In lucid dreams it is rare, indeed virtually unknown for the dreamer to be identified with an apparently incorporeal point of view, or with anything which differs significantly from his normal waking physical body. That is to say, he or she seems to have a normal body which produces the various expected visual and other sensations. Typically, this body image appears to be the same as his or her normal waking one.

However, there are a few cases in which lucid dreamers have atypical or unrealistic body images. People may, for example, have lucid dreams in which they are different people or people of the opposite sex. The following is a dream reported by J. H. M. Whiteman in which he dreamed that he was a girl.

Awareness in separation began with the sight of a tree, about twenty feet away, in a pleasant natural scene. I moved a little nearer, so that the tree was on my left. The freshness of the air and the joy of being in a smaller and acceptable form again made me start dancing, with movements exhilarating in their freedom...

Still affected with the joy in nature, I lay down on the ground, vividly feeling the cool grass with my fingers and the firmness of the earth beneath. I began to be afraid of the mounting excitement, that it would pass beyond my control, and decided to stand up again. As I did so, I noticed vividly how different it was, getting up off the ground in my proper form, from what it would have been in my physical body, on account of the great differences in bodily form, the smaller height, and the proportionately wider hips. In spite of this being as it were, a strange discovery, the movement was completely natural to me, and wonderfully satisfying in its ease and grace.

The memory-impression of what the contrasting movements of my physical body would have been, on the other hand, seemed only an outer illusory and provisional covering to the reality I was experiencing.

EDITOR'S COMMENT

C. 300 of my dreams are fully lucid (of 40,000 total; just 0.75%); about 440 1.1%) are genderbent. If Celia Green, above, was right, I'd expect zero dreams that are both; if random, three or four. In fact, though, I found six; a positive correlation for me. I also found species-bent lucid dreams (a horse, a hobbit, a wolf, an indescribable mythical beast and a giant Amazonian beaver) plus unclassifiable ones (I'm three people at once; I'm an angry sea!), so my lucid dreams contradict Green's theory both genderwise AND over all.

Here's the first I found.

Pirate Drill

Dreamed 1979/8/29 by Wayan

I'm parked on a sea-cliff. I swing idly from my car door, watching as psychodrama actors set up a barbecue and party. Then they... fire a cannon into the sea! Not a ritual--they aimed! They're trying to sink that pirate ship out beyond the sea-stacks.

Zoom! A cannonball whizzes over us. What? A return volley? No... that was my friends' ball. I'm on the pirates' deck now! Well, pirate; see only one. But I'm female; I do NOT want to end up his slave--sexual or otherwise. I don't want to fight him, fear one or both of us will die. So I snatch up knives and a drill, and hide, and start drilling a hole in the hull. But the drill blunts, goes nowhere--too soft. It was only wood itself! Find another drill, a metal one. Well, not quite find--I have to create it by going lucid.

Then I pause. Do I really want to disrupt the dream? What's it trying to teach me?

I wake puzzled.

NOTES

• Hippies fire at a ship I find I'm on: hippies mock worker drones, but I just had to take a dull job--I need the money.
• Woman drilling wooden hull: pun on drill, as in practice? In my new job I'm in training--filing catalog cards in a wooden wall of trays.
• I'm female:
  1. Whiteman notes physical differences--is it his first genderbent dream? I have many genderbent dreams, so a female body's familiar and I take it for granted.
  2. The vast majority of my co-workers are female, and sexism lowers our wages. I share the disadvantage, so I'm female in the dream.
  3. My first three lucid genderbent dreams all have untrustworthy men--pirates, spies, thuggish drifters. Being female means vulnerable, not just underpaid.
• Fear rape, so I discreetly use just enough lucid magic to sabotage the boat, distracting the pirate: I frequently have minimalist or underhanded lucid dreams like this. Feel like taking charge is cheating, avoiding the dream-message.

--Chris Wayan

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