Freud Archives | Kelly Bulkeley

Reflections on An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming (1997)

Kelly Bulkeley — Mon, 05 May 2025 22:10:11 +0000

Early in my career, I had attitude about writing “secondary” texts. I didn’t want to write about what other people thought, I wanted to write about my own ideas. That’s why when the opportunity arose to write a book intended as an introductory textbook for college students, I hesitated. The offer came by way of …

Continue reading "Reflections on An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming (1997)"

The post Reflections on An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming (1997) appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

Reflections on The Wilderness of Dreams (1994)

Kelly Bulkeley — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 20:11:48 +0000

Writing has always been a relational process for me. Relationships with an imagined audience, with the people who have taught and influenced me, sometimes with co-authors, and always with the energies of inspiration I personify as Muses—without them, I would never care enough to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. With them, I’ve …

Continue reading "Reflections on The Wilderness of Dreams (1994)"

The post Reflections on The Wilderness of Dreams (1994) appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

The Four Factors that Shape Our Dreams

Kelly Bulkeley — Mon, 31 May 2021 21:48:50 +0000

In Sigmund Freud’s pioneering book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), he explained how dreams are formed by referring to four factors that make up what he called the “dream-work.” Even after the passage of more than a century, many of Freud’s key concepts are still valid and useful in the practice of dream interpretation. This …

Continue reading "The Four Factors that Shape Our Dreams"

The post The Four Factors that Shape Our Dreams appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

New Dream Research in 2019

Kelly Bulkeley — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 23:51:16 +0000

Dreaming, play, theater, science, religion, social and political crisis. Jung, Freud, Shakespeare, a troupe of immigrant artists, Alice in Wonderland, Lucrecia de Leon, the US President. These are the topics and the people I will be discussing most frequently in a series of presentations lining up for 2019. Each presentation will speak directly to the interests of a …

Continue reading "New Dream Research in 2019"

The post New Dream Research in 2019 appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

The Origins of Religion in Dreaming

Kelly Bulkeley — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:18:13 +0000

One of the oldest theories about the origins of religion argues that religious beliefs and practices are derived from the experience of dreaming. This theory is most often associated with the 19th century British anthropologist E.B. Tylor, as expressed in this passage from the 1873 work Primitive Culture: “The evidence of visions corresponds with the …

Continue reading "The Origins of Religion in Dreaming"

The post The Origins of Religion in Dreaming appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

The Call of Cthulhu: A Pioneering Effort in Empirical Dream Research

Kelly Bulkeley — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:31:43 +0000

H.P. Lovecraft (pictured to the left) wrote the short story “The Call of Cthulhu” in 1926, and first published it in 1928 in the magazine Weird Tales. The story centers on Professor George Angell, Semitic languages expert at Brown University, who dies under suspicious circumstances and leaves his papers to the care and disposition of his grand-nephew Thurston. …

Continue reading "The Call of Cthulhu: A Pioneering Effort in Empirical Dream Research"

The post The Call of Cthulhu: A Pioneering Effort in Empirical Dream Research appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

Mary Shelley’s Baby Comes Back to Life

Kelly Bulkeley — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:37:12 +0000

In February of 1815 a baby girl was born two months prematurely to Mary Godwin, seventeen years old at the time, and the poet Percy B. Shelley. Twelve days later Mary went to the child during the night and found she had died in her sleep. On March 19, 1815 Mary recorded the following dream …

Continue reading "Mary Shelley’s Baby Comes Back to Life"

The post Mary Shelley’s Baby Comes Back to Life appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

Nietzsche’s Prophetic Childhood Dreams of Death

Kelly Bulkeley — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:17:59 +0000

In Ronald Hayman’s 1980 biography Nietzsche: A Critical Life, he mentions two dreams that came to Friedrich Nietzsche early in his life. 1. “I heard the church organ playing as at a funeral. When I looked to see what was going on, a grave opened suddenly, and my father arose out of it in a …

Continue reading "Nietzsche’s Prophetic Childhood Dreams of Death"

The post Nietzsche’s Prophetic Childhood Dreams of Death appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.

Freud and Neuroscience: A Return to Origins

Kelly Bulkeley — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:51:47 +0000

A chapter I wrote with that title appears in the recently published book Disciplining Freud on Religion: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences, edited by Gregory Kaplan and William B. Parsons (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Here is the abstract: “Freud developed psychoanalysis on the basis of a neurological model of human mental functioning. Scholars and …

Continue reading "Freud and Neuroscience: A Return to Origins"

The post Freud and Neuroscience: A Return to Origins appeared first on Kelly Bulkeley.