Tag: play

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Bizarreness, Nightmares, and Play

The bizarre contents of dreaming can easily seem like the products of mental deficiency. “Children of an idle brain” is what Mercutio calls them in Romeo & Juliet (I.iv.102). Many scientists today essentially agree with Mercutio that the weird absurdities of dreams are evidence of diminished cognitive functioning during sleep.

But what if the “bizarreness” of dreaming is a sign of health and not disorder? What if, in some conditions at least, the increasing weirdness and unpredictability of dream content heralds genuine healing from serious psychological distress?

At the recent annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Robert Hoss and Alwin Wagener analyzed a 45-year long series of PTSD nightmares from an American veteran of the Vietnam War. They found that over time, as the veteran healed from his psychological wounds, his nightmares included fewer direct or literal references to wartime violence and more references to other kinds of content, with a rising frequency of metaphorical and symbolic content. In other words, his nightmares gradually became dreamier. Instead of unrelenting graphic repetitions of the traumatizing event, he now experienced dreams involving new characters, settings, scenarios, and emotions.

This fits well with the findings of Harry Wilmer and others that long-term recovery from PTSD corresponds with changes in the frequency and contents of trauma-related nightmares. Wilmer observed that, “the emergence of an ordinary nightmare after prolonged recurrent reliving of the exact trauma in dreams is a healing process… It is the psyche’s attempt at healing.” (1996, 89)

It remains unclear which comes first, the shifts in dreaming or the psychological healing. But their close connection suggests an underlying process by which increasing dreaminess signals a loosening of the trauma’s grip and a return to the natural variability and freedom of dreaming experience.

This process also accords well with the theory that dreaming is a kind of play, the play of the imagination in sleep. Typical PTSD nightmares can be seen as the antithesis of play. Fixed in content and inescapable in their repetition, they are symptoms of an imagination paralyzed by the harsh reality of the trauma. But with time and the support of caring others a more playful spirit returns, bringing a renewed experiential awareness of creative freedom and the capacity to grow in the future.

A key implication for therapists is the value of monitoring changes in nightmare frequency and content as a potentially helpful window into the healing process. Those who already have active practices in play therapy or art therapy may find this insight especially congenial to their efforts, but any therapist who works with trauma can benefit from more attention to the vicissitudes and playful dynamics of dreaming.

 

Note: This post first appeared in Psychology Today on June 14, 2024.

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Dreaming as Play and as Mind-Wandering

The neuroscience of dreams has shifted in recent years toward the idea that dreaming can be conceived as a kind of mind-wandering in sleep. According to current evidence, mind-wandering (also known as day-dreaming, or drifting thought) is a product of the “default mode network,” a system of neural regions that remains active in the absence of external stimulus or focused thought. During sleep this same system of neural regions becomes active, helping to generate the experience of dreaming.

Two recent books by esteemed researchers make this argument about the connection between dreams and mind-wandering: When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep, by Antonio Zadra & Robert Stickgold, and The Emergence of Dreaming: Mind-Wandering, Embodied Simulation, and the Default Network, by G. William Domhoff. When scientists of the stature of Domhoff, Stickgold, and Zadra reach a common conclusion, it’s worth taking the idea very seriously.

Mind-Wandering and Play

However, the valuable implications of this idea remain obscure when expressed in research terminology. I suggest a more helpful framework is provided by the concept of play. Mind-wandering is, in this view, the mind at play. And dreaming is the play of the mind while asleep. Released from external demands and left to its own devices, whether awake or asleep, the mind becomes active in a more spontaneous, imaginative, emotionally variable, and freely associative mode. If this is not identical to mind-wandering, it at least shares so many core features with play that we should consider the benefits that come from further studying this connection.

The Play of Animals

There is a rich scientific literature on play behaviors in many animal species, all of which can provide dream researchers with valuable evidence, surprising insights, and a stronger grounding in the evolution of our own species. According to comparative zoologists, play in animals is centrally involved in learning and practicing survival-related skills, especially at the younger stages of life and especially for species who live in complex social groups. These features of play correlate very closely with prominent features of dreaming, not excluding the widespread occurrence of terrifying dreams of fear and vulnerability, which seem at first sight to be entirely unplayful. However, the most common form of play in the animal kingdom is play-fighting, which helps to account for the prevalence, and even value, of nightmares in healthy human development. Our fundamentally playful dreams include a great deal of the fighting kinds of play. Although distressing in the short-term, such dreams have the beneficial long-term effect of priming our waking awareness to be vigilant toward similar threats in the waking world.

The Science of Creativity

How does the mind generate novel ideas in art, science, technology, and daily life? Research on mind-wandering is clearly relevant to this important question, insofar as the creative process seems to depend on a moment of unforced openness to serendipity, to a flow of spontaneous images, feelings, and ideas emerging from the unconscious mind. These moments of openness to the unconscious regularly occur in dreaming while asleep, which is why dreams have always been considered a source of creative inspiration.  These moments also occur in playful activities while we are awake, alone or with others, when our focused attention is temporarily suspended and the curious explorations of the wandering mind can yield unexpected insights and discoveries.

Psychotherapeutic Dialogue

The connection between play, dreaming, and mind-wandering has practical relevance for clinicians and caregivers who work in play therapy, art therapy, or any therapeutic approach in which an open dialogue is part of the healing process. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to recognize the therapeutic value of “free association” as a technique of encouraging clients to say whatever spontaneously comes into their minds, as a way of eluding the critical judgment of consciousness and honestly expressing their unconscious feelings. Psychotherapy in this sense has the quality of shared mind-wandering. It creates a safe, playful space in which the clients can, with their therapist as a companion, freely explore questions and conflicts relating to important concerns in their life.

Philosophy

This might sound like more of a stretch, but research on mind-wandering, if slightly reconceived, can also help shift the philosophy of dreaming toward a deeper appreciation for what we experience during dreams. The concept of play is central to Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), a key text for the early German Romantics which suggested that play enables us to achieve a higher union of the mutually opposing needs of our mind and body, intellect and desire, reason and sensation. “Man plays only when he is a man in the full sense of the word,” Schiller stated, “and he is only a complete man when he plays.” If dreaming is indeed a legitimate form of play, we can draw on the reflections of Schiller and his colleagues to affirm the philosophical significance of both dreaming at night and mind-wandering during the day as paths toward a more fully integrated and actualized sense of self.

 

Note: this post originally appeared in Psychology Today on July 30, 2024

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New Dream Posts from Psychology Today

Here are the recent posts I have written for Psychology Today, going back to the middle of last summer. Although each one is written as a stand-alone discussion of a special topic in dreaming, I now realize they also form a series of interrelated texts, like the chapters of a book I didn’t consciously know I was writing….

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The Natural Wisdom of Children’s Dreams

Dreaming is a natural and normal part of children’s lives as they grow and develop. Vivid dreams can appear in children as young as two or three years old. Many preschoolers between four and six years olds have frequent dream recall, and occasionally terrifying nightmares. As children develop cognitively and socially, their dreams become longer, more complex, and more varied in content. Adolescence tends to be a time of intensified dreaming, reflecting the dramatic changes happening in their minds and bodies.

Possible Functions

In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Sigmund Freud observed that children’s dreams are often simpler than adults’ dreams—shorter, less inhibited, more directly expressing our instinctual desires. Because of this “uncensored” quality, Freud saw children’s dreams as especially helpful in showing how dreaming can lead to a deeper understanding of the human mind. In their dreams, we can catch glimpses of the primal forces of the psyche that influence all later mental functioning.

C.G. Jung also emphasized the deep psychological wisdom of children’s dreams. From Jung’s perspective, children are capable of greater insight into the collective unconscious because their minds have not yet been molded by adult society in ways that limit, discourage, or even reject the possibility of such insights. Before those cultural boundaries are imposed, children’s dreams are free to express profound truths by means of archetypal symbols—extremely vivid, highly memorable images that have little or no relation to current waking life, but rather come from a collective realm of human psychological experience. According to Jung, the capacity for “big dreams” with archetypal symbolism is innate in every child.

Several other psychologists have helped us better understand the nature and possible functions of children’s dreams. For instance, Jean Piaget and David Foulkes both showed how children’s dreams have more cognitive structure and developmental regularity than either Freud’s or Jung’s theories would suggest. Many psychotherapists and educators, such as Denyse Beaudet, Alan Siegel, and Kate Adams, have found that dreams enable children to express feelings and ideas they cannot put into spoken language. Dreaming helps children process their daily experiences with their bodies, families, friends, school, and the broader culture. Perhaps most importantly, it gives them a totally free and private space in which their growing minds can play, explore, reflect, and exercise their creative imaginations.  For anyone involved in the care and education of children, dreams can be a powerful resource and valuable ally.

Practices for Talking with Children about Dreams

Here are four simple practices that can help you talk with children about their dreams.

  1. Listen respectfully, and ask open-ended questions. Show interest in every detail of the dream. When the child is ready to let the conversation drop, let it drop.
  2. Don’t “interpret” the dream in the sense of trying to translate it into a rational message. Rather than you leading the child out of the dream, encourage the child to lead you into it.
  3. Play with the dream, using whatever materials and methods are available: drawing or painting special images, enacting scenes with dolls and action figures, performing and dancing the movements of the dream, creating poems and songs. Don’t worry if the artistic process wanders from the original dream; this kind of playful creative flow is a version of what Jung has called “dreaming the dream onward.”
  4. Suggest the child think of other possible scenarios for future dreams. For example, if you had the same kind of dream again, would you do anything differently? Would you try to act differently, or look more closely at something? This does not necessarily mean trying to become lucid, although it can. At a deeper level, it’s a way of stimulating an ongoing dialogue between children’s dreams and their waking minds. With timely encouragement from caring adults, this dialogue can become a lifelong resource of insight and guidance.

 

Note: this post first appeared in Psychology Today, May 24, 2021.

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Christmas Dreaming

Dreams during the holidays bring happy memories, and recurrent anxieties.

The holiday season brings many anticipated pleasures, and many reasons for worry. Our dreams about Christmas express both happiness and anxiety, eagerly looking forward to the holiday but also expressing recurrent worries about every possible thing that could go wrong.

The Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb) includes 184 dream reports of 5+ words in length in which “Christmas” is mentioned at least once. Below are excerpts from a few of these dreams (identifying details have been removed). Without delving into the personal meanings of these dreams, we can still read them as fascinating commentaries from the unconscious on Christmas as a collective cultural experience.

Good times. The most positive Christmas dreams emphasize feelings of togetherness, play, and creativity.

“Dreamed about family Christmas time. Brought back happy memories of getting together with brother and sisters.”

“In my dream I was back home. It was Christmas break and my brother, his roommate and I were on a plane going home. When we got there, I went back to my high school and got to see all my friends again.”

“We were all in a hotel for Christmas. I don’t know why but it was a little sad. After a while, we walked outside and it began to snow. We all picked it up and had a snowball fight. It felt like a perfect day.”

“I dreamt that me and some other girl were singing in the living room to this Christmas music. We were trying to put “Away In a Manger” to a rap beat!”

“I was given a box with small parcels in it. I realized that this was a Christmas present. The dream became lucid and I thought, “This is a Christmas dream.” I was doing housework at the same time and noticed a bare Christmas tree in the house alongside a wall. I thought that it needed decorating before the party I would have that night.”

Misfortunes. Dreams also remind us of how very many things can go wrong during the holidays.

“My husband wants to plug in a string of Christmas lights that have a short circuit in them, or rather the switch in the wall does. The lights go on and off. I suggest he try another switch or plug.”

“I had a dream that it was Christmas Eve. My boyfriend and I arrived at my mother’s home in the afternoon and she wasn’t there, she didn’t show up till 5:30 because she was at the gym. This meant dinner wouldn’t be served till later than 8 which is when my boyfriend and I have to leave for a trip to his parents’ home. I was extremely irritated throughout the dream.”

“It was the night of my school’s Christmas pageant, and I was running late–very late. The pageant was supposed to start at 7:30, and I didn’t start dressing for it until 7:45. When I finally headed out the door, I was already a half hour late and I suddenly realized that I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got there.”

“I was out Christmas shopping in a huge crowd and I got lost and couldn’t find my way out of the store.”

“I was buying trying a Christmas present for a family member but wherever I went it was out of stock or they didn’t have it.”

“I’m going to a Christmas party at my boss’s house, and I manage to spill my coffee, complete with generous amounts of soymilk, all over her couch.”

Nightmares. The holidays can bring out deeper fears, too.

“As a child, and a few times as an adult, I had a recurring dream at Christmas time, initially happy, involving spinning Christmas trees with colored lights. The multiple trees begin to spin faster, then unite into a single, large tree, and come closer. The dream turns darker, and the tree begins to be threatening, a whirl of pine needles and colored lights. Eventually I get sucked into the tree, and wake up in a sweat. To this day I use only white lights on my Christmas trees.”

“I was about 5 years old, and it was Christmas Eve. I was lying in bed, in the top bunk, and when I looked over at the bedroom door, there was a skeleton standing there, with a red Santa hat on, and a bag slung over its shoulder, as if full of gifts.”

Visitations. The most poignant Christmas dreams recall loved ones we have lost, and whose presence we miss most at this time of year.

 “Last week I dreamed that my brother and I were wrapping Christmas gifts. He ran out of wrapping paper and asked if I had any. I didn’t think I had any left but miraculously pulled out a roll and handed it to him. Just as I did this I woke up. My brother died many years ago. He lived in another state and would visit for a week every Christmas. Every time he came he would wrap all his gifts in my wrapping paper which irritated me.”

“I dreamed that my mom (who is deceased) and I were going out to the stores and shopping for Christmas. I didn’t want to wake up, because if I did then she would be gone again. The dream seemed really real.”

“My grandmother passed away recently. My dream was about us baking cookies. I believe the dream comes from the many memories I have of us doing that at Christmas.”

Conclusion

These dream reports were provided mostly from American adults, most of whom are Christians. Given the universality of dreaming, we can predict that people who are members of non-Christian religious traditions also have dreams about their most sacred holiday celebrations, and these dreams also range across the emotional spectrum from happy anticipations to anxious nightmares.

Note: This post first appeared in Psychology Today, 12/14/20.

 

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A Panel Discussion of Dreams and OSF’s “Alice in Wonderland”

Before going to bed each night after a long day of rehearsals, the director of “Alice in Wonderland” wrote a letter, sealed it, and put it under her pillow. The letter was addressed to her theatrical hero, Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991), a revolutionary figure on the American stage whose adaptation of the Alice stories was first presented in the early 1930’s at the Civic Repertory Theater in New York City, which she founded with the mission of providing the highest-quality dramatic artistry for the widest possible audience.

The director, Sara Bruner, has for many years been one of the brightest creative lights at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in a variety of acting roles.  The Le Gallienne adaptation of “Alice” is her first major directing opportunity at OSF, and she devised this pre-sleep practice of writing pillow missives as a way to gently soothe and channel her anxieties before sleep.  She would write to Le Gallienne about the challenges of the day, the unique demands of the production, and her creative hopes for the future.

This was one of the many intriguing insights to emerge from the panel discussion held at the recent regional meeting of the International Association for the Study of Dreams in Ashland, Oregon, May 31 to June 2. The panel was on Sunday morning and feature an ideal line-up: Sara, the director; Emily Ota, the actor who performs as Alice; and Amrita Ramanan, the director of literary development and dramaturgy at OSF who helps Sara and the cast with the broader story-telling context of the “Alice” tales. Several people were curious about the role of the dramaturg in a theatrical production, and it was fascinating to hear Amrita describe the many ways in which she enhances the whole creative enterprise. It made me think of a dream studies analogy: at some level, a dramaturg enables what Jung called the process of amplification, helping the dreamer (or cast) recognize the concentric circles of biographical, cultural, historical, and mythological meanings surrounding the dream (or play), all as a way of enhancing its unique significance right now.

We did not record the session, alas, because we wanted to allow for more spontaneity in the discussion. (Passing microphones around in a small room is awkward, especially with professionals who are trained to project their natural voices.) But the panel certainly made it clear that the intersection of dreams and theater is a lively space for deep discussions about the nature of creativity, imagination, and the lived experience of an artistic life.

The panel was enhanced by Bernard Welt, a long-time IASD member and emeritus professor of Film and Humanities, who co-facilitated with me. Angel Morgan, the local host of the weekend gathering, also helped by asking great questions, as did Isaac Taitz, Stanley Krippner, and David Gordon.

In response to one of Isaac’s questions, everyone on the panel said they experience anxiety dreams about their work in the theater.  Emily even said she has found the appearance of such dreams to be an expected part of learning a new role: once she starts having nerve-wracking dreams about it, she knows the role has begun to sink in.

The panel also discussed at some length the stagecraft used to generate a sense of magical dreaminess in “Alice.” Without revealing any spoilers, I would say that Sara’s approach is deceptively brilliant, like a master class in the cognitive psychology of perception: it uses the simplest objects, shapes, and gestures to elicit in the audience a maximal response in their imaginations, prompting them to creatively join with the performers in (re-)telling a classic yet eternally new story.

This will not be the last such gathering to discuss dreams and theater with OSF artists. The annual conference of the IASD is scheduled for Ashland in 2021 (June 13-17), and there will likely be additional regional gatherings between now and then.  Think about coming to join us….