzsche and I haven’t even gotten to the oneirogenic blues LP, the two big guys in black suits with no faces, the ethical complexities of gathering pure scientific data, and the deepening mystery surrounding Topeka, “a good place to dig for roots.” I’m hooked, most definitely hooked!

falling-water

Below is what I wrote in the Huffington Post after watching the first episode.

Finally, someone gets it right: a television show about dreams that feels genuinely dreamy. “Falling Water,” a new series on the USA Network premiering October 12, centers on three characters (Tess, Burton, and Taka) who learn how to enter a dangerous, shadowy world of shared dreaming. I just watched the first episode (available online), and I’m very, very impressed! After years of complaining about lame, painfully unimaginative portrayals of dreaming in television and movies, I can now say there is a TV show that accurately, and entertainingly, conveys many of the sensory qualities and content themes that typify actual dreaming.

Foremost among those themes is, as the title suggests, falling water. I won’t reveal any plot twists, nor will I describe in too much detail the many beautiful images of water in the first episode, but suffice it to say that the element of water is essentially another character in the show. It flows in many different directions, over various surfaces and bodies, and ultimately down into mysterious depths. As a quick search for “water” words in the SDDb reveals, this element is indeed a very prominent feature of people’s dreams, and it has a long history of multi-dimensional symbolism. It will be fun watching future episodes to see how this theme develops over time.

Another prominent theme has to do with visual experience. Eyes, windows, mirrors, glasses, and other reflective surfaces abound in the first episode, creating a kaleidoscopic perceptual atmosphere for the characters and viewers alike. Visual sensations are also very prominent in actual dreaming, and in my recent Big Dreams book I talk about the roots of visual dreaming in terms of hard-wired neural activities in the sleeping brain. I refer to an “autonomous visionary capacity” that is innate in all humans and capable of generating powerful, creative, and highly realistic visual experiences in dreaming. The premise of “Falling Water” seems to be that people can potentially cultivate that inner capacity for powerful visionary dreaming and channel it in specific directions. It’s an exciting and reality-based premise that opens up lots of narrative possibilities for future episodes.

The theme of trying to control one’s dreams raises unsettling ethical issues that religious and spiritual traditions around the world have debated since ancient times. Are methods and tools of dream control a way of enhancing and amplifying the dreaming process, or do they ruin dreams by imposing the shallow desires of the waking ego on the wisdom of the unconscious psyche? Could more control of our dreaming promote greater self-knowledge, emotional health, and problem-solving abilities, or is it a harmful violation of our inner world and a potentially destructive way of exploiting people’s deepest fears and vulnerabilities? Perhaps most worrisome of all, if we forcefully try to control our dreams, are we ready for the possibility our dreams will fight back? These questions are becoming even more urgent today, thanks to the emergence of a new generation of dream-stimulating technologies (exaggerated, but not by much, in the show).

The final scene of the first episode raised the specter of a “war” for control of our dreams, and I’m curious to see how that alarming notion plays out. This might sound like science fiction, and it is exactly that, science fiction at its best: a dramatized version of cutting-edge scientific findings, technological innovations, and cultural trends whose real-world consequences are just dawning on us. We are living in a world where various forces, some benign and others much less so, are competing for influence over our minds, in waking and in sleeping. “Falling Water” is poised to reflect that emerging reality back to us in a fictional medium that, paradoxically, will probably have a tangible impact on the real dreams of its viewers.

Having watched a lot of dream-related movies and television shows over the years, I can’t help but notice several visual and thematic references in “Falling Water,” all of which bode well for it future direction. Most viewers will immediately associate the show’s premise with the 2011 film Inception and its portrayal of skilled agents entering into other people’s dreams and trying to manipulate them. But “Falling Water” seems to be aiming for something bigger, more along the lines of the 1999 film The Matrix, with its mind-bending metaphysical combat and prophetic call for a new, more advanced kind of consciousness. More than either Inception or The Matrix, however, “Falling Water” goes deeper into the creepy depths of the collective unconscious, with an occult mystery theme that reminds me of the first excellent season of the 2014 TV show “True Detective.”   Some of the visuals and epistemological paradoxes in “Falling Water” are strikingly reminiscent of the 1988 film “Jacob’s Ladder,” which used the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a template for describing a soldier’s journey through a nightmare world located somewhere between life and death. And there are several parallels to the Nightmare on Elm Street series of films, starting in 1984, which used schlocky special effects to dig deeply into the dark, festering corners of the American psyche. A striped shirt appears on a key character in “Falling Water,” which does make one wonder.

The touchstone for any show like this is always “Twin Peaks,” the David Lynch television series from the early 1990’s, which is set to reboot with new episodes soon (!!). “Twin Peaks” featured a dream-inspired FBI agent who tracked down an evil entity haunting people’s minds and forcing them to violate the laws and morals of the waking world. In its incredible beauty, emotional rawness, and surrealistic whimsy, “Twin Peaks” portrayed aspects of genuine dreaming in a more compelling way than perhaps America was ready to handle at the time. The first episode of “Falling Water” does not have any of the levity and comical weirdness of “Twin Peaks,” which may be a good thing at the start (no dwarves in red suits) but will hopefully appear in some form in later episodes. There’s bound to be lots of falling in this show; will there also be flying?

 

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Dreams of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

 

voting-boothIn several studies over the past 24 years I have explored the various connections between dreaming and electoral politics. One of the recurrent findings has been that political events and activities, like Presidential elections, can impact the content of people’s dreams. Some politicians appear with unusual frequency in people’s dreams, which has led to the hypothesis that dream appearances are an index of political charisma: The more a politician appears in people’s dreams, the more likely the politician has made a personal and emotional connection with those individuals. (An important note, especially in the 2016 US Presidential campaign: Charisma can have a positive or negative valence, acting as a force of attraction or repulsion.)

This post represents a progress report on a longer-term project that will finish at the end of the year. The main findings presented here illuminate the impact of the US election on the content of people’s dreams. Contrary to many Western psychologists who focus exclusively on the personal significance of dreaming, the examples here suggest that some dreams also have collective levels of significance. Such dreams are not only about the individual dreamer. They also relate to concerns shared by other people in the community. Political dreams are a dramatic example of the broader dimensions of cultural meaning that can be found in dreams.

These reports come from three different sources: 1) personal contacts, 2) websites I manage devoted to dreams of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, and 3) the 2016 Demographic Survey I administered in May of this year.

Each source has its methodological advantages and disadvantages. The personal contacts allow for more detail and follow-up conversations, but they are limited by my sphere of contacts. The websites can gather detailed reports with follow-up possibilities, but with uncertain provenance; I cannot assess the reliability of the sources. The demographic survey provides a broad spectrum of participants from a reliable source, but the reports tend to be short on detail, with no chance for follow-up.

(Some of the early reports I received from personal contacts were described in the post of July 3, 2016.)

All of the data I gather during this election cycle will eventually be available in the Sleep and Dream Database.

The reports presented below have been grouped into six thematic categories: Friendliness with a Candidate, Anticipations, Political Disagreements, Opposition to Trump, Openness to Trump, and Work & Place. Each of these categories sheds new light on an important aspect of the interaction between dreaming and politics.

With any of these dreams, further interpretation would undoubtedly reveal deeper meanings that might have nothing to do with politics. For this presentation, the goal is simply to highlight the various ways in which political phenomena impact the content and emotional tone of people’s dreams.

 

Friendliness with the Candidate

A consistent theme in political dreams is a friendly interaction with a candidate or politician whom the dreamer favors in waking life. At one level, such dreams express the individual’s political support in metaphorical terms of friendliness, intimacy, and sharing personal spaces. Such dreams can be regarded as evidence that a politician has forged a meaningful connection with that individual.

26 male, liberal

I recently had a dream that I was friends with Hillary Clinton and at an event, giving a speech to introduce her.

41 male, very conservative

I dreamed Ted Cruz came to my house

60 male, moderate

Being at a party with Donald Trump

20 male, very liberal

Yes, Bernie Sanders was in my kitchen and I was very excited.

21 female, very liberal

I went to a gathering of Bernie Sanders supporters and my favorite teacher was there.

37 female, liberal

I had a dream the other night that I met Hillary, and she wanted to give me a hug. I was so thrilled. Then we hugged and it was super awkward.

26 male, liberal

I had a dream before Clinton announced her campaign in which I asked her if she would run; she smiled and said yes.

69 female, moderate, MD

We were at a public event taking place out doors with many people. Hillary was sitting next to me and we were talking together as if we were good friends who had known each other a long time. I asked her about her plans for universal healthcare once she is in office. However, we were interrupted and I did not get an answer. The dream is strange because I am not a Democrat. [Comments: “I have no idea why I would have dreamed about Hillary Clinton, other than I am considering voting for her because I am not fond of my party’s proposed candidates.”]

 

Anticipations

Several politically-related dreams look ahead to possible outcomes of future political events like elections. Often these dreams have the quality of a wish-fulfillment. They express what the dreamer hopes and wishes will happen in the future.

68 female, liberal

I dreamed I was watching TV to see the results of the POTUS election. It said Bernie won, and I ran into my front yard, hollering with joy. It was nice.

23 male, very conservative

Marco Rubio won several states and took the lead. I was very excited and happy.

42 female, not sure

I had a dream that the presidential candidate who won was announced on TV. When I went in the living room, I saw a picture of John Kasich on the TV.

20 female, very liberal

I had a dream very recently that they announced who the presidential candidates were going to be, and I remember very distinctly being disappointed learning that Donald Trump received 3/4 of the vote, while being pleasantly surprised upon learning that Barack Obama was running for another four years.

 

Political Disagreements

Some dreams create a symbolic arena for debating political issues. In sociological terms, politics provides a public venue for working out arguments between different groups, and this makes it fertile territory for dreams about social conflicts at many different levels, from the individual’s family to the whole human species.

24 male, conservative

Argued with family in favor of Donald Trump. They were mad, but possibly swayed to support him.

23 male, moderate

I once had a dream that I was voting for the Republican nominee. I voted for Jeb Bush, and the rest of my family voted for Cruz and Trump. Disturbing.

22 male, moderate

I was being instructed by John Kasich in a college lecture and he reprimanded me. I went to Hillary Clinton and she acted as a counselor for me and prevented punishment.

62 female, moderate

I dreamt that Hillary had a major medical issue after securing the nomination. This caused the Democrats to act much like Ted Cruz and instead of going with Bernie Sanders – who would be the nominee- they tried to subvert the rules. This caused both parties to ask for a do-over. The Supreme Court ruled against them – Bernie lost.

 

Opposition to Trump

Several dreams I gathered expressed strong anti-Trump sentiments, which seemed mostly consistent with the dreamers’ waking life views of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The preponderance of anti-Trump dreams reflects the limits of my (mostly liberal) social circle, but it also reflects the high level of antipathy his campaign has generated among many Americans.

44 male, liberal

That gross Donald Trump wanted to sleep with my in my bed and I was like absolutely not. This was just last night.

35 female, very conservative

I have dreamed that Donald Trump was being generally unfriendly.

65 male, moderate

Donald Trump and I were having a conversation while walking through downtown – my wife is chasing us with a camera yelling “I didn’t get a picture.” I told him to ignore her she would cut off the top of our heads and he just chuckled and we went on discussing the issues and why I was against him. I was upset because he wouldn’t let me finish a sentence.

22 female, very liberal

I had a dream that Donald Trump was suing me for being a “slut” and I tried to fight him in court, but he won because I he had more money than me. I had to go to jail for years and was really distraught.

55 female, liberal

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a weird dream about Donald Trump. Basically, I was telling him what I jerk I thought he was and why I disagreed with everything he stands for.

47 female, liberal, NY

I dreamt that I was dating Donald Trump. I guess it was at the point of the dating process where you proceed to sex, cause that is what the Donald was wanting. There was an anxiety building up in me, teetering towards panic as I realized I did absolutely not want to have sex with him but felt pressured to do so. He was coming at me with only a white dress shirt, unbuttoned on. I looked down and saw that he had a small, red, stubby little penis. His hands were little baby hands, reaching for me. I told him that I recently had surgery (which presently is actually true), and that I physically was unable to have sex, presently. He backed down, unable to reasonably pressure me, but I could tell he was frustrated, angry and annoyed about it. Later we were supposed to travel somewhere together, but I somehow was able to arrange that I would be going by myself. I was grappling with how I got myself into this situation, that I was actually dating Trump and how I could possibly tell my brother, without being mortified, cause I knew he would find that idea horrific. As did I. All I was thinking, how can I get out of this?! The thought of having sex with Trump made me sick to my stomach. [Comments: “It’s obvious to me. The thought of him is repugnant. It perfectly exemplifies how I feel about him as a woman. It also demonstrates his male ego, arrogance and rage. He brings up fear. It’s confirmed my feelings about him on a more primal level. I also have been almost obsessively following all news about him. I find it to be fascinating as a character study and a study of the American political landscape of this time in history. However I was horrified at having had this dream.”]

18 male, liberal, CA

I was at an outdoor rally, but Trump was in the center of the crowd. His presence there did irritate me, but then he continued to talk. At one point I boiled over with rage so I grabbed Trump in a chokehold and dragged towards the trash can. It was a rusted, old, metal trash can. I start to beat Trump with the trash can, slamming his head against it. He continues to talk during the whole beating, about his childhood, why he’s going to “Make America Great Again,” and his “small loan of a million dollars.” He eventually stopped talking with blood dribbling out of his ear. The trash can was bent out of shape. Then I woke up. [Comments: “I very much do not like Trump, but last night, my girlfriend’s boss was talking to her about Conservative fiscal policy and why she should be a Republican. This made me annoyed.”]

 

Open to Trump

People from across the political spectrum have experienced dreams in which they discover that Trump has previously unappreciated virtues and positive qualities. Even if the dreamers still hold an overall negative view of him, their dreams open up a new perspective on his character and candidacy. This might indicate an unconscious attraction to Trump’s candidacy, and/or a compensation for the intensity of the dreamer’s negative feelings toward Trump in waking life.

71 female, very conservative

The last dream was about Donald Trump. He was interacting with me on a private basis and he was the kindest, caring person.

19 male, very conservative

I dreamed that my band director got fired and was replaced by Donald Trump. He could conduct surprisingly well, thankfully.

29 female, very conservative

I dreamt that I was watching an old interview with Donald Trump in which he resembled George W. Bush and was much more genial and sensible than the raving megalomaniac he now is. The interview was part of a documentary that described how he used to be and I felt sympathy toward him for having been nice once.

54 male, moderate

I recently had a dream where I was watching a movie where Donald Trump was an actor playing one of the major characters, and I was thinking he wasn’t that bad in the movie, but I still despise him as a person.

33 female, liberal, NY

I had a dream that I was dating Donald Trump. I was very embarrassed about it, But I explained it by saying that his parents treated him very poorly and that’s why he acted out for attention. [Comments: “I’m very worried about the state of our country when his hateful rhetoric appeals to so many people, so he’s been on my mind. I think that he acts like a toddler who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way and my dream self was much more tolerant of that than I normally. But America should be very embarrassed.”]

34 female, progressive, NY

Trump and I were hanging out on a college dorm floor, just shooting the shit, chatting about life, etc., and I was thinking to myself, “why does this guy get such a bad rap/put on such a show? He’s a really cool dude… and, like, gets it…” (!!!!!!!!!!) [Comments: “It’s obviously his campaign team infiltrating my dreams through some sort of advanced technology/dream therapy, but it won’t sway me!”]

57 female, progressive, CA

I was sailing in high seas with my son (a sweet, gentle kid who is the opposite of Trump) when suddenly he turned into Donald Trump, and suddenly we were pulling the boat ashore. No more sailing. We went into a casual beachfront restaurant and got two seats at a table under an umbrella. Someone brought lunch. I got to choose my side dish but the entree was already chosen. We both had water, but he wanted an alcoholic drink. He couldn’t get the waiter’s attention. He finally went into the bar and came out with a half gallon carton of chocolate milk. (Bartender’s idea of a joke?) He poured one for himself then started going around to the other diners with the milk. He was his “on stage” attention-seeking self with them, whereas with me he had been surprisingly pleasant and low-key. When he came back to the table, he was naked. (!!) He sat in a “manspread” kind of way so his junk was just hanging out. He seemed to be wearing some sort of weird sparkly thong; I could see a gold chain glittering in his pubic hair. I felt slightly alarmed but more just curious, what did it mean that he was naked? Were we going to have sex? The dream ended. [Comments: “I’ve been surprised by some of his endorsements, but I figure he must be more charismatic in person than he is on stage. Maybe this dream was exploring that possibility. But even in my dream he acted like a narcissist (just had to get the other diners’ attention) and an entitled jerk (coming back to our table with no pants). As for the genitals, maybe because of that reference to his penis size in the debate?”]

18 female, conservative NY

I was his secretary or something and was in his office and in his lap and we started making out and I was kissing his neck and he was kissing mine and I never gasped so sharply in a dream and we were getting undressed until finally I was in my bra and tights and I was all ready and then he was like we can’t do this, you’re barely dressed! And I was like yeah, isn’t that the whole point? And he was like, no go put on a decent nightgown right now! And his wife was there and I was just really confused. (Comment: “I think this dream came from memories of reading the Donald Trump Fan fiction my friend told me about.”)

 

Work & Place

These two respondents indicated their high frequency of politically-related dreams stemmed from the significant role of politics in their waking-life work and place of residence. This is further evidence that the continuity hypothesis encompasses waking life concerns about politics.

30 male, conservative

I have lived in Washington DC for ten years. Many of my dreams somehow involve politics or politicians.

63 male, N/A

My job involves politics so I dream about it all the time.

 

Comments, reflections, and interpretations are most welcome!

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Related Writings

Dream Recall and Political Ideology: Results of a Demographic Survey. Dreaming 22(1): 1-9.

American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us About the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else. Boston: Beacon Press.

  1. The Impact of September 11 on Dreaming. (Co-authored with Tracey L. Kahan.) Consciousness and Cognition 17:1248-1256.
  1. Dreams Shed Light on Obama’s Values. San Francisco Chronicle (August 17).
  1. Sleep and Dream Patterns of Political Liberals and Conservatives. Dreaming 16(3): 223-235.
  1. Dreaming of War in Iraq: A Preliminary Report. Sleep and Hypnosis 6(1): 19-28.
  1. Dream Content and Political Ideology. Dreaming 12(2): 61-78.
  1. It’s All Just a Bad Dream. San Francisco Chronicle (December 6): A27.
  1. “Political Dreaming: Dreams of the 1992 Presidential Election,” in Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion, and Psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 179-194.
  1. Dreaming in a Totalitarian Society: A Reading of Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams. Dreaming 4(2): 115-126.