THAT DAY

For four years now I've been having recurring flare-ups of a fever with night sweating and achy joints like flu. This year I joined a new health plan our city offers for low-income residents. But their appointment system is slow, so I always see my new doctor long after the latest flare-up has burned out. He's never seen me sick! So he figures I'm a hypochondriac, and wants me to see a psychiatrist in the system. Yet he won't even call the therapist I already see, who has seen attack after attack and can describe it. Shelley's a PhD not an MD, so her years of observations mean nothing!

Western medicine's never dealt well with chronic illness, so I shouldn't be insulted. But I am a bit--and wary too. The last MD psychiatrist I saw was a real mood-pill pusher--he told me openly that all he ever prescribed was antidepressants. Prozac, yeah, that'll fix recurring fever!

I spend the evening working at a friend's house on an art-website for her. She tells me a predictive dream she had. When I get home, two more dreams were emailed to the World Dream Bank. They were examples of dream ESP too! Feel like the world's reminding me western science refuses to look at a lot. Don't let an ignorant doctor get under your skin!

THAT NIGHT

I'm at the De Young Museum with a friend I like to flirt with. She tells me a strange, rather happy dream as we ride the elevator. Then the door opens... and Sigmund Freud steps in. The elevator dims like a theatre and her dream plays silently, holographically on the walls.

1. We're uncritical--unaware we're dreaming until we awake.
2. We dream only of ourselves, really; other characters are aspects of ourselves at root.
3. We dream to reconcile past conflicts evoked by present-day experiences
4. This reconciliation occurs only through pain--facing unpleasant truths--either in the dream or later in analysis."

1. "She wasn't lucid in this dream, but she had traces of awareness. And she's had lucid dreams, as have I. They're real. We're NOT always uncritical in dreams."
2. "You deny we can dream of others? Political and social dreams are impossible, then. But we shamans have them all the time--it's our job! Dream-suggestions for group projects, diagnostic dreams, dreams of public issues. And this is one--it's about her whole community, not just her!"
3. "You say we only dream of the past and its resonance in the present. You're ignoring dreams that consider the future! Yet I just got two more emails from dreamers troubled by predictive dreams. Dreams look ahead as often as back."
4. "Dreamwork's not all shock and pain. This dream was happy. Many dreams are. And more could be." I don't add aloud that I think this pain comes from neglecting, even crippling, our inner lives--from over-respecting Freud's reality principle. Quit hurting yourself, and dreamwork won't hurt. Even if the world hurts you, you can take that in stride.

NOTES

• Is this a real dream? Yes. I know it reads like a made-up dream but it's not. I've been studying early dream researchers, and their crazy theories seem to both amuse and annoy dream-me as much as waking-me. I had a whole night of dreams playing with Havelock Ellis's dream-theories. And tonight, my dream of Freud analyzing dreams is really a dream analyzing Freud!
• My sexy friend looked like Louisa the teacher on the BBC show Doc Martin. I think she stands for a well-balanced psyche (in contrast to Martin, who's as rigid and arrogant as Freud)
• Psychologist viewing holographic projections on darkened walls: when I was a kid, Asimov's Foundation books made a big impression on me. The psychologists who secretly steered Galactic history studied their master plan by projecting its equations holographically in a darkened room. Asimov's image of psychiatric megalomania (and its clever pun around "projection") isn't far-fetched; remember Freud claimed to grasp dreams' real meanings better than the dreamer! The Foundation reference warns me to be skeptical of our city health program's psychiatric evaluators.
• Her dream challenges Freud: the real Freud didn't dismiss dream ESP totally (he saw too much of it in clinical practice) but in public he hedged, wanting to appear scientific; one reason Jung split with him.
• ACTION: Well, I'm already challenging mainstream science's skepticism about ESP by simply collecting hundreds of apparently psychic dreams and posting them. Why not test the Freudian claim that our dreams largely concern the past not the present or future? Hmm... is there an objective way to measure this that doesn't involve Freud's projections of symbolism, that sticks to actual dream-events? Well, how many of my dreams are literally about the past versus the future? Why now count my dreams on the World Dream Bank that depict the past or future (over 100) and see which predominates?

OK, I just did a rough sort. Dreams of the future outnumbered the past nearly 2:1! That's just me, of course, and Freud would surely claim to find symbols of childhood issues in them. He might even be right. But symbolism is open to interpretation (projection!), while dreams explicitly about the future can't be interpreted away. They show some people's dreams are more forward-looking than back.

So how about you?

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