Category: Areas of Research

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How the Enlightenment Went Astray on Dreaming

 Enlightenment philosophers helped to spark the scientific revolution, but they were not always accurate or justified in their assumptions about dreaming.

The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) played a vital role in promoting the ideals of the Enlightenment throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  These ideals included a trust in human reason, a corresponding distrust in authority and received opinion, and a demand that people who make theoretical claims about nature, society, the mind, etc., must offer empirical evidence to back up their assertions.

These powerful principles of the Enlightenment set the stage for the scientific and technological revolutions that have changed the world over the past few hundred years.  The digital technologies we use and enjoy today have emerged directly out of this cultural lineage reaching back to Locke and his contemporaries.  Unfortunately, many Enlightenment philosophers made false and misguided claims about dreaming that have also shaped the lineage of our digital world.  If we want to create a healthy ecosystem for technologically enhanced dream exploration, we have to make sure we accept and trust the philosophical assumptions built into that ecosystem.

In his greatest work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (first published in 1690), Locke explains how the mind works and the process by which humans gain true knowledge about the world and themselves. Early in the book he delves into the topic of sleep and dreaming, because he recognizes that the functioning of the mind while awake is quite different from the functioning of the mind while asleep.  Locke is here confronting a key question that many philosophers before and after him have tried to answer: how does mental activity during sleep relate to mental activity while awake?

Unfortunately, Locke makes two false assumptions about human dreaming experience right at the outset, false in Locke’s own sense of being contradicted by empirical evidence.  These assumptions allow Locke to make several other claims that do not square with actual scientific research on sleep and dreaming.  I will address those further claims in a later post; here, I want to focus on the first two missteps, to see as clearly as possible where Locke initially goes astray.

The first comes in Book II, chapter 1, section 14, when Locke is discussing the nature of ideas and the issue of whether people can dream without remembering it.  In this section he asserts, “Most men, I think, pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming.” He then mentions a scholarly friend who never dreamed until he was in his mid-twenties, after a fever.  Locke goes on to say, “I suppose the world affords more such instances: at least everyone’s acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such, as pass most of their nights without dreaming.”

The empirical reality is more complex than Locke suggests.  Modern sleep laboratory research flatly contradicts his claim.  If someone sleeping in a laboratory is awakened at certain points in the sleep cycle, the chances are extremely high that the person will recall some kind of dreaming content.  Research on “non-dreamers” by James Pagel has shown the proportion of such people appears to be very unusual in the general population.  Dozens of studies have shown high levels of regular dream recall people from all demographic groups, all across the social and cultural spectrum.

Locke is right that many people rarely remember their dreams. But he is wrong to suggest that such people are somehow typical or normal, and he makes a major mistake in dismissing from his philosophical theory the mental activities of other people who do remember their dreams frequently.

It might seem unfair to judge Locke’s 17th century claims using 20th and 21st century research.  But he did mention, as evidence for his claim, the experience of one of his friends, which means he did at least this much investigation on his own.  Did he ever talk with anyone else about their sleep and dream experiences?  Did his circle of acquaintances include anyone who was a vivid dreamer? Apparently not, because Locke offered no other empirical support for his assertion than this one friend.  That strikes me as a weak foundation for building a larger argument about the nature of the mind.

The second assumption comes in section 16 of the same chapter, in which Locke describes the rational workings of the soul, which he insists occur only in the waking state:

“‘Tis true, we have sometimes instances of perception, whilst we are asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts; but how extravagant and incoherent for the most part they are; how little conformable to the perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams, need not be told.”

Locke offers nothing to support this claim; he suggests it is self-evidently true to anyone who is “acquainted” with dreams.  The assumption that dreams are characterized by rampant bizarreness continues into the present day, despite there now being several decades of solid empirical research showing that most dreams are, in fact, rather mundane and non-bizarre.  Most dreams, it turns out, revolve around familiar people, familiar places, and familiar activities.  Many dreams are indistinguishable from people’s descriptions of ordinary events in waking life. Of course there are strange and outlandish things happening in dreams, too, but research on dream content shows that such bizarre elements are not a pervasive and overwhelming quality of dreaming as such.

Again, Locke could have gained this insight if he had taken the time to talk with a few different people about their actual dream experiences.  It would not have been difficult for him to reach the empirical conclusion that dreaming includes a mix of both bizarre and non-bizarre elements. But Locke evidently felt his philosophical ideas required him to mute or eliminate entirely the possibility of significant mental activity in sleep, and so he did his best to discourage any further attention to this realm of the mind.

The irony is that this topic of bizarreness is actually an excellent example of where dream researchers have put Locke’s principles into practice, to wonderfully liberating effect.  Empirical studies of thousands of dream reports, using careful and systematic methods of analysis, have produced results that have overturned an authoritative but irrational assumption, transforming a false opinion into true knowledge.  Locke’s powerful method is an excellent means of refuting Locke’s weak assumptions.

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Note: all the references to research findings are cited in Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Dreams Conference 2017

 

The 34th Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams begins on Friday, June 16, in Anaheim, California.  I’ll be making several presentations, all of which draw on findings from the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb).

On Saturday, a panel on “Dreams and Current Politics” will include Jody Grundy, Jeremy Taylor, and myself, talking from various perspectives about dreams as reflections of people’s political beliefs.  My presentation will describe a demographic survey of 2,285 American adults.  The initial findings correspond to previous studies I’ve done on this topic: political conservatives tend to sleep better (less insomnia) and remember fewer dreams than liberals, who tend to sleep worse and remember more of their dreams.

The survey also revealed a troubling divide on the demographic questions of personal income and education.  Wealthier people tend to sleep better and remember more dreams than poor people.  Likewise, more educated people tend to sleep better and remember more dreams than less educated people.

I’m looking forward to a lively discussion with the other panelists and the audience about the significance and implications of these results.

On Sunday, a session on “Dreaming and Waking Continuities” will include Nori Muster, Jayne Gackenbach, and myself, all focusing in various ways on empirical methods of identifying clear and meaningful continuities between dream content and waking life concerns.  My presentation will describe the results of analyzing the long-term dream journals of four women, using the word search tools in the SDDb.   I’ll show the audience how to practice the method of “blind analysis,” an interpretive approach in which the word usage frequencies of a person’s dreams are used to make inferences about the person’s most important concerns, activities, and relationships in waking life.  Hopefully the audience will gain a practical, hands-on appreciation for what this method can and cannot achieve.

On Monday I’m part of a panel titled “Research 101” with Justina Lasley, Tracey Kahan, Jayne Gackenbach, Bob Hoss, and Michael Schredl.  The plan is for each of us to take 5-10 minutes to describe our research and the main findings that we think anyone interested in dreams should know about.  It’s an ambitious program, and likely to put on display both the agreements and disagreements that define the field today.

For my portion of the panel, I will draw upon what I did at the “OMSI After Dark” event earlier this year at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland.  It was the first time I gave a public show-and-tell presentation about the SDDb, and I learned a lot about how to engage ordinary people in the most intriguing aspects of dream research.

Last but not least, on Monday evening I have the honor of introducing one of the conference’s keynote speakers, Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Prof. Domhoff (Bill) has been a tremendous supporter and guide in my efforts to develop and improve the SDDb.  He and his colleague Adam Schneider have done revolutionary work in bringing the Hall and Van de Castle coding system into the digital era, and I am very excited to hear Bill’s talk, which is titled “Seven Surprising Discoveries That Changed My Thinking About Dreams.”  I’ve got some guesses about what they are…

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Keeping a Dream Journal

For anyone interested in learning more about dreaming, I have a simple piece of advice: keep a dream journal.  Record your dreams on a regular basis, track their themes and patterns over time, and you will discover through your own experience many of the key psychological principles that shape the general process of dreaming.  

Beyond that, you may find your journal becomes a unique personal treasure—an invaluable source of insight into your most important concerns, activities, and relationships in the waking world.

You can start a journal at any time by making some retroactive entries.  For example, write out the earliest dream you ever remember, even if it was just a tiny fragment or wispy image.  There it is, the beginning of a dream journal!

Have you ever had a dream of flying, or being chased, or having an intense sexual experience, or seeing someone who is dead appear as if they were alive again?  Write those out, too.  Do you remember any recurrent dreams?  That’s very important to note, because recurrent dreams provide one of the best points of entry for a study of the long-term themes and patterns in your dreaming.

Recording especially memorable dreams from the past can be a good way of initiating a dream journaling practice going forward into the future.  Regular journal-keepers typically place a pad of paper and a pen next to their bedside, and when they wake up with a dream in mind they immediately write it down.  Because these bedside notes are often scrawled in semi-legible form, people will usually transcribe their dreams later in the day, into either better handwriting or a computer word processing system.

People today may want to use voice-to-text programs on their cell phones, which can be just as effective for those who know how to manage the technology.  Whatever method is used, the main goal is to set up a smooth, friction-free process to record as much of the dream as can be remembered, as soon upon awakening as possible.

It is worthwhile to include information about one’s sleep patterns in the journal, since the conditions of sleep often make a significant impact on the dreaming process.  Ideally, each entry has the date, the location where you are sleeping, the time you go to sleep, the time you wake up, and a subjective assessment of the quality of your sleep (e.g., good, fair, poor).  If you do not remember any dreams for that night, at least you have gathered some useful information about your sleep.

If you do remember a dream, the key is to record it in as much detail as you can manage, including aspects of your internal experience (e.g., what you were thinking or feeling during the dream).  When people narrate their dreams they typically leave out numerous details that seem too trivial or obvious to mention.  Yet it is precisely these seemingly worthless details that often become highly significant in later explorations.

Take your time when initially recording a dream, and don’t worry if some aspects of the dream are vague, fragmentary, or impossible to describe.  Just write them out as best as you can.  All of these fragments can be sources of unexpected significance when you look at the dreams over time.

Along with the dream report, a journal will typically include thoughts, memories, and associations that come to mind in relation to the dream.  These comments can be brief or very extensive, depending on your time and inclination.

I find it helpful to give each dream a title, as if it were a poem or short story.  It’s a way of crystallizing in a phrase or image something important about the dream.  The titles also make it easier to refer back to the dreams and sift through the series for recurrent threads of meaning.

One of the greatest values of a dream journal is the way it grows in power and depth over time.  The ever-expanding pool of dreaming experience creates an evolving network of meaningful connections.

Carl Jung, one of the pioneers of Western dream psychology, proposed back in the 1930’s that a series of dreams can provide an extremely useful means of exploring an individual’s life.  In his essay titled “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy,” he presented his analysis of “over a thousand dreams and visual impressions coming from a young man of excellent scientific education.” (116) Jung described his method in these terms:

“[H]ere we are not dealing with isolated dreams; they form a coherent series in the course of which the meaning gradually unfolds more or less of its own accord.  The series is the context which the dreamer himself supplies. It is as if not one text but many lay before us, throwing light from all sides on the unknown terms, so that a reading of all the texts is sufficient to elucidate the difficult passages in each individual one… Of course the interpretation of each individual passage is bound to be largely conjecture, but the series as a whole gives us all the clues we need to correct any possible errors in the preceding passages.” (119-120, italics in original)

Jung’s insight has been actively explored by many people who study dream series over time, and in a future post I will say more about their findings.

For now, I will leave you with this thought: keeping a dream journal is a priceless gift to your future self.

 

Reference:

C.G. Jung, Dreams (trans. R.F.C. Hull), Princeton University Press, 1974.

This post first appeared in Psychology Today, May 27, 2017.

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

A word search analysis of a five-year selection from my own dream journal reveals the same consistent patterns of content in both shorter and longer reports.

I’ve been wondering about this question for a long time now.  Are shorter dreams different in any fundamental way from longer dreams?  Some people naturally remember only brief dream fragments and images, while other people can remember extremely elaborate and detailed dream scenarios.  Most researchers prefer to analyze reports in the “Goldilocks zone,” not too short or too long, just right in the middle.  That is a reasonable methodological choice, but it still leaves unanswered the question I’ve been pondering.

To continue developing the word search tools of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), I really need to get some clarity on this point.  The frequencies of word usage identified by the SDDb tools vary a great deal depending on whether the dreams have a smaller or larger number of total words.  Is this a problem, or not?

I also have a personal reason for wanting to explore the question.  In early 2015 I began a new approach to my own dream journaling practice, which has led to at least one remembered dream every night for more than two years.  This is approximately double my recall rate for the previous several years.  The 2015 dreams were also shorter on average (74 words) than the dreams from previous years (all averaging 100+ words).  This made me wonder about possible changes in the content patterns of my dreams before and after 2015.

With all of this in mind, I started by tabulating the distribution of my dreams over a five-year period of time (2012-2016), separating them into four categories of word length (less than 50 words, 50-99 words, 100-149 words, and 150 words or more). Here are the totals for each year in the four categories, from shortest to longest:

2012: 41, 67, 50, 43 (201 total)

2013: 68, 83, 51, 50 (252 total)

2014: 51, 54, 40, 41 (186 total)

2015: 145, 120, 56, 31 (352 total)

2016: 91, 134, 64, 77 (366 total)

As I already knew, the increased recall in 2015 happened at the shorter end of the word length spectrum.  My new approach to recall seemed to yield a lot of short dreams that I might not have remembered or recorded in previous years.  Then the 2016 dreams shifted again, with a more even distribution of word lengths, closer to the previous years but with higher total numbers.

Dividing the dreams into these subsets makes it possible to address the main question: what are the content differences between dreams of different lengths?

For each of the 20 subsets of dreams I used the SDDb 2.0 word search template to determine the frequencies for 40 categories of word usage, organized into 8 classes (Perceptions, Emotions, Characters, Cognitions, Social Interactions, Movement, Culture, and Elements).

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.

Consider the following excerpt from the analysis, which shows the four subsets of dreams from 2013, and the results of searching these reports for references to “Perception” words, from shortest to longest reports.  The numbers are percentages of the dreams that have at least one reference to the words in the category.

Vision: 24, 54, 69, 76

Hearing: 1, 6, 18, 22

Touch: 1, 6, 16, 26

Smell/Taste: 1, 2, 0, 6

Color: 21, 42, 31, 56

The longer dreams have more references to “Touch” than do the shorter dreams, but the longer dreams also have many more references to “Vision” and “Color” than to “Touch,” which is the same pattern found in the shorter dreams.  It’s this kind of pattern—the relative proportions between the various word categories—that remains consistent regardless of the length of the dreams.

This finding suggests the proportions among the word categories do not, for the most part, dramatically change across word lengths.  These proportions can be found in short, medium, and long dreams.  Even very short dreams preserve the basic architecture of typical dream content.

I need to do a more precise mathematical analysis of these patterns, to illuminate subtler variations that may alter my conclusions.  But I’m reassured by these initial results indicating that shorter dreams are just as legitimate as longer dreams for data-driven research and theorizing.

That’s the big picture.  Within this portrait of broad consistency, there are a few instances where the longer dreams do have an unusually high frequency of a particular word category.  The most prominent are Fear, Speech, Walking/Running, and Transportation.  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.

Here is an example from the 2016 dreams to illustrate what I mean, using the Emotions class. The numbers are percentages of the dreams that have at least one reference to the words in the category, from shortest to longest reports.  Note the dramatic rise in Fear words across the four subsets.

Fear: 3, 11, 36, 55

Anger: 2, 4, 9, 17

Sadness: 4, 2, 8, 5

Wonder/Confusion: 23, 40, 63, 75

Happiness: 11, 22, 20, 26

The shortest dreams have scarcely any references to fear, whereas more than half the longest dreams have a reference to fear.

What I think this means is that when a dream introduces a reference to fear, it heightens my awareness of what’s going on in the dream space.  It stimulates an expansion of what I notice and find significant, and after awakening this requires a lengthier report to describe adequately.

What about the unusual increase in Speech references in longer dreams?  Perhaps a dream in which people start talking with each other is more likely to deepen the interaction and extend the overall experience.

Same with the increased references to Walking/Running and Transportation: a dream in which people are moving from one place to another is probably going to include additional details about what happens before, during, and after the movement.

So here’s a more refined conclusion: Shorter dreams are mostly similar to longer dreams in their basic content patterns, except that longer dreams tend to be scarier, more mobile, and more conversational.

Looking specifically at the 2015 dreams, I found the word usage frequencies were mostly lower compared to previous years, but they generally stayed the same in terms of their relative proportions to each other.  Even though the 2015 dreams were much shorter than the dreams of previous years, they shared with the other dreams a consistent profile of relative frequencies across all the word categories.  So my increased recall that year did not significantly alter the content patterns of the dreams.

Finally, I thought it would be fun to try a “blind analysis” of my own dreams.  Now that I have identified this remarkably stable profile of my dream content over five years of time, including both short dreams and long dreams, what do the patterns reveal about my life?

If I pretend that these dreams came from a stranger about whom I have no biographical knowledge, I would predict that in waking life this person:

Is male

Is visually oriented

Often experiences wonder/confusion

Is sexually active

Cares about his wife

Cares about cats

Has equal relations with men and women

Likes running

Is not concerned about death

Has lots of interactions with cars and streets

Likes basketball

Likes music and movies

Has lots of interactions with water and earth

All of these inferences are grounded in the statistical results of the word searches, and I would have to affirm every one of them as accurate.  Indeed, this is a remarkably concise summary of my concerns, interests, and activities in waking life.

Most importantly for the topic of this essay, the content patterns that helped me generate these inferences are observable in the shortest dreams.  I would have made most of these same accurate predictions if I had only been looking at the dreams of less than 50 words.

This means the answer to the opening question is no, there is not a significant difference in patterns of content between short and long dreams.  Perhaps dreams should be conceived as having a kind of fractal quality: even at a small scale they reflect the same basic structures that shapes things at a larger scale.

I will close by noting the three most striking discontinuities between the word usage frequencies in my dreams and the concerns, interests, and activities of my waking life.  These are instances where my blind analysis predictions would have been wrong.

First, I have very few references in my dreams to “Fantastic Beings,” which might lead to the inference that I do not like the cultural genres of science fiction or fantasy.  This is not true; I have always loved books, movies, and tv shows in the sci-fi and fantasy realm.  Perhaps what I like about these stories are not the odd characters (vampires, zombies, aliens, robots, etc.) but rather the spirit of unpredictable novelty and imaginative adventure.  Putting it in those terms, my high frequency of “Wonder/Confusion” words might be a better sign of my cultural interests in this direction.

Second, I have only moderate references to “Reading/Writing,” which might suggest I do not engage much with these activities.  This is not true; I am a voracious reader and prolific writer, and have been so for several decades.  What strikes me as discontinuous is that my dreams don’t have far more references to reading and writing, given their central importance in my waking life.  Ernest Hartmann’s notion that we typically do not dream of the three R’s might be a factor here.

And third, I have very few references to “Religion,” which would prompt the inference that I have little or no concern about religion.  At one level this is definitely false; I have a Ph.D. in religious studies and I read and write about religion very frequently.  One would never know this about my waking life based only on the patterns of my dreams.  And yet, at another level this inference is surely true; 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.  Perhaps this all makes sense in that religion is 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.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten.  The next step will be trying this same process of analysis with other sets and series of dreams.

 

Note: this post was originally published in Psychology Today on May 4, 2017.

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199 Dreams of Donald Trump

A new collection of dreams about the new US President sheds light on his psychological impact in the minds of those who support him and those who oppose him.

These dreams were gathered via a website I manage, idreamoftrump.net, which has been active since early 2016.  A total of 143 came from people living in the U.S., and 56 came from people living in countries outside the U.S.  In terms of gender, 124 reports come from females and 75 from males.  I asked a question about how the individual would describe his or her political ideology, and 43 said they were progressive, 44 liberal, 50 moderate, 8 libertarian, 37 conservative, and 9 very conservative.  

This is certainly not a representative sample of people from the U.S. or the human population, so I want to be cautious in drawing conclusions from the data.  This sample represents a self-selected group of people who woke up remembering a dream of Donald Trump, found my site online, and shared the dream with me (for which I am very grateful!).  The results of analyzing these dreams can illuminate several possible dimensions of meaning which are interesting and important, though not definitively proven or established using current research methods.  What I’m going to lay out is more than mere speculation, but well short of settled knowledge.

The good news, from a research perspective, is that this set of 199 dreams turns out to be remarkably consistent with the content patterns of average or typical dreams.  In my 2016 book Big Dreams I describe the “SDDb baselines,” a set of more than 5,000 dream reports I gathered from normal, healthy people to create a portrait of the baseline frequencies of average dreaming.  I analyzed the 199 Trump dreams using the same word search template I used with the SDDb baselines (which includes classes for Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Movement, Characters, Social Interactions, Culture, and Elements), and I found the results match up very closely with the frequencies of the baselines.

What this means is that the Trump dreams are not radically different from ordinary dreams.  The same general currents that shape regular dreaming also shape the dreams in which Trump appears as a character.

This also means the few differences I did find are worth special attention.  The close parallels between the Trump dreams and the SDDb baselines on so many categories of content casts into sharp relief the areas where the Trump dreams had unusual variations from the baselines.

The Trump dreams had a very high frequency of references to male characters, which makes sense given that the Trump is present in all of them.  But these 199 dreams also have an unusually low frequency of references to female characters, which is more striking.  Compared to the baselines, the dreams of Trump also have remarkably high frequencies of references to the act of speaking, to the perceptual sense of touch, and to the cultural domain of money and work.  

For the males, their dreams of Trump had unusually high friendliness, low physical aggression, and low references to weapons.  For the females, their dreams of Trump had unusually high physical aggression and sexuality.

To summarize these findings, it seems that when Trump appears as a character in people’s dreams, he does not disrupt the whole process; people continue dreaming more or less the way they typically do.  But he does have a tangible and measurable impact on certain aspects of those dreams.  A dream about Donald Trump typically involves fewer women and more talking, touching, and references to money and work.  Men seem to become pacified around Trump in their dreams, while women seem to become more instinctually primed.  

I can provide the spreadsheet with the detailed results to anyone who requests it, and I will go into more detail about these and other politically-related dreams at the upcoming conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, to be held June 20-24 in Anaheim, California.  I am giving a presentation on dreams in relation to current U.S. politics, and the analysis of this set of 199 Trump dreams will be featured in the presentation.  

The dream reports are currently available in the SDDb for further study and exploration.  I have selected twenty-three reports to include in this post, all of which came post-election, as a way of illustrating the personal experiences behind the statistical comparisons I’ve been discussing so far.  Each report includes the age, gender, country/state of residence, and political ideology of the dreamer, along with their SDDb participant ID codes.  The dreamer’s associations to the dream follow the report, responding to my question about what they thought the dream might mean, and whether it altered their view of the new president.  I made up the titles with an eye towards highlighting what I think are the most interesting themes.

 

He Put a Ring on My Finger

A female, 32, from Iowa, moderate – Td107

I dreampt I was in his house, a really large one. There were threats that he was going to be assassinated all around and I was crying. He was acting like everything was okay and he had a lot of security. Everyone was dressed casual, and I think his family was there too. Suddenly the dream shifted and everyone was saying he was dead. I couldn’t stop crying, and as I was about to go he stood in front of me and told me I was worried for nothing, he was smiling and totally confident. This part is weird and embarrassing. …He then proposed to me and put a ring on my finger! I grabbed him and was sobbing into his chest while he was rubbing my back. I have NO idea why I dreampt it lol. That’s what prompted me to search if anyone else has dreams of him. 🙂

Idk, I voted for him..and I think he’s great! It doesn’t change my opinion of him at all, it made me feel a little closer to him perhaps…which is weird to say.

 

I Could Mess With Trump If I Wanted to

A female, 14, from Louisiana, liberal – Td123

I was is a car, one with black leather material. The car has three rows of seats and Donald Trump and my brother resided in the middle set and I sat in the back row. I sat behind Trump and he reclined is chair to touch my knees. I give him a dirty look and received the same back but he soon put his chair back. Then, not immediately after, almost like some time had past, Trump asked me to get something from the seat next to me that was him and he reclined his chair and I gave his item to him and the very slightest bit of our fingers brushed past each other and I was disgusted so much that I quivered. My brother gave me a dirty look and Trump put his seat back on. I realized that I could mess with Trump if I wanted to and texted my friend and asked “Should I shout I’M GAY!” And my dream ended at that.

Perhaps the dream means how I feel scared about what could happen to my friends that are not all white men.

 

He Gives Me a Necklace to Wear for Our Wedding

A female, 63, from New York, progressive – Td124

I’m getting married! I am preparing for my upcoming wedding. My fiance, Donald Trump, has given me a necklace to wear for our wedding. The necklace has a large oval moonstone set into a square platinum setting surrounded by diamonds, on a small link platinum chain. I am not sure I want to wear this necklace. I have another necklace given to me by my last partner, John. It is a gorgeous platinum necklace set with baguette (rectangular shape) emeralds, and diamond pave (tiny diamonds). It is a series of ¼” links and has an elaborate clasp as a focal point; it’s more dimensional with the same design. While deciding which necklace I will wear my ex-husband, Peter shows up. We go to the local nursery with a container with two plants in it; we own together. One of the plants has died. The man at the nursery says the problem is the two plants need different environments – one needs sun and lots of water, the other less water, and no bright sunlight.

While writing the dream down, I had a big ah-ha about why my ex-husband and I did not get along. This dream made me take a look at my disowned shadow showing up as Trump. I’m still processing it. The jewelry to me represents some accomplishments in my life which point to speaking up (necklace around throat). Integrating Donald will probably help that too, but at this moment I have a difficult time with admitting I am that too, but dreams don’t lie. LOL!

 

I Note That He Is Circumcised

A female, 69, from Colorado, liberal – Td125

I’m in a bathtub with Donald Trump. He tells me to wash my hair. Melania sits on the toilet with the cover down and tries to make nice. He’s not being sexual with me. Maybe I’m not attractive enough for him to notice. I tell Melania he’s my father. I know no good will come of this. I note that he is circumcised because I know people will ask. Why won’t he let me take a shower? I need to rinse my hair. There’s not much water. Should I pull the white shower curtain? I decide not to. It’s no use. He cannot win, I think to myself, trying to make it so.

Trump has invaded my private space, yet is not as aggressive or fearful as he seems in waking life . I don’t want him there but he’s more of a bumbler than a threat.

 

Working Very Closely With Him

A female, 53, from Mississippi, conservative – Td127

It was very good dream.Donald hired me to work very closely with him full time and most of what my job consisted of was entertainment. It seemed like many people were flocking around him at something like a resort/? Donald seemed to be so appreciative of my opinion 24/7. It was a very vivid dream and people were a little jealous of me and/or confused about the situation.

Yes my dream did change my perspective of Donald in a better way. He seems very kind and giving.

 

A Soft Kiss on the Lips

A male, 67, from Virginia, progressive – Td133

I am a trump supporter.. maybe more didnt want the alternative the night before the election he came to me in a dream and kissed me on the lips…his lips were very soft. i felt very close to him. I’m not overtly attracted to him in a sexual way

it engendered a feeling of paternal trust

 

I Am His Disgruntled Spouse

A female, 50, from Georgia, liberal – Td141

I dreamt I was in the White House as First Lady and he was my husband. Even in my dream I was disgusted by his presence and felt compelled to do everything in my power to keep him from becoming our President. I was a disgruntled spouse who was complaining about everything he was doing. Every time I looked at him I loathed being with him! We were getting ready to go to a show and he kept trying to convince me it was going to be ok? ?Strangely I had the upper hand and he was pretty much agreeing to everything I said and actually trying to be extra nice to me. Very vivid in my mind-Everything was pale pink like the drapes, and layers underneath were white with hints of old shimmering. Even the furniture was upholstered in sand pink and gold thread, the wood works had gold shimmery accents to it! He wore a black suit, with a white shirt and red tie. I was dressed in a white suit with gold shimmer..

I was just so disturbed by it it mortified me that we were even in the same dream! He seemed absolutely puzzled about his every move, almost apologetic about everything he said and I had a dog that was sleeping in my bed and I remember being very mean and saying I’ll just take the dog with me you can stay here in the White House and be president. It was a room with large glass panels all over and I felt like I had no privacy and then I pushed him out and locked the doors. He said, “at least give me the dog! Please be ready, I’ll see you down stairs.”

 

I’m His Girlfriend and Melania Is Super Jealous

A female, 26, from Nebraska, libertarian – Td155

I’ve been having basically the same dreams about Donald since before he was even president. It’s always where I’m like his girlfriend lol. Melania is always super jealous of me and everyone don’t get why he chose me. But I’m always super for it! He’s always very nice and treats me like a princess. It isn’t so real and I can like feel him lol there’s so many details I can’t even tell them all. It’s like it’s real life. Always me and him together like in a relationship. Very good dreams

Well. I have always been a fan of trump. Like his number on every fan lol. And his sons wife followed me on Instagram and we’ve talked online about her horse and dogs. And she personally thanked me for going up to vote for him. I love that family

 

He Accepts Me As I Am

A female, 54, from California, conservative – Td176

I was supposed to be at a formal presentation but, I was dressed in shorts and a tank top. I was standing in front of a beautiful building but, was anxious about going in due to my attire. As I stood there, President Trump comes over like we’ve known each other forever, takes my hand ever so gently and he sort of waves his individual fingers against mine. He then looked right at me and said “Don’t worry about how you are dressed, you have the same right to be here as everyone else.” That’s it. It made me feel good. Accepted.

I have been scared to death about the direction of this beautiful country. Too many agendas will only lead to chaos. I feel like the dream Trump was telling me that things will be OK and that all people eventually will be treated with courtesy and respect.

 

I’m His Child, and Powerless to Stop His Plans

A female, 49, from West Virginia, liberal – Td180

I was at a cocktail party at a swanky mansion, and Trump walked in, and had a different wife, blonde, and a different child, I guess that was me, although I felt like myself. He wanted u us to go see his property down by the river, so we got in the car and the blonde drive us around till we came upon a big Greek revival type building, sort of looked like mausoleum actually, and he said it was an apartment building he had bought and did I like it? I said yes, it was beautiful, and then several young women came bounding out, wearing bikinis and talking about what they had made for dinner. We almost hit the off kilter gate backing out of the driveway. Then I woke up. Earlier in the dream, I was being chased in my car by one of his security officers, and I sped up to get away and lost control of my car and went down a wooded cliff in the dark and thought I was going to die. I landed safely in a bunch of bushes, at the house that became the other dream.

I felt powerless to stop his plans, like a robot, or a slave. Even acting like I was a relative or a child made me feel annoyed because I am my own person wanting nothing to do with him. I don’t agree with him at all in real life but in my dreams he was like you will do it my way and be impressed or I will chase chase you off a cliff.

 

A Neighbor in NYC

A male, 50, from New York, progressive – Td158

I was walking down an avenue in Midtown Manhattan and I saw Trump walking alone. He didn’t have any protection or staff flanking him. He was wearing black sweat pants and a sweatshirt and he looked a bit forlorn. As he passed me I said, “Good afternoon, Mr. President.” He didn’t react. I think someone behind me said hello to him as well. I remember thinking why isn’t he wearing his usual suit? In real life, I have seen him in my neighborhood twice before. His daughter lives around the corner from me on 59th and Park and I have seen her frequently over the years since she was a youngster.

The dream did not increase any negative feelings re trump

 

An Honored Guest in the Great White Plaza

A male, 35, from Colorado, conservative – Td153

There I was with my good friend Eric. We were way up high on some kind of structure and seemed to be boarding a ride or a craft of some kind. Eric was steering the craft at first to show me how to do it. Then it was my turn. I took over the craft and started to bring it down to the ground below. It seemed like some kind of helicopter but very small as it only fit me and Eric side by side. When we landed I jumped off and Eric stayed on taking the craft back up. The moment I turn around I notice that I am now in an all white setting. The walls were white with columns leading to curved arches and they stretched around an enormous square plaza that had what looked like a white woven carpet for a floor. I then noticed that I was being guided around this area by Donald Trump, who seemed to be treating me as an honored guest. He showed me around and introduced me to people. We seemed to be talking candidly but I cannot recall what about. After we left the great white plaza Donald guided me through what seemed to be a naval vessel. We kept going up until we reached a compartment that appeared to be multi-functional. Donald left me at a table with close to a dozen people, all who had communication devices in their ears. They were testing these devices and one of the devices had a distorted sound. Everyone there seemed to know me as they looked to me to figure out what was wrong with the device. I spoke into the microphone and made a few comments and then woke up.

I am not sure what the dream means, but after waking from it I certainly felts interested in the meaning. The feeling I had while in the dream was excitement and admiration as it seemed that I was being treated with great honor and respect in what seemed like a setting full of very important people.

 

Something 14.5 Inches Exactly

A female, 29, from US, moderate – Td188

I wasn’t going to share this but here it goes… I was at some political/social event and happened to meet President Trump. He said that he wanted to show me something that was 14.5 inches exactly. He then began pulling down his pants and said, “See, I told you it’s huge.” In reality it (his penis) was not. This is making me want to throw up typing this and I do not know why I had this dream. In reality I would never want to see that! LOL However, I specifically remember seeing the number 14.5, so that could mean something. I don’t recall ever seeing anything that connects to the number 14.5 in relation to Trump or in my life.

I think this dream is hinting at exaggeration of some kind. Maybe making something out to be bigger than it actually is or expecting too much of a certain situation. I’m not really sure what triggered me to have this dream.

 

I Cannot Bring Myself to Say the Words

A female, 55, from California, moderate – Td194

In my dream, my 7/8th grade students are to be heading out on a field trip. I am standing in the parking lot waiting for the drivers to file out. Donald Trump has his driver-side door open standing between it and the car gesticulating to the bystanders. I want him to get in the car and drive my students to the destination. However, I cannot bring myself to say the words, “President Trump” in order to get his attention and tell him to get in the car and drive it. Instead, I call out, “The car needs to be moving; we need to get to our destination.” Nothing happens. Trump keeps talking and waving his hands and is standing wedged between the open black car door. I try again. I yell out, “Get in the car and get it moving; the students need to get to their field trip.” He doesn’t stop talking. I turn to someone standing next to me and I ask them, “Could you walk over to him and tell him he needs to drive the car – I can’t get his attention, and I just can’t bear to call out the name ‘President Trump.'” I woke up and my dream was so real I am still bothered by it.

As far as what triggered it, well I have been watching lots of youtube videos regarding Trump, so that could have triggered it.

 

A Game of Him Trying to “Win” Me Over

A female, 22, from Georgia, moderate – Td195

He was coming to an event and he was driving through a body of water. The water would part and people would walk through then a wave would come and then it would part and his limo drove through. We were in a huge colosseum listening to him talk. Then there was an after party and he came up to me wanting my number- I am not a Trump fan and I expressed that. It then turned into a game of him trying to “win” me over. My old boyfriend was there, he is a Trump supporter, and Trump told him he wasn’t interested in talking. This went on the entire night until I left the party.

I have no idea what triggered the dream. I did not run into my ex and I try to avoid Trump news.

 

Married to the President with a Baby Carrot Penis

A female, 54, from Florida, moderate – Td197

I dreamt I was married to Donald Trump and he wore pajamas that look like his regular clothes and his penis was a baby carrot. He also sent me to Victoria’s Secret to buy my inauguration dress with a black American Express card that said president of the United States of America. I told him Victoria secret didn’t carry plus size clothes and he said they do now. I went to Victoria’s Secret and they do not carry plus size clothes and they said they would get them I had my own American Express card that said Mrs. president of the United States of America and paid for peoples dinner at the mall where the Victoria’s Secret’s was with my black American Express card. I also dreamt of the inauguration in the White House inside was kind of tacky and dirty. The funniest part was Barbara Bush was sleeping in a cot in the hallway and blue pajamas with her pearls on her neck. And as I walk down the hallway all the other first ladies are sleeping on cots in the hallway

I’m pretty sure that I manifested trumps hatred of fat women and the tackiness of his wife’s clothing. I’m also pretty sure that the baby carrot penis had to do with eating some before bed and having a diverticulitis attack in real life. It’s also the first time I have proof that o dream in color! The carrot was orange

 

From participants living in countries outside the US:

Everyone Is Blindly Praising Him

A male, 17, from Denmark – Td140

I dreamt that I was in a high school class and donald trump was also attending this class, it was an older version of him and he had a lot more wrinkles and his skin was more orange, he seemed like he was disgusted of everyone in that class and started criticizing us and telling us what to do but indeed everyone was blind about it and started praising him and saying the famous sentence: make America great again. AWKWARD

I think it really reflects the reality of things, in a more concrete way and that a lot of people are blind about the bad deeds of Donald trump.

 

Trapped at School by a Gunman

A female, 18, from Canada, liberal – Td184

I was watching a movie in what seemed like an elementary school classroom. It was brightly lit, and someone was handing out fruit leather to us in our desks. When I left the classroom, I found myself in a stairwell as all the doors mechanically snapped shut. I somehow knew that there was a man with a gun in the building, and that I was trapped in that particular flight of stairs. I also knew that Melania Trump was a few flights above me, also locked in. Somehow I sensed that the gunman was Trump, but he didn’t know that Melania was trapped in the stairwell along with the rest of us. I should mention that the stairwells were sparsely populated, with only about 3 people locked in each flight of stairs. I woke up before anything more could happen.

I am firmly liberal (democratic to Americans), and staunchly oppose Trump’s policies. Since he has been inaugurated I have felt extremely uneasy, and it grows with each day. It’s possible that this dream was an expression of that anxiety, or perhaps it foreshadows the destruction of the school system under Trump? Haha not sure.

 

Does He Have Manipulative Superpowers?

A male, 31, from Malta, progressive – Td172

Donald Trump was my Flatmate, which in my dream was more of a background information, because the dream setting was some private party of his somewhere else. Everything was super luxurious, sunny, nice snacks, and he was really nice to me, showing me around and being attentive. In my dream I knew that I actually am against Donald Trump, but for some reason meeting him in person I actually liked him. I was wondering if he had manipulative superpowers of some sort, because it didn’t make any sense that I got along with him so well. I met his family, all were very nice too. I kept my resentments against them hidden and took part in conversations. I had the feeling I saw the human sides in them, everyone thinking they are actually doing the right thing, being good people, but getting it all wrong because they live in this super rich bubble, disconnected from the real world. Later more people joined the party, even an old friend of mine. We got a bit drunk and at one point I told him that Trump is actually sharing a flat with me at the moment and we both laughed at the absurdity of it.

I was surprised to see how quickly I somehow changed side, just by being invited to a party of his, apparently lulled in by the luxury of it all (I actually don’t even like luxury very much). There was this nagging feeling in the back of my head that it is wrong to be nice to them, but it felt extremely difficult to take a position in that setting (or even remember what my position really was).

 

Sleeping With Him

Female, 15, from Ireland, moderate – Td131

I had to sleep with Donald trump. There were no beds left to sleep in so i had to sleep with Donald.

Maybe because i thought about donald trump a lot and I’m still okay with Donald.

 

He Was Very Sweet

A female, 21, from the Philippines, moderate – Td112

It was a very long dream, and Donald Trump was only a part of it. I remember he was courting me, he was very sweet to me, and wanted to have an affair with me. I knew we had so much age gap, and that I am not suited to be his wife, so I just laughed but I was flattered that he was being that way to me. I dont want to have an affair with him though. Lol

I dont know what it means, and I didnt even think of him the night before. But that dream made me ponder that he has a soft but impulsive side to him.

 

Trapped in a Marriage With a Narcissist

A female, 26, from New Zealand, liberal – Td181

I was married to Trump and we were at some kind of social gathering. I was sitting next to an old school friend, talking to her, when I heard a verbal attack outside and saw that a group of African people were fighting with Trump. They appeared to be insulted by what he was saying and then they left and Trump came back inside. He sat down next to me and I asked him whether it had been taken out of context or had he said something insulting? He answered that it had been insulting but that he didn’t care. I was mortified that I could be married to someone like this and I angrily expressed my feelings, and then I said something like “Donnie, Sean, whatever your name is!” (Sean is the name of my partner – who is nothing like Trump!) – I then left and spoke to my old school friend and described how trapped I felt. It then changed to another aspect of this gathering… Melania Trump was there and she was ordering me drinks, and then she was standing on the bar table and dancing. I remember eating lots of cake.

Thoughts of narcissism may have triggered it – my mother in law is a narcissist (has tried to ruin my relationship with her son) and I’m reading a book titled ‘the narcissist next door’ published in 2014, it talks about Trump in its beginning pages (before he became president!) and describing him as a kind of poster boy narcissist (which I think he is) and he is using fear to divide and conquer. It’s very sad.

 

His Head Looks Like Crumbly Rubber With a Bad Toupee

A male, 63, from Thailand, moderate – Td151

I’m on Trump Island. It’s supposed to be a big luxury celebrity deal, a kind of trip to fantasy island, but it’s just a rough, flat, windswept space surrounded by gray sea with some decrepit buildings on it. People in long overcoats are moving around with no sense of direction, and there’s a feeling of something going on, something important but unclear. Trump is in a kind of lounger next to me, and he’s really anxious and upset that it isn’t going well. He’s on the verge of tears. His head looks like it’s made of crumbly rubber, with a bad toupee, but I know it’s really him. He’s started clinging to me, and crying. I’m embarrassed to be there, but I try to comfort him. Later I’m crying out “Donny! Donny!” because they’re asking me for a ticket I don’t have.

The dream means I’m seeing too damn much Trump on the internet. I’ve never dreamt about a world leader before. I still hate the fucker. Slightly more, if anything, for wasting my valuable dream time.

 

Note: this essay first appeared in the Huffington Post on April 26, 2017.

 

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The Dreams of a Religious Cult Member

A new study of a long-term dream journal from a woman who belonged for many years to a physically and spiritually abusive religious cult.

Earlier this year a dream research colleague, G. William Domhoff, told me about a new series of dreams available from a person willing to participate in a new experiment with “blind analysis.”  Blind analysis involves bracketing out all personal information about a dreamer and focusing only on the patterns of word usage frequency in the dreams.  These patterns become the basis for making inferences about the dreamer’s waking life concerns, relationships, and activities, which the dreamer is then able to confirm or disconfirm.  I like this method because it provides a very rigorous way of testing and refining my hypotheses about dreaming-waking connections.

According to Domhoff, the dreams came from a woman who is an “ex-cultist” and who has been keeping a regular dream journal for more than 30 years.  This immediately catapulted the project to the front of my research queue.  Here was a rare opportunity to study the dreams of someone from what sounded like an extremely unusual religious background.  What might a blind analysis of the dreams of such a person reveal?

The following is an initial progress report on what I’ve found so far.  A more detailed discussion will be part of a talk I will give in June at the annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams in Anaheim, California.

To make the analysis more manageable we asked “Beverly” (a pseudonym) to provide four subsets of her dreams, one each for the years 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016.  Apparently she has recorded a total of more than 6,000 dreams recorded over this whole time period, which works out to an average recall rate of about four dreams a week for 30 years.  Quite a prolific dreamer!  And quite an amazing personal document for her to reflect on the long and winding course of her life.

We uploaded the four sets of dreams into the Sleep and Dream Database and I used the SDDb’s 2.0 word search template to analyze each set.  The 2.0 template has 40 categories of word usage organized into 8 classes: Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Characters, Social Interactions, Elements, Movement, and Culture.  After creating a large spreadsheet with all the word search results, I compared the frequencies in Beverly’s dreams with the frequencies of the SDDb baselines—a large, high-quality set of dreams from many sources that I use as a standard of “normal” frequencies of dream content (presented in chapter 6 of my book Big Dreams).  I also looked at variations between the four sets of Beverly’s dreams, noting any frequencies that seemed markedly higher or lower than others in the same category.

A special challenge with Beverly’s dreams is their relatively short length.  The 940 total dreams across the four sets have an average length of 54 words, with a median of 43 (meaning half the reports are more, and half are less, than 43 words in length).  I typically use this method with much longer dreams, so I went into the analysis with even more caution than usual.

As it turned out, and as I will describe in more detail at the IASD conference in June, the short length of Beverly’s dreams did not impede the process.  On the contrary, this has been one of the most successful experiments of blind analysis I’ve done to date.

After I calculated Beverly’s word usage frequencies and made my baseline comparisons, I formulated a total of 26 inferences about her waking life.  To be clear, at this point I only knew three details about Beverly’s personal life: she was a woman, an avid dream journaler, and an ex-cultist.  Other than that, I was “blind” to her waking life circumstances and personality.

Of the 26 inferences I sent to her, Beverly confirmed 23 as accurate.  These included predictions about her personality, relationships, financial concerns, physical health, and cultural interests.

The three inferences she did not affirm are interesting, and may help me further refine the blind analysis process.  I’ve found in past experiments that I often learn more from mistaken inferences than from successful ones.

In the 1986 set of dreams there are five dream reports that use the word “earthquake”; none of the other sets of dreams use this word, which prompted my inference that in 1986 Beverly was “impacted by an earthquake.”  This was her response: “This must be symbolic of what I went through with the group in 1986. That was the year they hit bottom, including the murder.”

This aspect of meaning was not really part of my inference, so I don’t count it as a successful one, but it does shed light on the possible use of a natural disaster like an earthquake as a recurrent symbol for strong emotional concerns that feel profoundly disruptive and foundation-threatening.

The 1996 set of dreams had remarkably low frequencies of perception words, which struck me as significant.  My inference suggested that during this time the dreamer was “less perceptually stimulated.”  Beverly responded, “Not sure what this means, but I was smoking tons of pot that year.”  Maybe that’s the connection, or maybe it’s something else. I didn’t phrase the inference very precisely, which made it hard for her to definitively confirm or disconfirm it.

The 2006 set of dreams had the highest frequency of animal references, which led me to infer that during this time period Beverly was “more concerned about animals (especially birds, cats, and dogs.).”  She replied, “Possibly. I had pet birds and was very attached to Rocky, my parents’ big orange tabby.”  I’m inclined to take this answer as a confirmation of my inference, since 1) she specifically mentions birds and a cat, and 2) she describes the kind of behaviors and feelings that I would generally include in defining the phrase “concerned about animals.”

What about the references to religion in Beverly’s dreams?  This whole series is an amazing chronicle of a lifelong spiritual journey.  Even if I had not known Beverly was an ex-cultist, I would have made it the top headline of my inferences that this dreamer had an extremely strong interest in religion in the early parts of her life.  It turns out that Beverly was deeply involved with a Hare Krishna group in the 1980’s, a group that took a very dark turn into abuse, violence, and murder, as she mentioned.  Her dreams track the course of her involvement with the group and her final escape from it, which has opened her life to a variety of new creative possibilities, also reflected in her dreams in remarkably accurate detail.

At the IASD conference I will talk more about the religious dimensions of her dreams, along with her social relationships and her “big dreams” (i.e., what she considers the most memorable dreams of her whole life).  I will then compare these results with those I’ve found in studying three other long-term dream journals—from Brianna, Jordan, and Jasmine (all pseudonyms, all in the SDDb).  My hope is to use this conference talk, and the feedback I receive from my colleagues, as a springboard for a deeper exploration of Beverly’s dream series.  Her journal is an incredibly valuable resource for the scientific study of religiously significant patterns in dreaming.

Note: This post was first published in Psychology Today on April 20, 2017.