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Detecting Dreams and Nightmares
Sub-feature analysis plus dream interpretation
Illustrations by Suzanna Hart & Robert Krajenke
From "Dream Decoding: Structural Clues
Beneath Obvious Imagery." Paper presented at Theoretical Topics Symposium,
22nd Annual IASD Conference, Berkeley, CA. (2005) |
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The side of a dream that produces a literal presentation is the
side where, as Freud said, a cigar is actually a cigar. The dream copies
a photo of physical existence that stands for itself. A literal object from
the material world may present itself complete and whole, so that we recognize
and label it just as we would in waking life. However, it's far more likely
that the dream will select certain sub-features to reproduce exactly, while
allowing other to morph creatively. Sub-features show up so frequently in
lab and field research that I have given them the name Consistent Clues.
Consistent Clues aren't the full literal object or event; they are
bits and pieces of the whole. Because they are piecemeal, they may not show
up as words written in an average dream report. Substructural elements on
the literal side of the chart include the shape, size and color of form,
the direction of movement, the intensity of lighting and the number, type
and positions of dream characters.
However, not every phase of life can be captured by a video camera. Besides
the obvious life as we walk around in the visual world, there's also the
hidden life we live as we respond to physical reality: our thoughts, feelings,
emotions, sensations and all those subtle senses with, as yet, no names.
There's the inner life of the body: the churning of our stomachs, the glitches
of our brains. We live an imaginal life, daydreaming, musing and creating
scenarios that are unrelated to current events. We live a psychic life,
picking up information at a distance in time and space. Any of these levels
of living may impact our dreams. The dream converts unseen stimulus into
an analogous prepresentation. |
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Dream Examples
All 3 of these dream examples incorporate a sense of overwhelm. While
that component is the same, its trigger varies from bodily sensation to
emotional reaction to a felt sense of tremendous size.
The Green Slime
Consistent Clues: Shape, Tactile Sensation, Color, Direction
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A phosphorescent green blob pulses and seethes menacingly. It is a single
spot of color and light emerging from the dark mist of the basement. It
begins to grow. I race for the stairs and the house above. On the first
floor, my children join me and together we run outdoors. "Hurry! In
the car!" I tell them. "Get away! Get away!"
The blob overflows into the house. It spills out into the street. I take
a wrong turn and drive the car up a dead end road. "Quick! Turn around!"
I think to myself. Will there be enough time to backtrack before the blob
blocks our exit? I push the accelerator to the floor and head directly back
into the blob's path. The tires skid in the dirt just inches from the blob.
For a heart-stopping moment, I think we will be stuck next to the growing
threat. Then, miraculously, we are off again, heading down the road to warn
the townspeople.
As the dream draws to a close, a loud voice overdubs the scene. The stern
voice admonishes, "Don't let the green slime reproduce its own kind!" |
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This nightmare occurred when I was in the midst of a tremendous flu and
head cold, surrounded by wads of used Kleenex and feeling sorry for myself.
It remains a favorite to this day because of the creative story-telling
devices used to relay the message, and most of all for the chuckle it gives
me.
I borrowed the main character from science fiction and fantasy: cult
classics like The Blob, X the Unknown and the Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes horror movies that feature something shapeless and squishy.
For anyone who has had a head cold, I don't need to tell you where the color
green comes from. Up from the basement of the sinuses and out of your body-house.
These are the sub-features of the dream report. Most of these sub-features
are fairly obvious. They are literal labels that appear in the text. Others
are implied in the narrative. But the literal waking event, a head cold,
is not part of the dream report.
The Consistent Clues are detecting elements, not symbolic interpretation.
They alert us to the sub-features of elements found in waking life. However,
they really don't "click" to reveal a conceptual connection until
we know where the stimulus for the dream originated.
My symbolic interpretation is dependent on me first knowing that stimulus,
the context of my life: in bed with influenza. At the time, my children
were quite young and constantly at my bedside. "Where's my jacket,
mom?" "Victor won't let me see Sesame Street, Mom!" The potential
for them catching my flu was very real. So I interpret that the dream
advice was right on: "Don't let the green slime reproduce its own kind!"
Don't spread your cold, or you'll be endangering your children and the world
at large. When I woke up, I gathered the Kleenexes and placed them out of
harm's way. This physical action was also an affirmation of my determination
to get well. |
The Paper Monster
Consistent Clues: Shape, Personification
Wandering through alleys, past buildings, I'm looking for a warehouse.
I come to a corner, stop, look both ways. Which way should I go? Ah, there's
a telephone booth at the corner, so I walk over and call for directions.
A female voice answers.
After leaving the booth, I walk left down the street to what looks like
the entrance to a subway. Through the glass door, down a staircase, I go,
passing a dark-haired man coming up the stairs. I hurry past tables being
set for a group of men into the kitchen. When I don't find what I'm searching
for there, I come back past the tables and down more stairs.
Just as I reach the landing, a monster looms up and attacks me. Twice,
he comes directly at me. His face looks like the wadded paper rolls off
my adding machine. I fight him off easily, pushing him away from my face,
and leave him behind. |
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This dream occurred when, as a business manager, I was working at home
and in touch with my office by telephone. It was the end of the fiscal year
and I had four different budgets to balance. To get them to coordinate,
I had to go back and forth between them many times. This activity generated
so much adding machine tape that my wastepaper basket was overflowing.
I thought the dream was so accurate, that, when I returned to work, I
told it to my boss, upon which he provided his own interpretation. He looked
at me rather quizzically and asked, "Are you trying to tell me you
want a vacation?"
Now, if you didn't know the context of my life, could you tell what's
important about this dream and what isn't? It's my experience that the only
way to unlock the significance of a dream is to reveal the dreamer and the
dreamer's inner and outer environment. There actually were several literal
elements from my day including the telephone, the adding machine tape and
the stairway landing.
The underlying conceptual structure of the dream is difficulties with
paper and people, especially on a stairway. Now, my workplace had no stairways.
It was all on one floor. But my house has two floors. I had to go up and
down the stairs to get supplies. It took awhile, but I finally recalled
that, during the day, I'd had a minor disagreement with my husband, Manny,
on the landing. All in all, I interpret this dream to be about the
emotional pros and cons of working at home.
The budget calculations and my husband: the two were combined using the
Consistent Clue, "shape" as the basic sub-feature (shape
of paper; shape of my husband). It was conceptually elaborated to create
a personification of my double struggles. The dissension on the landing
was "paper-thin" - a dispute with minimal significance. |
The Alien Mothership
Consistent Clues: Shape, Size, Direction, Color, Feeling, Pun
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I am traveling through space in a solo spaceship. My husband Manny accompanies
me in another, similarly shaped craft. We are both engulfed by a huge, alien
mothership. Then we are separated: me to live with the women, he to live
with the men.
He comes back to locate me. I see him at a distance suddenly turn tail
and think he is avoiding being seen, because he is violating the rules of
the place. I follow him through winding corridors until I come to what I
think is his room.
When I enter, he's not present, so I look around to see if there's anything
of his that I can recognize: perhaps a piece of paper with his handwriting.
Instead, I find an artsy-craftsy rectangle, which I assume belongs to him,
because he is an artist. The rectangle seems to be made of broken pieces
of glass embedded in grey grout.
Eventually, we discover that a smaller spacecraft is berthed inside the
mothership. It has the power to free us from the trap. |
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When I pictured the dream in my mind's eye, I became aware that the dream
involved a small rectangular form, a sense of enclosure in a large space,
a specific route that I had taken through that space, and a pervading sense
of strangeness.
The first key to unlocking the mystery was the fact that I was traveling
with my husband, not alone. The second key was the prop in my husband's
"room," that rectangle of gray. It was small enough for me to
hold in the palm of my hand. Now where had the two of us been when I picked
up such an object?
The term "mothership" is sci fi jargon. It means a large conveyance
that can house smaller spaceships, or at least serve as a place to dock.
A depot, in other words. The word "mothership" turned out to be
a pun from waking life.
A couple days before, Manny and I had gone to the Home Depot.
This home improvement center is a warehouse 2-3 stories high. The shelving
looms upwards towards the ceiling and makes it seem quite impressive. In
the course of our wanderings we separated, then came together again at the
checkout stand. I had gone back to pick up rectangular samples of Formica...we
had been looking at various types of bathroom counters, including some made
with tile cemented into gray grout.
But why convert this excursion into an alien space fantasy? Simple. The
night before the dream, Manny returned from yet another trip to Home Depot.
He exclaimed, "I really like that store, but the people are weird!"
I had avoided the checkout stand because customers were arguing with
the cashier. Manny stood patiently in line with a shopping cart and eventually
got through and outside the store. We both eluded the trap.
Summary
These have been examples of dreams that relate to events that a video
camera could record. Although dreams can contain elements that are exact
clones, many parallel waking life only in terms of their sub-features. These
can become more obvious if we draw a dream instead of talk about it. Or
learn to picture the dream in the mind's eye, while being alert to its underlying
sensory structures.
But you've probably had dreams that relate entirely to internal events:
thoughts or feelings that have nothing to do with the outer world. To detect
them is much harder, but not impossible. My suggestion is to first use Consistent
Clues to detect dreams that relate to the outer world. That way you'll
begin to get an intuitive sense of how your own unique dreaming mind works:
the sorts of patterns, puns and personifications that your dreaming mind
is apt to use. Then, during the day, pay closer attention to your inner
responses to outer events. Also recall what daydreams have floated through
your mind, especially those just before sleep. Be alert to what you watch
on television, too. To aficionados of story and myth, to dreamers with creative
imaginations, many so-called "bizarre" elements of dreams aren't.
They are direct imports from the playgrounds of the mind occupied during
the day. |
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