Dreaming, like the reason for people's appreciation of music, is
one of the deeper mysteries of the human condition. We all dream, several times
every night apparently, but it is usually only the dream we are having shortly
before we wake that we remember and even then usually only for a few moments.
We spend a huge segment of our lives wrapped up in often the most bizarre
fantasies and yet this night-time carnival, this nocturnal phantasamagoria, is
something which, for the most part, simply evanesces away before we even rise
from bed. What purpose does it serve? Why dream?
The study of dreams is known as oneirology. I am no expert
on it – although I have read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and feel I at least have a layman’s understanding of
some of the theories about dreaming. I have myself extraordinarily vivid dreams with high frequency. Last
night, for instance, I dreamed I was brainstorming ideas with other writers for
a sitcom – a fairly uncomplicated and pleasant dream for a change. Usually I
have nightmares, either something as simple as an acquaintance’s severed head
known floating into my house through the door or extremely dense complex
narratives involving zombies and vampires and earthquakes. I take an interest
in other people’s dreams and have found that some kinds of dreams are fairly common. Being
forced to resit a difficult high school exam is a dream many people have had,
as is the dream of making a presentation naked to a crowded room. Dreams of
flight are fairly common, a dream Freud interpreted as being about sex (no
surprise there). Kurt Cobain apparently used to dream that someone was trying
to break into his house and I met a chap recently who had a recurring dream
that Tom Jones was stalking around his property trying to find a way in. The
commonality of some dreams evinces the universality of human experience.
A dream of my
own… When I was living in Dunedin immediately after leaving school, some
fifteen years ago, I dreamt that I was in some American ghetto neighbourhood.
Sirens and the presence of fire-trucks indicated that some major disaster or
catastrophe had unfolded. A fireman presented a saucer on which floated a
fragment, only a fragment, of a face belonging to a close friend of mine. This
fragment said, “Andrew- I can’t feel my legs!” The dream was so awful that I
decided that I could only be having a nightmare. Remembering, in the dream,
that dreamers don’t feel pain, I pinched myself. I felt no pain, knew I was
dreaming and forced myself to wake up.
The modern voguish theory of dreaming is that it is the
brain’s way of processing, selecting and sorting the day’s memories,
transferring salient ones from short-term to long-term storage. I think this
theory is bullshit. Although there is apparently some statistical evidence that
most dreamers supposedly tend to dream about their experiences of the previous
day, my own dreams are far too bizarre to fit this theory at all. Generally my
dreams relate to my preoccupations, not to the previous day’s experiences.
Freud’s theory of dreaming, by contrast, is that it is fundamentally concerned
with wish-fulfilment. Dreams manifest desires that we cannot avow or
acknowledge, even to ourselves, and so we conceal them behind metaphors and
metonyms, employing compression and displacement to protect the conscious ego
from the wild cravings of the subconscious id. I believe Freud is right in
suggesting that dreams are coded communications to be deciphered but wrong in
suggesting that they are all about repressed desire. Dreams also manifest anxieties
and fears – perhaps nightmares sometimes have a cathartic function. We rehearse
the worst in sleep so that, when we wake, we are prepared for it. If I dream
that a loved one has died, is it reasonable to suppose that I truly secretly
want that person dead? In fact, I believe Freud’s theory not only to be wrong
but dangerous. If we interpret a nightmare as expressing a repressed desire, it
may lead us to a faulty conclusion about who we are.
Another dream of my own… About seven years ago I dreamt that
I was in a subterranean chamber. Flickering red firelight played hellishly
across the walls. In the room with me sat George W. Bush (then still POTUS) and
John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I was intimidated to be in the
same room as them. Bush said to me, “We try to keep our club quite… exclusive.”
As I said, being addressed by the American president was something I found
quite intimidating, and I remember, in the dream, Key turning to Bush as if to
say, “See? I’m not the only one intimidated.” I left the chamber and, in an
antechamber, found myself in a circle with Nicholas Cage, Tim Robbins and a third, a
slight shadowy figure that I couldn’t identify. They gave me a communion wafer
which I put in my mouth – immediately I felt as though I had been stuck in the
mouth by a lightning bolt. Tim Robbins said to me, “How do you like that acid?”
The ancient Greeks apparently believed that dreams were
messages from the Gods or from dead relatives. Flaky hippies often espouse the
idea that dreams are a form of astral travel. Perhaps dreams can foretell the
future as well as refer to the past. For example, in the dream I just
described, I believe that the shadowy figure was Jon Stewart, someone I didn’t
and couldn’t identify at the time because I dreamt the dream before the Daily
Show had even started screening in New Zealand, but someone who was to become
extremely important to me later in life (for reasons too bizarre to explain in
this blog.) I have had dreams that foreshadowed future events and other dreams
that were almost revelatory. Dreams do not just tell us about ourselves; they
tell us about the world we are living in. Perhaps, in sleep, we are plugged
into the universal unconscious and, in sleep, we lose ourselves in the
world-soul.
I wish I could offer a good theory of dreams. I feel I have worked out a good theory
of narrative and even a partial theory of music but a good theory of dreams
eludes me. Perhaps there is no single theory that explains dreams – some dreams
are explained best by Freudian psychoanlysis, others by modern neurocognitive
approaches, others by more mystical interpretations. Perhaps the error we make is in
looking for a single catchall explanation. Perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps… But
it is both important and therapeutic to make the enquiry.
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