Dream a Little Dream of You

My dreams are like categorical video formats: there are dark, nebulous, vague dreams as if I were watching from another room, through a crack. There are dreams that arrive episodically, shifting scenes and characters and tonality as if I were punching a TV remote surfing channels. Then there is the feature film dream, widescreen, full color, stereo sound with a storyline and dialogue that, on waking, feels like a real-life experience.Freud built his career on his first and most famous book, The Interpretation of Dreams. He conceived of the unconscious as a secret self, coiled under the mantle of the conscious mind. When frustrated past memories become energized, they pierce into consciousness disguised in the form of defense mechanisms that Freud well elucidated. But the unconscious rules the dream world. Yet, as Freud explained, it speaks in symbols. A psychoanalyst is trained to decode these symbols and interpret their meaning back to the dreamer, eventually to repair those frustrated past memories.When it was discovered that dream phenomena are sparked randomly from various parts of the dream, Freud’s theory seemed to have collapsed. Even if by random selection, dream elements are assembled by the dreamer via the narrative process.Humans are inherently driven toward narrative comprehension. We cannot undergo an experience without framing it into some narration. Ancients did not stare dumbly at an eclipse and suffer a flood without finding a story to explain the experience. It is both our privilege and our doom.So dreams acquire the meaning we assign them. The power of our narrative capacity is evident in the cinematic quality that dresses dreams in the full essence of a private movie.My most recent dream is a clear example, and also an illustration of Freud’s view of dreams as expressing a wish fulfillment. The background to this dream is that during the day I had visited a friend who was recovering from weeks of hospitalization, many complications, a difficult surgery, and now appeared demented, though hopefully only temporarily.In my dream I visited him in a somewhat different hospital room. He was encased in an inflated series of balloon-like apparatus, something that seemed to be necessitated by his fragile state. But I was able to speak with him and he was completely lucid. The dream ended as I rushed off to tell the good news to his daughter.In olden times a prognosticator might interpret the dream as predicting my friend’s full cognitive recovery. A Freudian interpretation might seize upon the symbolic features: the inflated apparatus might be interpreted as penile erection, my friend’s lucid words as a fertile ejaculate, the incipient wish possibly being a desire to impregnate (or annihilate) the psychoanalyst.I tend to view the dream as merely the representation of hope; the inflated container as the curative care-taking that supports his recovery; and the lucid speech as proof that recovery is possible..

"Is there some neurophysiological necessity to dreaming?'

.Dreams such as this one have the added feature of stark realism. Waking from such a dream feels as though it actually happened. Other dreams have plot and characters and backgrounds but even while dreaming these seem like theater, as if I, the dreamer, knows all along that the dream is fictive. Such dreams may be fascinating, even terrifying, but they arrive labeled as mere dreams, the inventions of a mind asleep. One wakes from such dreams knowing, sometimes with relief, that the dream has ended, knowing it was all only a dream.The reality dreams, by contrast, take moments to be recognized as-non events, as just dreams. That truth can seem almost shocking. The disbelief takes a little toll.And why do we dream? Is there some neurophysiological necessity to dreaming? Sleep is a corporal requirement. Scientists think that sleep allows for the sorting and consolidation of memories as if some mental accountant is filing, cross-referencing, distributing, and clearing out dead memory space.Are dreams part of the working brain? Have they evolved as night-time entertainments? Do they function to prepare the dreamer for elements of remembrance? Are they, as Freud asserted, signposts to an unconscious store of memories we dare not ignore or forget?Dreams are the deep mystery that run through sleep, and there are many people who seem never to dream or never or recall them.Without dreams would sleep merely be a rehearsal for death?