Category: Areas of Research

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1,001 Nights of Dream Recall

Between January 8, 2015 and October 4, 2017, I remembered and recorded a dream every night for 1,001 consecutive nights.  Now I’m studying the dreams and trying to find insights that can help in exploring the dream series of other people.  I don’t expect anyone to accept my personal dreams as conclusive evidence for any general theory of human dreaming.  Instead, I offer them as way of being transparent about the experiential grounding of my research pursuits.  This is one of the ways I get ideas for new projects.

All of the dreams are available online for further study in the SDDb, in the “Sample Data” section.

From a scientific perspective, the value of an introspective project such as this is to generate working hypotheses for future studies.  Trying to study another person’s long diary of dreams can be very challenging, especially at the outset when the researcher is facing a huge mass of texts with multiple dimensions of meaning.  I appreciate anything that can provide some initial orientation and help to steer the direction of the analysis.  By studying my own dreams, which I know from both a first- and third-person perspective, I can quickly and easily identify some patterns of meaning that seem worth further exploration.   Maybe they will apply to someone else’s dream series, maybe they won’t; either way, it helps the analytic process get going.

Remembering and Recording the Dreams

The method I use for keeping my dream journal is fairly typical.  I keep a pad of paper and a pen by my bedside, and when I wake up in the morning I immediately write down whatever dreams I can remember, before getting out of bed or turning on the light.  Then later in the morning I type the dream into a digital file, along with associations, memories, and thoughts about what the dream might mean.

During the three years of recording this series of 1,001 dreams, I did my best to wake up slowly each morning, so the images and feelings from the preceding dreams could coalesce in my memory.  I don’t believe I dreamed more during this time than I did in previous periods of my life; rather, I devoted more energy to remembering the wispier, more evanescent kinds of dreams that, in previous years, had not crossed the threshold into waking memory.  I made a more determined effort to protect the space around the transition from sleeping to waking, even during circumstances when that was difficult to do (e.g., on international plane flights, during family holidays).  Often it took a few moments of quietly lying in bed with my eyes closed before the vague feeling “I know I was just dreaming,” could eventually take form into a specific memory of what I was just dreaming about.  Often there were “aha!” moments when suddenly a whole long dream came back to me, which I surely would have forgotten if I had immediately leapt out of bed upon awakening.

I also put more conscious intention into the other end of the transition, from waking into sleeping, as I carefully set up my journal and pen each night before turning out the light.  I did not set specific dream incubation questions during this time, but simply tried to signal to myself that I was ready and willing to record whatever dreams might come during that night’s sleep.

These were not extreme or burdensome behaviors; they required consistency of purpose, but no heroic feats of will.  I never set any long-term goals or numerical targets.  Instead, I just focused on each new night and each new dream, figuring the time would come when I could survey the series from a broader perspective.

About a month ago I finally did the math, and realized that October 4th would mark 1,001 nights of dream recall in a row, an enchanting milestone.  This seemed like a large enough collection of dreams to pause, look back, and see what I could learn.

Patterns of Word Usage

The reports comprise a total of 93,050 words, with an average length per dream report of 93 words, and a median length of 73 words.  The shortest dream in the series has 9 words, and the longest has 728 words.  The average length of these dreams is not unusual, compared to other people whose dreams have been analyzed in this way.  Some people have much longer dreams than I do, and some people have much shorter dreams.  This series of 1,001 dreams, then, includes mostly dreams of middling length.

To highlight the patterns and themes in a series like this, I start by comparing it to what I call the “SDDb baselines,” two large collections of male (N=2,135) and female (N=3,110) dreams that have been systematically gathered and analyzed using a template of 8 classes and 40 categories of word usage.   I use the baselines a measuring stick for identifying possible continuities and discontinuities between the dreams and the individual’s waking life.

The results of this comparative analysis are presented in an accompanying spreadsheet, “1001 Nights Data.”  Some of the discussion below draws on an earlier analysis I wrote about an overlapping set of my dreams.

In relation to the SDDb baselines (an average of 100 words per report for the females and 105 for the males), my dreams are a little shorter than average (93 words per report).  The results for each of the 8 classes of word usage are summarized below.  Compared to the male and female baselines, my 1,001 dreams have:

  1. Perception: More references to vision and colors.
  2. Emotion: Many more references to wonder/confusion, and more to happiness.
  3. Characters: Fewer references to family characters (although the word “wife” is mentioned very frequently), more references to animals (especially cats), and slightly more references to females than males.
  4. Social Interactions: Slightly more references to sexuality.
  5. Movement: Fewer references to death.
  6. Cognition: More references to thought, fewer to speech.
  7. Culture: Fewer references to school, food/drink, religion, somewhat more to sports (especially baseball and basketball).
  8. Elements: More references to water, somewhat more to earth.

These findings provide the basis for a “blind analysis,” which means making predictions about continuities between these patterns of word usage in dreaming and the individual’s waking life activities, beliefs, and concerns.  If I pretend I knew nothing about the dreamer of these 1,001 dreams, and I only had these word usage frequencies to consider, I would infer this individual:

  1. Is visually oriented
  2. Often experiences wonder/confusion
  3. Is relatively happy
  4. Is married
  5. Cares about cats
  6. Has fairly equal relations with men and women
  7. Is sexually active
  8. Is not concerned about death
  9. Is not highly verbal
  10. Is not highly involved with schools
  11. Is not highly concerned about food/drink
  12. Is not highly concerned about religion
  13. Has lots of interactions with water and earth

Most of these inferences—I’d say 11 of 13—are unmistakably accurate in identifying a continuity between a pattern of dream content and an aspect of my waking life concerns.  The two I would question are numbers 10 and 12.  Regarding the low frequency of dream references to school, I do in fact engage in a great deal of teaching and educational work, but it’s almost entirely online, and I rarely set foot inside a traditional school any more.  Also, I no longer have school-age children living at home.  So it seems my dreams are continuous with my physical behaviors relating to schools, but not with my computer-mediated educational activities.

Regarding the low frequency of religion references, I most certainly do have great interest in religion, going back to my masters and doctoral studies at the Divinity Schools of Harvard and University of Chicago.  So the inference seems very wrong at this level.  And yet, at another level it seems more accurate.  I was not raised in a religious household, I do not personally identify with any official religious tradition, and I rarely attend religious worship services.  Compared to other people I’ve studied with very high frequencies of references to religion in their dreams, I am a much less personally pious person.  Perhaps what this suggests is that the dreams are accurately reflecting the fact that religion may be an important intellectual category for me, but it is not a personal concern.  My spiritual pursuits are more likely to be expressed in dreams with references to other word categories like water, art, sexuality, animals, and flying.

Shorter versus Longer Dreams

Earlier this year I looked at different set of my dreams to get some idea about possible differences between shorter and longer dreams.  This question rose in relevance when I realized, as noted earlier, that my increased recall seemed to depend in part on the recollection of relatively shorter dreams that in the past I did not fully remember or write down.

There were two main findings of that earlier study.  First, most of the patterns in content appeared in dreams of all lengths, from the shortest (less than 50 words per report) to the longest (more than 150 words per report).  Here’s a summary of what I found:

“The results of this analysis suggest that shorter dreams are not dramatically different from longer dreams in terms of the relative proportions of their word usage.  The raw percentages of word usage do rise from shorter to longer dreams, of course, but the relative proportions generally do not.”

Second, the longer dreams did have proportionally more references to a few word categories, chiefly Fear, Speech, Walking/Running, and Transportation. Another quote:

“These are the word categories that seem to be over-represented in longer dreams.  They are significant contributors to what makes long dreams so long.”

Returning to the present collection of 1,001 dreams, I divided the series at the median point into two groups: the shorter dreams (72 words or less, 500 reports total) and the longer dreams (73 words or more, 501 reports total).  I used the same SDDb word searching template with each of the two groups as I used with the full series, and then I compared their frequencies of word usage.  The biggest variations between the shorter and longer dreams appeared in the following categories:

  • Touch
  • Fear
  • Anger
  • Physical aggression
  • Walking/Running
  • Speech
  • Transportation
  • Water

This list adds a few other categories that may be characteristic of longer dreams.  Each of these categories has a dynamic quality.  Touch is a physical interaction.  Fear and anger are strong and unpredictable emotions, usually prompted by something in the external environment.  Physical aggression combines the previous categories (touch, fear, anger) and possibly intensifies them.  Walking/Running and Transportation both involve physical movement from one place to another.  Speech implies a context of interpersonal communication, people talking with each other.  Water, the “universal solvent,” is ever-shifting in its states (gas, liquid, solid) and its movement through human life.

When these elements appear in my dreams they seem to have the effect of expanding the range of experience, stimulating more interactions, and lengthening the narrative.

Conclusion

I don’t know if any of this applies to anyone else’s dreams.  I do, though, believe that several of the insights gained here can provide working hypotheses for studying other series of dreams.  I will be keeping these ideas in mind as I explore new dream series:

  • The recall and recording methods of the dreamer influence the types of dreams included in the series.
  • Personal relationships are an area of especially strong continuity between waking and dreaming life.
  • The use of religion-related words in dreams may be discontinuous with spiritual interests in waking life.
  • Shorter dreams have mostly the same general proportions and patterns of content as found in longer dreams.
  • Longer dreams tend to include more dynamic elements.

 

####

 

Notes:

The accompanying spreadsheet can be found here:

https://www.academia.edu/35024762/1001_Nights_Data.xlsx

More description of the SDDb baselines can be found in Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

The earlier study of short versus long dreams can be found here:

Short vs. Long Dreams: Are There Any Differences in Content?

 

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A Guide to the Sleep and Dream Database

Just added to the SDDb library is A Guide to the Sleep and Dream Database, a text I hope will help to make the resources of the site more accessible to teachers, students, researchers, and anyone interested in dreams.

The guide is the first in a series of what I’m titling SDDb Research Papers.  This series will present new findings from projects that use the dream materials and analytic tools of the SDDb.  The papers will share works-in-progress in the empirical study of dreams.

Here is the abstract for the first paper:

Intended for newcomers to dream research, this guide offers an introduction to the functions of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), an open-access digital archive that includes tens of thousands of dream reports, along with survey data about sleep, dreaming, and demographic variables.  Readers are shown how to use the Survey Analysis and Word Searching functions of the SDDb to study a variety of questions about dreaming.  The topics discussed here as illustrations include gender and age variables in dream recall; differences between men and women in the frequency of fear in their dreams; and the meaningful patterns of content in a woman’s long-term dream journal.

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What the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine Means for Dream Research

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has an indirect but significant connection to dream research. For those of us who believe the scientific study of dreaming needs to be grounded in the evolutionary biology of sleep, the news of the 2017 Nobel should be a cause for celebration.

The prize was awarded to three Americans—Michael W. Young, Michael Rosbash, and Jeffrey C. Hall—in recognition of “their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm” (quoted from the Nobel committee’s public statement).  The key point, from a dream research perspective, is that these three investigators have shown we have a genetically hard-wired need to sleep.

All life on earth is fundamentally oriented toward the cyclical presence and absence of the sun. Every kind of living being has evolved internal clocks of approximately 24 hours in length that guide and regulate their biological processes and behaviors. These internal clocks are known as circadian rhythms, and they have long been observed as powerful factors in plant and animal life.  But only recently have the details of how these clocks work become known, thanks to the work of this year’s trio of prize winners.  Their studies, going back to the 1980’s, explain how circadian rhythms are programmed into the genetic activities of each cell at the molecular level.

The researchers focused on the circadian rhythms of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), as a model for understanding similar rhythms in the cells of other organisms.  They identified a specific gene in each cell whose activities oscillated in a 24-hour rhythm.  During the night, this gene encodes a specific kind of protein that accumulates in the cell.  It reaches a high point at the beginning of day, after which the gene shuts itself off and the protein slowly dissolves, reaching a low point at the beginning of night when the process repeats itself.  According to this year’s prize winners, the feedback loop involving this specific gene is a key part of the self-sustaining internal chronometer that shapes the functioning of all biological organisms, from flies to humans.

The committee that decides each year’s award made it clear in its statement that the work of Hall, Rosbash, and Young has important relevance for medical practice and social welfare:

“Our wellbeing is affected when there is a temporary mismatch between our external environment and this internal biological clock, for example when we travel across several time zones and experience ‘jet lag.’ There are also indications that chronic misalignment between our lifestyle and the rhythm dictated by our inner timekeeper is associated with increased risk for various diseases.”

Most commentators on the 2017 prize have highlighted this last point, about the diagnosis and treatment of illness.  Circadian rhythms influence the human body in numerous ways: via hormone levels, metabolism, temperature, and of course the sleep/wake cycle. Disruptions to the biological clock, whether through behavior (e.g., traveling across several time zones) or internal malfunctioning (e.g., a genetic mutation), can lead to a variety of serious health problems, including diabetes, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, bipolar disorder, memory defects, Alzheimers, and attention-deficit disorders.

The hope is that the more we learn about the elemental mechanisms of circadian rhythms, the better we can treat these problems, and prevent them from occurring in the first place.  Further research in chronobiology may show us there are better and worse times of the day for undergoing surgery, taking a medication, or participating in a psychotherapy session.

It may also give us new insights into the rhythms, cycles, and recurrent patterns in human dreaming.  Anything that gives a new understanding of sleep has the potential to provide a new understanding of dreams, since dreaming naturally emerges out of the state of sleep.  The ubiquity of dreaming in human experience throughout recorded history, in cultures all over the world, strongly suggests it is a phenomenon deeply rooted in our evolutionary heritage.  It strengthens the argument in favor of this idea to show, as this year’s Nobel winners have done, that the circadian rhythms guiding our waking and sleeping behaviors are encoded in every cell in our bodies.   There can no longer be any question that sleep is an absolutely vital feature of healthy human life.  The study of dreams can build on this solid foundation in evolutionary biology to explore in more detail what exactly is happening in the mind and body during sleep that contributes so powerfully to human health.

Note: this was originally published in Psychology Today on October 23, 2017.

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Dreams and Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Jealous paranoia cannot distinguish between dreaming and waking in one of Shakespeare’s bawdiest works.

There are several reasons why “The Merry Wives of Windsor” has generally been considered one of Shakespeare’s minor plays.  It’s an absurd, bawdy farce set in an English country village around 1600, bereft of any epic characters, grand locales, or soaring lyrical speeches.  Revolving around the rakish antics of Sir John Falstaff, the play comes across as an entertaining trifle filled with sexual puns, slapstick comedy, and a variety of ridiculous schemes, disguises, and deceptions.  This may all be true, yet it overlooks an interesting element of darkness in The Merry Wives, an element that elicits the only references to dreaming in the play.

Master Ford is the husband of one of the two wives of the title, and there is very little merriment about him.  On the contrary, he stands out among the other characters for the intensity of his one driving emotion—jealousy.  Master Ford also stands out for his moral rigidity and insufferable pompousness, but it’s the jealousy that really defines him and motivates his behavior.  He says as much in a brief soliloquy, after meeting the other wife, Mistress Page, and hearing her talk about Falstaff.  Master Ford immediately concludes that both his wife and Master Page’s wife are having romantic affairs with Falstaff, and he criticizes Master Page for failing to keep close enough watch over his faithless spouse: “Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any thinking? Sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them” (III.ii.26-28).

Master Ford decides that, despite other people’s doubts, he will wake everyone up by revealing the true sinfulness of these “revolted wives.”  He will appear suddenly at his house and catch the lecherous Falstaff in the act: “There I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather praised for this than mocked, for it is as positive as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there. I will go” (III.ii.42-45).

In the next scene a supremely confident Master Ford brings a group of companions to his house to apprehend Falstaff.  His wife, in the midst of sending out the dirty laundry, denies that Sir John is there.  Master Ford contemplates the laundry basket, which is about to be sent out for “buck-washing” (a traditional means of laundering clothes by soaking and rinsing them repeatedly with lye, ash, or urine), and utters some strange lines: “Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck! Buck, buck, buck! Ay, buck; I warrant you, buck—and of the season too, it shall appear” (III.iii.155-157).

Several sexual allusions are compressed into Master Ford’s odd little speech.  Unfortunately for him, while he is fixated on the multiple meanings of “buck,” the laundry basket containing the hidden Falstaff is taken out of the house.  Now Master Page turns to his companions and makes a bold declaration: “Gentlemen, I have dreamed tonight. I’ll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys. Ascend my chambers; search, seek, find out. I warrant we’ll unkennel the fox” (III.iii.158-162).

His use of “dream” here, the first mention of the term in the play, is meant ironically.  It seems unlikely that Master Ford is referencing an actual dream; rather, he’s playing with the term, to enhance the impressiveness of his ultimate victory.  Master Ford is framing what he believes will be his triumphant discovery of Falstaff as a prophetic dream: last night he dreamed of something that will be revealed to his companions when they find Sir John, the implication being that Master Ford foresaw the infidelity in his dream, and now his companions will see tangible proof that his dream has come true and he was right all along.

But there are at least a couple layers of deeper irony to his “dream” that Master Ford does not seem to recognize.  First, his companions do not find Falstaff in the house, so his allegedly prophetic dream fails to come true as he so grandly predicted it would.  Second, the certainty he feels about this dream, and about his wife’s sinfulness, is actually based on his own vain and substance-free fantasy that he assumes is as solid as the earth itself.  And third, if he had not been so absorbed in his resentful musings (“buck, buck, buck!”), he might have noticed that Falstaff was in fact right in front of him; so Master Ford’s dream did come true, but he was too captivated by his jealousy to realize it.  By making the self-aggrandizing claim that he had received a miraculous dream revelation of Falstaff’s illicit presence in his house, Master Ford only magnifies the humiliating mockery he feared would be the result of his efforts to unmask the sinners all around him.

Perhaps Master Ford would have let it go at this point, but then he hears Falstaff (who is himself thoroughly deluded about what’s actually happening) brag that he has already enjoyed the delights of Mistress Page and is planning to return to her house as soon as possible.  This seems to confirm Master Ford’s worst fears, and his jealousy heats to a full boil.  In another brooding soliloquy right after Falstaff leaves, Master Page repudiates sleep and dreaming and forces himself to face what he thinks is a damnable reality: “Hum! Ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford! There’s a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford!”  (III.v.137-140)

Again, the irony is that by forcing himself to “awake,” he is actually descending even further into his jealousy-fueled fantasy.  By rejecting dreaming, he is rejecting something that could in fact provide him with accurate insight into the perception-warping effects of his violent passions and emotional insecurities.

The production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” I saw recently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival featured the actress K.T. Vogt as Falstaff, a brilliant piece of casting that breathed new life into the old rogue and his errant codpiece.  Master Ford was played by Rex Young, an OSF veteran whose evocation of fragile male pride was strong enough to drive the plot forward, but not so strong as to overwhelm the delightful antics of everyone else.  The aesthetic design of the OSF production was shaped by the giddy, gaudy 80’s, with pastel clothing and bouncy music, and in Master Ford’s second soliloquy, which ends with an angry pledge to fight back against his tormentors (“I’ll be horn-mad”), the musical accompaniment is “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads—a perfect touch for the dramatic moment.  Master Ford is indeed committing himself to the darkest of purposes, and yet he does so to the beat of an irresistibly danceable song.

Perhaps “The Merry Wives” seems like a minor work because the shadow elements are limited to one character and never become so intense that they overwhelm the lighter elements of love, laughter, and play.  But those darker energies are there, and are a significant part of the story.  Here as elsewhere in Shakespeare, the seemingly illusory experience of dreaming provides a portal into hidden realms of emotion and desire that reflect the deepest and most honest realities of human life.

The final scene of the play is a festive forest spectacle in which the main characters disguise themselves as a troop of mischievous fairies and “moonshine revelers” in order to scare the poor Falstaff out of his wits.  This scene includes an evocation of sleep and dreaming that seems to reflect contemporary folk beliefs about the magical wonders and dangers of the night.  When Falstaff sees what he thinks are fairies coming, he falls to the ground and covers his eyes, because of the legend that fairies will kill those who look upon them without permission.  A moment later the first fairy (the parson Sir Hugh Evans) arrives and issues the following command to the other fairies:

“Where’s Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid

That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said,

Raise up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy.

But those as sleep and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.” (V.v.52-57)

Some versions of Shakespeare have “Bead” instead of “Bede.”  To me, “Bede” makes more sense as a reference to the 8th c. monk Bede and his famous work of astronomy The Reckoning of Time.  In Shakespeare’s time Bede was still considered an authority on lunar events and the impact of the moon on earthly life.  I don’t know what “Where’s Bead?” would mean in this context (there’s no reference to a character with that name), but “Where’s Bede?” could mean something like, “Where’s our authority on the moon, because this is certainly a realm under a strong lunar influence?”  It’s the kind of thing an Elizabethan might typically say upon first entering a beautiful moonlit glade at night.

The rest of the passage suggests a sharp religious dichotomy: prayers and spiritual humility can protect against fairy attacks and prompt restful sleep and inspiring dreams (“raise up the organs of her fantasy”), while people who do not pray or “think on their sins” will suffer sharp pains all over their bodies during sleep. This scene has strong echoes of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” written a few years earlier, and of other plays in which sleep and dreaming are presented as eternal battlegrounds between competing supernatural beings fighting over our souls.  This may or may not have been Shakespeare’s personal view, but it does reflect widely held beliefs among his culture and the members of his audience.

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Dreams and Shakespeare: Henry IV Part II

To be a king, one must give up sleep and dreams in favor of the ruling duties of waking life.

This is the grim truth that animates much of the action in Henry IV Part II.  The second chapter of prince Hal’s transformation into King Henry V contains two of the most vivid references to sleep and dreaming in all of Shakespeare’s works.  Hal’s father, King Henry IV, suffers from an agonizing inability to sleep, prompting him to exclaim the famous line, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”  At the climax of the play, the newly crowned King Henry V publicly humiliates and cruelly disavows his old friend Sir John Falstaff, comparing him to a foolish dream—“but, being awaked, I do despise my dream.”

Below are all the references to sleep and dreams in the play, with brief comments.  The play is currently in production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.  The outstanding cast includes Jeffrey King as King Henry IV, Daniel Jose Molina as prince Hal, and G. Valmont Thomas as Falstaff.

 

I.ii.45

Falstaff: “Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it…”

Sir John Falstaff is appearing here for the first time in the play, and he immediately becomes angry that a tailor will not accept his “security,” i.e. his pledge to pay his debts.  Falstaff cannot provide the security the tailor demands, so instead the old rogue pivots to a different meaning of “security,” insulting the tailor by suggesting he’s a cuckold (with horns), unaware of his wife’s infidelity (lightness) while he sleeps in apparent safety and ease.

I.ii.111-113

Falstaff: “This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.”

The Chief Justice has just entered the scene, and he demands to speak with Sir John about his criminal behavior.  Falstaff avoids the question by asking the Chief Justice about the health of the king, Henry IV, who is reportedly ill with “apoplexy.”  The king has been losing his vitality and energy through a “kind of sleeping in the blood,” and Falstaff wants the Chief Justice to focus on what will happen when the king is dead—prince Hal, the good friend of Sir John, will ascend to the throne, and he will not look kindly on the mistreatment of his closest pals.  Falstaff’s medical diagnosis of the king is a thinly-veiled threat against the Chief Justice.

I.ii.153-154

Chief Justice: “But since all is well, keep it so. Wake not a sleeping wolf.”

The Chief Justice does not press the point, but he gives Falstaff a warning of his own.  The proverb suggests that a prudent person will recognize the benefit of allowing a violent beast to remain in peaceful slumber.

II.i.76-77

Hostess: “He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his. But I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o’nights like the mare.”

Falstaff: “I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get up.”

Mistress Quickly, the hostess of the tavern, complains to the Chief Justice about the money Falstaff owes her and refuses to pay.  Having no other recourse, she threatens to harass the old rogue in his sleep like a nightmare.  Sir John deflects her anger by transforming the nightmare curse into a bawdy invitation.

II.ii.86-88

Bardolph: “Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!”

Page: “Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away!”

Prince: “Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?”

Page: “Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered of a firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.”

Prince: “A crown’s worth of good interpretation. There ‘tis, boy.”

This scene starts with prince Hal and his disreputable companion Poins discussing the king’s illness, and Hal’s unwillingness to show his true feelings.  Then Bardolph and the young Page arrive, two bumbling fools with a message from Falstaff.  Poins makes fun of Bardolph’s red face (discolored from drink), and the Page reveals that Bardolph was recently with a prostitute.  The furious Bardolph chases after the Page, who calls him “Althaea’s dream.” Prince Hal takes interest in this, and asks what the boy means.  The Page responds by mistakenly combining two classic mythological tales.  Althaea was an ancient Greek queen who killed her own son by burning a brand (piece of wood) that, so it was prophesied at his birth, would cause his death if ever consumed by fire. Hecuba was a Trojan queen who had a dream while pregnant that she gives birth to a firebrand; the child she bore from that pregnancy, her son Paris, was the impetuous warrior who abducted Helen, sparking the war that led to the destruction of their city.  Several other Shakespearean plays make accurate references to the story of Hecuba, so it seems likely the Page’s conflation of the two stories is intentional and not a mistake of Shakespeare’s.  Does prince Hal know or care if the Page’s mythology is accurate?  Maybe not, but the prince does appreciate a fine display of wit.  Hal plays along with the dream theme by offering the Page a small payment (the crown) for the pleasing interpretation, just as if he were consulting a diviner in the marketplace.

II.iv.200-201

Pistol: “What! Shall we have incision?  Shall we imbrue? [Snatching up his sword.]

Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!”

The Ancient Pistol, one of the rowdy soldiers who hang around the tavern, gets in a drunken brawl with Falstaff.  The notion of death as a kind of sleep is pervasive in Shakespeare, and in classical mythology.

II.iv.382-386

Falstaff: “Farewell, hostess. Farewell, Doll. You see, my good wenches, how men of merit are sought after. The undeserver may sleep when the man of action is called on. Farewell, good wenches.”

Sir John was just about to go to bed with his female companions, but he is suddenly informed that a dozen of the king’s men are waiting at the door for him.  Falstaff realizes he can no longer escape the military service that a nobleman like himself must perform.  He thus turns necessity into a virtue and presents himself to his lady friends as a man of extraordinary importance whose sage presence the king desires immediately.  The moral contrast between he draws between a virtuous man of action like himself and a slothful “undeserver” is undercut by the fact that Falstaff was just about to retire for the evening, until forced by a troop of soldiers to do otherwise.

III.i.4-17, 26-31

King: “How many thousands of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee,

That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

In loathsome beds, and leav’st the kingly couch

A watch-case or a common ‘larum-bell?…

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;

And in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

The next scene occurs in the palace, where the aging king Henry IV appears “in his nightgown,” desperately desiring to sleep and yet unable to do so.  Falstaff’s fantasy of the wakeful “man of action” is belied by the painful reality of mighty ruler who is strangely impotent in the domain of sleep.  Alone with his insomnia, the king broods over the baffling irony of sleep bestowing its gifts to the lowliest of people in the worst of circumstances, and yet denying any comfort or rest to the greatest and most powerful man of all.  These ruminations prompt the king to utter perhaps the most famous line in the play, an honest reckoning with the cost he has paid for the power he seized and hopes to pass on to his son.

IV.ii.37-42

Archbishop: “I sent your Grace

The parcels and particulars of our grief,

The which hath been scorn shov’d from the court,

Whereon this hydra son of war is born;

Whose dangerous eyes my well be charm’d asleep

With grant of our most just and right desires…”

The Archbishop and the other rebels against the king have met to negotiate with his son, prince John.  The Archbishop diplomatically suggests that the monstrous violence of war, which once set loose can grow horribly out of control, may be “charm’d asleep” if the king will simply grant their legitimate grievances.  The prince seems to agree.  But it soon turns out he was in fact charming the Archbishop; as soon as the rebel troops are released, the prince seizes the Archbishop and other rebellion leaders and sends them to their execution.

IV.iv.65-68

King: “The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape,

In forms imaginary, th’unguided days

And rotten times that you shall look upon

When I am sleeping with my ancestors.”

On the verge of death, the king sadly anticipates the wasteful, unruly behavior of his son Hal, who will inherit the crown once the king is gone.  Even when he is on the brink of succumbing to the eternal sleep of death, the king cannot help worrying about the world he will leave behind in the hands of his degenerate child.

IV.iv.135-138

Gloucester: “The people fear me, for they do observe

Unfathered heirs and loathly births of nature.

The seasons change their manners, as the year

Had found some months asleep and leaped them over.”

The ailing king’s closest allies gather in the palace and speak darkly about what will happen next.  The Duke of Gloucester describes strange omens and worrisome changes in the weather that seem to foretell conflict ahead.  Here is another metaphorical contrast between sleeping passivity and waking action.

IV.iv.20-21

Warwick: “Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet Prince, speak low;

The King your father is dispos’d to sleep.”

Now, at the very end of his reign and his life, sleep briefly returns to the king.

IV.iv.26-30, 39-42

Prince: “Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,

Being so troublesome a bedfellow?

O polish’d perturbation! Golden care!

That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide

To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now!…

My gracious lord! My father!

This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep

That from this golden rigol hath divorc’d

So many English kings.”

Prince Hal enters the bed chamber of his father, where the golden crown sits on a pillow next to the slumbering monarch.  Hal is initially puzzled by this, since he knows the bitter impact of this band of metal on his father’s sleep.  But then the prince thinks his father has slipped into an eternal sleep, and he resolves himself to honor his father’s noble death by taking up the crown and devoting his life to upholding their royal lineage.

IV.iv.73-74,

King: “Is he so hasty that he doth suppose

My sleep my death?…

For this the foolish overcareful fathers

Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care…”

After the prince leaves his father’s bed chamber, the king briefly awakens and worries that Hal has greedily snatched the crown before the king is even dead.  This fear sets up their final deathbed reconciliation, and Hal pledges that once he becomes King it will be time “to show the incredulous world the noble change that I have purposed.”  Reassured by his son’s promise to rule wisely and well, King Henry IV dies, and Hal becomes King Henry V.

V.v.52-56

Falstaff: “My king! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!”

Prince: “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,

So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;

But being awak’d, I do despise my dream.”

Falstaff assumes his greatest wish has come true—his criminal protégé, the young prince, has become the new king, and he will surely give Sir John total freedom and license to indulge his many, many appetites.  This has been Falstaff’s plan and expectation since the beginning of Henry IV, Part I, and now at the end of Part II, he celebrates the rise of his “sweet boy” to the throne.  But this turns out to be the moment when Falstaff’s wishes are not only dashed but utterly annihilated in five cold, cutting lines of verse.  The newly crowned King repudiates everything having to do with Falstaff, using language that echoes a famous biblical warning against dreams in Psalm 73:20: “They are like a dream when one awakes, on awaking you despise their phantoms.” (RSV)  This particular psalm asks God why He allows wicked people to prosper in the world, and the psalmist concludes that God will eventually cause them to fall into ruin and be swept away, just as wispy dreams disappear in the light of morning.  The new king casts Falstaff in this biblical mold, and in so doing he both rejects Sir John and identifies himself as a traditional, righteous king who is a vigorous man of action, not a dreamer.  Even though he admits that this man has been a long-time presence in his life, Henry V is now focused entirely on his duties to the future.

As the play ends, I cannot help asking: will the new king suffer the same deep psychological damage, the same painful alienation from his sleeping and dreaming self, that plagued the old king?

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Dark Times and the Powers of Dreaming

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a new book, Dreaming in Dark Times: Six Exercises in Political Thought, by Sharon Sliwinski, a professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Sliwinski approaches dreaming as a powerful resource for political theory and action, especially in times when basic human freedoms are most at risk. That we today are living in such times has become impossible to ignore.

But throughout history, in times of collective crisis, people’s dreams have often responded with a surge of imagery, emotion, and insight that help people respond more effectively and creatively to the pressing challenges facing their group in waking life. This is also true in the modern era, as Sliwinski’s fascinating and beautifully written book makes clear.

As she explores the political sociology of the dreaming imagination, Sliwinski’s main guides are Sigmund Freud (as interpreted by Michel Foucault) and Hannah Arendt. It is the deep dive into Arendt’s philosophy that gives Dreaming in Dark Times its inspiring vision and potent timeliness. Arendt was a twentieth-century political theorist born in Germany who fled the Holocaust in World War II and lived in the United States until her death in 1975. Her writings focused on such topics as totalitarianism, freedom, authority, and revolution. Sliwinski draws her book’s title from Arendt’s notion of “dark times,” which Sliwinski describes as follows:

“Dark times are turbulent political moments in which the public realm has been infected with a kind of black light… [Arendt] marked these eras by a certain kind of suppression of speech and public declaration, and simultaneously, by an all-too-public display of evildoing. In dark times, social and political violence is both overtly visible and yet oddly difficult to recognize… She noticed that human speech becomes divested of its power to represent and transmit the truth during these periods. A kind of perverse language emerges instead that tends to serve those who wish to prolong the distorted political situation… This kind of language is designed to obfuscate reality, thwarting the citizenry’s capacity for thought.” (xviii)

I cannot think of a more apt analysis of the current American political environment. But the frightening realization that we are indeed living through dark times is immediately tempered by Sliwinski’s inspiring appeal to the potency of dreaming:

“This book aims to show how dream-life can serve to reanimate a world that has been flattened by dark times. Dreams are a crucial resource for regaining a measure of freedom in our thought and speech, serving as a vital landscape to recover our fundamental human capacity to assign meaning to the world.” (xix)

I encourage not only dream researchers but anyone concerned about current politics to read this book and study it closely. I will have more to say about it at the upcoming online conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, September 25.

Here, I’d like to mention four other writers and journalists who are trying to make sense of today’s frightening political and cultural trends by using dreams and dream-related modes of thought and reflection. I want to give an admiring tip of the cap to those who are pushing back against the flattening and dehumanizing effects of dark times, and doing so in ways that emerge organically out of human dreaming experience.

1. Kathleen Parker’s op-ed column on August 1, 2017, begins with this:

“Insidious is the force that causes us to dream of things we wish (or don’t wish) were so. Thus, on the eve of this column’s creation, I dreamed of Donald J. Trump. We were seated at a dinner table for eight, but the other six chairs were empty. We spoke of many things, from education to globalization and the near-universal crisis of identity. The president was courtly, humble, erudite and wise. I awoke suddenly to the harsh sounds of braying asses (I had left the TV on), only to realize that I was actually dreaming of Adlai Stevenson, the twice-defeated presidential candidate who lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower in part because of his excess erudition. In today’s clever-ish jargon, he was too thinky. Mine was a dream of wishes, obviously, for we suffer no such excesses now.”

Parker goes on to contrast the brilliant, intellectually curious Stevenson with the humble, plain-spoken General Eisenhower, and she observes that Trump falls far short of both men. For years Parker has bemoaned the rise of Twitter as a means of political communication, so the new regime is truly the apocalypse for her. She worries that “civilization doesn’t seem as securely tethered as it once was,” a process of social unraveling that started decades ago (for conservatives this usually means the liberal reforms of the 1960’s), but has accelerated in recent years because of technology and the chaotic pace of modern life, with damaging effects on people’s cognitive capacities for sustained attention and clear thinking.

I don’t entirely agree with her account of how the 2016 election was won and lost, but that doesn’t matter because the heart of her column, and I suspect the concern left in her mind after her dream, came in the final paragraphs:

“But what now? In just over six months in office, Trump has managed to alienate our allies, shatter our international standing, demonstrate no leadership ability or essential knowledge, fire or replace people in key positions, and exacerbate global tensions with his lack of discipline, maturity and self-control. Who can save us from ourselves? There are still plenty of deep thinkers out there, but who is listening? Who is reading? Who among those who can contemplate the future — as opposed to retweeting this-just-happened — is even willing to lead? And what, finally, is leadership in an era when centuries-old institutions are failing and commonly shared beliefs are no longer common or shared? Well, somebody. Someone who has consulted history to understand present and future challenges, who understands the role and risks of technology — and who can help people understand the daily chaos with the erudition of Stevenson, the humanity of Eisenhower and the wisdom of one we’ve yet to know.”

If we take Parker at her published word, her strangely wishful dream of Donald Trump and Adlai Stevenson prompted her to write a searing cry of political conscience and a prophetic call for true leadership in a time of gathering darkness. For other conservatives who claim to care about preserving traditions and promoting moral character, her dream is a direct challenge to their continued support of someone who is clearly intent on tearing all of that down.

2. In “The Transformation of the ‘American Dream’” economist Robert Shiller examines a problematic shift over the past few decades in the cultural meanings attached to the hallowed phrase “the American Dream.” At the time of its earliest documented usage, the phrase evoked the ideals of “freedom, mutual respect, and equality of opportunity.” But in recent times the emphasis on freedom and equality has diminished, and in its place has arisen a singular material focus on purchasing real estate and owning a private home, a trend the Trump regime has strongly promoted. Given his long expertise as an academic analyst of the housing industry, Shiller’s stern warning against this approach is worth taking seriously: “One thing is clear: bringing back the fevered housing dream of a decade ago would not be in the public interest.” Instead, Shiller calls for economic policies guided by the original, dynamic sense of the American Dream as “a trajectory to a promising future.”

3. A review by Chris Richards of Lana Del Rey’s new album “Lust for Life” takes the phenomenology of dreaming as an interpretive key to understanding not only artistic creativity but also the political cross-currents of a radically destabilized world. Richards’ review, titled “Lana Del Rey Suddenly Sounds Like the Poet Laureate of Post-Truth,” initially takes Del Rey to task for the insular, detached dreaminess of her previous work (i.e., “the old stuff, which only ever made Del Rey sound like she was dream-journaling on Xanax”). But now, Richards suggests, the head-spinning surrealism of modern society has reached a point where Del Rey’s dreamy, free associational songs are surprisingly relevant. I don’t know her music very well, but I do appreciate Richards’ final words, which seem consistent with Del Rey’s aesthetic: “Parsing our dreams teaches us how to separate what’s real from what’s unknowable. As imaginative beings, exercising that literacy is one of life’s great pleasures. As citizens, it’s suddenly become one of our greatest responsibilities.”

4. An op-ed by Charles Blow, “America’s Whiniest ‘Victim’”, catalogs the various ways in which the new President has complained about unfair treatment by others. Blow is a relentless and passionate critic of the President, and the intensity of his language may seem extreme. But in the final third of the column Blow makes reference to the psychological process of projection, a process quite familiar to anyone who works closely with dreams. Suddenly, using this concept of projection, Blow’s insights come into sharp relief. He says Trump is “a projectionist: He is so consumed by his insecurities that he projects them onto others… The flaws he sees are the ones he possesses.” This isn’t a dream analysis per se, but it illustrates the power of using concepts and methods honed in the study of dreams to analyze political and cultural realities.

Note: this essay first appeared on HuffPost, August 24, 2017.