Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast
from the American Psychological Association.
I'm your host Kaitlin Luna.
Our guest for this episode is Dr. Deirdre
Barrett, a psychologist and scholar of dreams
who's on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's
Behavioral Medicine Program.
She's the editor of the journal Dreaming and
has written several books on the topic including
the Committee of Sleep.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Barrett.
Hi, nice to be here.
So dreams are always a fascinating topic.
We all dream but many people don't remember
them or don't really know what to do with
their dreams and you, as a scholar of dreams,
know all about dreams and are even a past
president of the International Association
for the Study of Dreams.
So I'll start off with, I think, a simple
question with probably a long answer but why
do we dream?
Well it's not a simple question it's probably
the one where you'd get the most disagreement
among dream psychologists.
Personally I think that we have rapid eye
movement sleep which is the stage in which
most dreams occur along with all mammals for
a lot of reasons many of which are very biological
that certain neurotransmitters are being replenished
in the brain during that stage of sleep that
that there's some very physical body reasons
for REM that we share with all mammals.
But I think evolution isn't that simple and
when something's been around since the dawn
of mammals it tends to have function upon
function layered on top of it and I think
for humans there's a lot of problem-solving
that goes on in that state but that's my answer
and you would get everywhere from you know
it has no function, to you know dreams are
sort of our wiser self speaking to us from
other dream psychologists.
But that's my that's my concept of it.
Yeah I mean I've always thought of it as sort
of like it's telling you something, you know
your dreams are trying to you tell you something
you have been avoiding or something you might
not realize what's going on because it's really
you are unconscious so I've always wondered
if it's really your sort of true self coming
out so I'm probably maybe in that camp just
as a lay person just being interested in the
study of dreams.
Yeah I mean I like to say it's just it's our
brain thinking in a different biochemical
state and I don't buy into the perspective
that there's one book called Dreams are Wiser
than Men, I don't think that what our dream
dreaming mind is thinking about an issue is
always the correct one or wiser than our waking
one, I think the benefit of dreams lie in
just what a different biochemical state it
is so if we're kind of stuck in our usual
everyday rational thinking, dreams may make
an end run around that and show us something
very different.
But if you had to operate off one or the other
I think our waking mind is probably giving
us you know more good advice than our dreaming
one, but the dream is a great supplement.
Absolutely and can you explain a bit about
what the International Association for the
Study of Dreams does?
It's a nonprofit organization whose mission
is just to disseminate information about dreams
and that's everything from the most basic
education about things that have been known
about dreams for a long time to the general
public and even to children on to disseminating
the latest research between professionals
in the field.
The ISD has one international conference a
year, it has some online virtual conferences,
it has some regional conferences and it has
two publications.
I edit the journal Dreaming which ISD oversees
the content, but APA is our publisher and
that is an academic journal for professionals
in the field.
But ISD also has another publication called
Dream Time which is a magazine which is much
more informal discussion of dreams that the
general public can enjoy.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
Until I was researching this topic I didn't
know there was such an association.
Yeah, it's a great group.
I recommend its website and for anyone that
can get there its conferences are great and
unlike many organizations it's a combination
of professionals and not professionals so
at the conference more than half the presenters
and about half the attendees are some kind
of professional in the field but there are
lots of people who are just extremely dream
interested who choose to come to the conference.
Interesting maybe I'll end up there one day.
So, you know, there's those common dreams
that I think you know you read about see in
television and movies and people talk about
like being in a public place naked or having
your teeth fall out or being chased.
So why do different people have similar dreams.
I've always found that that question really
interesting, like why would I have the same
dream as some random person from a you know
different walk of life and has there been
research into those common themes?
Well there's some research just on how frequently
they occur and that does demonstrate that
a few of those themes including the ones you
rattled off do occur pretty frequently to
people of different ages and around the world.
Some are more universal than others and it
tends to go with whether the metaphor they
seem to be representing is universal.
Clearly all cultures have some norms about
what parts of your body you're supposed to
cover and not even if it's you know a tiny
thong just covering your genitals in one culture
and bailing you know from head to toe in another
one, there's still a how much of your body
do you show and shame around showing more
than you're supposed to be.
So that the naked in public one seems to be
quite universal and I'll say more a bit later
about this, but we certainly don't think that
you should ever just say one dream theme means
exactly the same thing for anyone that dreams
it.
There's always an individual element.
But there's some things like naked in public
that are much likelier to be representing
social shame, social anxieties you know just
the common-sense metaphor about being exposed
in some uncomfortable way is usually what
that dream is about for most of the people
having it.
Then there are other common themes that are
a little more cultural bound like most Western
societies with our kind of schooling many,
many people in the culture have recurring
dreams about tests going wrong, you've overslept,
you've missed the test, you aren't figuring
out what the classroom is, you're late, you
can't find the classroom, you get into the
exam you realize you studied the wrong subject
for it, the exam is in hieroglyphics, they're
just all kinds of variations.
But somehow you are you know about to mess
up a test.
And we see that in in Western schooling type
cultures all the time, but you don't see that
in hunter-gatherer tribes where, you know,
learning to get out there and do adult tasks
in some sort of, you know, more intern like
way is the way that they're educated and test
obviously they don't have sit-down exam dreams.
And even in our culture people who decide
to be want to be actors or musicians from
an early age, they'll have a variation that's
the audition dream.
They're not sitting down to take an exam but
they're showing up with their musical instrument
and they realize they've studied the wrong
piece of music or they can't find the audition
hall so there's some variation even in those
standard ones but there's something to the
idea that there's some universal, very frequent
dreams meaning something similar for most
people who have them.
And those feelings behind those dreams could
be, like you said, maybe some sort of shame
or some sort of anxiety about what's going
to happen to be tested in some way that sort
of thing.
So they're common feelings that underlie them.
Well yeah, different shades for different
ones but just in line with what otherwise
are common metaphors you know if you "feel
exposed" or "feel naked", that's usually more
of a shame social disapproval.
If you're being tested, you know that's more
of an authority figure is evaluating you sort
of are you measuring up you know to society
in general or in authority?
So most of the recurring themes dreams are
anxiety dreams but whether it's about sort
of being competent versus being socially appropriate
those tend to be represented by different
specific things.
I've heard that that some people say that
dreams don't mean anything at all that they're
just random impulses from your brain when
you're sleeping or perhaps just, you know,
consolidating memories, that sort of thing,
and that there's no deeper emotional meaning
behind them.
But, you know, many people do believe dreams
are important, that they help problem-solve,
perhaps find inspiration which I'll ask about
in a few minutes, but what does the psychological
research say about the importance of dreams
and do we know what would happen if we didn't
dream?
Well let me answer the first part first, it's
a little simpler.
There is some research, there's a limit to
how much you can deprive people of REM sleep
and it does have to be depriving of REM sleep,
not quite all dreams happen in REM sleep and
one of the things that you see if you deprive
people of REM sleep is that you begin to get
more reports that sound like full-fledged
dream narratives out of other stages of sleep.
A few of those happen anyway but it's like
there's some pressure to dream that if you
don't let it happen in rapid eye movement
sleep it begins to happen in other stages
of sleep.
And then in the extreme, in some of the experiments
people seemed to hallucinate awake a little
bit.
So there's certainly a pressure to dream that
can sort of break out of REM not that it's
always totally confined there.
But the other thing is if you're REM depriving
people you see deficits in certain things
or it doesn't even have to be REM deprivation,
but you can do an experiment where the same
amount of time passes between exposure to
a task and retrying it and people either do
or don't get a REM episode in there.
And from those experiments it looks like other
stages of sleep have more to do with consolidating
some simple straightforward kinds of memory
and that rapid eye movement sleep is consolidating
and learning more emotionally-tinged memories
and certain kinds of problem-solving that
that require some abstract generalization,
from answers to single cases and beginning
to see a pattern across them, that people
that get a REM period in between exposure
to certain problem-solving tasks do better.
So that's REM sleep and that's not talking
about the dream content but we definitely,
in dream content we sometimes see very overt
problem-solving pop up somebody doesn't know
the answer to a question until they have a
dream that shows them the solution so REM
is doing something with that biologically
whether you're remembering dream content with
it or not but again layered on top of REM
for human beings dreams seem to be the about
the problems and issues we've just been exposed
to and sometimes solving them.
Speaking about what you just mentioned about
how people use them to problem-solve or get
inspiration and you wrote about in your book,
The Committee of Sleep, about some stories
from famous artists and inventors like Paul
McCartney, Salvador Dali and the inventor
of the sewing machine how they received inspiration
from their dreams which produced beautiful
works of art and practical tools like the
sewing machine.
Can you explain how we use dreams to problem-solve
and to find inspiration?
Yes, I mean there are two aspects of that.
One is that it simply happens spontaneously
a fair bit that people who are stuck on a
problem will have a breakthrough dream and
that was true in the case of the sewing machine
inventor that that dream came out of nowhere
without his asking for it in any particular
way and showed him how to make the sewing
machine.
And two kinds of problems are likelier to
get solved spontaneously in dreams.
One is anything that's a very visual-spatial
because dreams are so visual we can see things
in a hallucinatory way in front of us so the
first computer-controlled anti-aircraft gun
was dreamed, the sewing machine was dreamed,
the structure of the benzene molecule was
dreamed and all of those seemed to be cases
where being able to see the thing very much
more clearly than you could just do visual
imagination awake was a helpful part of it.
The other big cluster of solved-by dreams
are where you're stuck because the conventional
wisdom is wrong.
The benzene molecule is an example of both.
Kekule knew what the atoms in benzene were
but at that time all known molecules were
some kind of straight line with a side chain
and so he was trying to arrange the atoms
in a straight line in some way that made sense
and explained the chemical properties and
that wasn't working and he fell asleep and
dreamed of molecules dancing in front of his
eyes forming, he said snakes, but they were
straight lines of molecules and eventually
one of the snakes made of atoms reached around
and took its tail in its mouth and he woke
up realizing that benzene was a closed ring.
But all chemists would have been approaching
it to make it some kind of straight line.
So dreaming just bypasses that conventional
wisdom, "It has to be done this way, it has
to be done this way" and shows more possibilities.
So very visual problems or problems where
you need to think outside the box are likely
to get help from dreams.
But then the other aspect is that although
these happen spontaneously if people are trying
to focus their dreams on a particular topic,
we tend to call it dream incubation in psychology,
to say tonight I want to dream the answer
to a particular problem or I just want to
dream on this particular topic you're much
likelier to have a dream on that topic or
even an answer to the problem than if you
weren't doing that as a self-suggestion at
bedtime.
So everybody tends to get some help and inspiration
and good advice from their dreams, but you
can you can get more by asking your dreams
to focus on particular topics.
Yeah that's really interesting and I'm gonna
to just touch on that well we're there so
if you want to remember your dream better
and you want to be able to have a dream journal
and use it for those that problem-solving
like I said because sometimes people say,
"Oh I dream but I don't remember it", what
tips do you have for that?
So for someone to remember their dream better
and then how to do a dream journal.
OK, well the first tip is the most banal but
it's really the most important: Get more sleep
than the average American does.
If you get eight hours of sleep a night, you'll
remember a lot more dreams than if you're
getting less than that.
And it's not, we enter rapid eye movement
sleep about every 90 minutes through the night
but each REM period is getting longer so the
first one is just a few minutes whereas the
last one can be getting closer to half an
hour in length so if you sleep four hours
instead of eight, you're not getting half
your dream time, you're getting twenty percent
or less of your dream time when you truncate
your sleep because the dreams are coming every
90 minutes but they're getting much longer
through the night.
So getting enough sleep is extremely important
that's the simplest [unintelligible] with
high and low dream recall.
But other things are the intent.
I mean often people that are taking class
on dreams or reading a book on dreams it will
become more relevant they'll remember more
dreams in fact people listening to today's
podcast are likelier to remember a dream tonight
just by virtue doing that than otherwise,
but you can increase that with again a dream
incubation like I was talking about for problem
solving but just focused on recall.
If you're just telling yourself as you fall
asleep, "I want to remember my dreams tonight,
I want to remember my dreams tonight", that
increases the likelihood and then as you already
alluded to keeping some sort of dream journal.
What you do in the morning is just as important.
First of all aside from the journal, it's
better to wake up naturally than to an alarm
clock but you know I know everyone can't do
that.
Whichever way you wake up, if you lie there
for a moment and try to think about nothing
other than your dream if you already recall
it, if you're not gonna write it down or tell
it to a recorder, at least rehearse it in
your mind.
But if you don't recall a dream when you first
wake up just lie there and see what content
at all is there in your mind.
Like, did you wake up kind of thinking about
your brother, did you wake up feeling a little
sad because sometimes if you just stay focused
on that hint of content, a dream will come
rushing back, "Oh yeah I was thinking about
my brother because I dreamed that he did this"
or "I was sad because this dream that just
happened."
So dream memory is very fragile and sometimes
it's hovering there as you first wake up so
don't do anything else first before focusing
on the dream.
And secondly recording it is nice to have
the record but also tends to fix it in your
mind even if you're not referring back to
the dream journal that much so some people
still prefer to hand write things in beautiful
leather-bound journals, have a sort of a nice
association for some people, or if your laptop's
next to your bed you can reach for it and
type, but I know that a lot of people are
using their smartphones.
There are all sorts of apps.
Dreams Cloud is one of them, Dream Scope,
that have apps where you generally you can
set your alarm on the app, make that your
alarm in lieu of the other one and they have
all sorts of gentler tones to wake you up
or even a voice saying, "What were you dreaming?"
as the first thing you're going to hear and
then your phone is already set to if you speak
in response to the alarm or the voice saying,
"What were you dreaming?", it's automatically
going to record without you're having to reach
over and activate it or anything.
So those are some of the easiest you know
and then they all do speech to text, so you
have an account of it so a lot of the people
I know these days, I still type mine out,
but most of my students use an app on their
phones.
It's interesting using technology for our
dreams.
I noticed that I usually will like have to
do the hovering where I kind of like [ask
myself] "What did I dream?" and then I'll
recall it and then I can sort of get it firmly
planted in my memory and then I'll write it
down when I get the chance.
I've been known to do that on the Metro on
the way to work.
Sitting furiously writing in my journal, the
notebook I have.
Just rehearsing it in your mind, I mean, especially
like in the middle of the night if you don't
want to disturb a bed partner by speaking
your dream or something, if you just kind
of run through it in your mind that tends
to fix it into long-term memory because otherwise
so many people recall waking up from a dream
in the middle of the night and going, "Oh
wow that was such a weird dream" and that's
all they remember about it or even "I don't
need to write this one down I'm certainly
going to remember this one."
Even without writing it down, if you play
it through that kind of gets it from short-term
to long-term memory.
Going back to the content of dreams why do
some people have recurring dreams and what
do we know about what reoccurring dreams mean.
Recurring dreams are usually thought to be
themes that are more important for that person.
Freud talked about day residue and it's one
of his concepts that's still taken quite seriously
the idea that things that happen in the preceding
18 hours are much likelier to show up in your
dream than sort of other random previous days.
And so lots of lots of dreams are about very
recent events and they may be one-time concerns
about things that just happened that day and
they're still worth interpreting but they're
gonna be about a very specific current sort
of issue.
Whereas if a dream occurs over and over it
may be activated by events of a particular
day, it may make a long-term issue more salient
but it's certainly going to be about something
that's a kind of long-term character logic
issue for that person.
So in general we think of recurring dreams
as somewhat more important if you only have
time to analyze a few dreams, your recurring
dreams would be ones to target.
And often people talk about having nightmares
or violent dreams and I've spoken to friends
and you know, myself included, we've had those
kinds of scary dreams.
So what do those dreams mean and what do you
do if you have violent dreams or nightmares
often?
Well they're two very different kinds.
One is the metaphoric, they're scary but otherwise
the content seems much like other dreams it's
fairly metaphoric witches chasing you down
a hall in an old building or something.
And children have more of those kind of garden-variety
metaphor nightmares than adults, they tend
to decrease with age but almost everyone has
a few of those.
Versus post-traumatic nightmares where you've
suffered one or more extremely violent, terrifying
waking life events and in post-traumatic nightmares,
the event tends to unfold very much like it
did awake.
Some people it replays exactly like they were
in a video of the episode of getting raped
or being in this battlefield or house burning
down around them over and over and over exactly
like it happened.
Or more commonly it's pretty close to how
it happened but it's either got a bit of bizarre
dream distortion but not as much as most dreams
or often the post traumatic nightmares go
one step further like somebody was holding
a gun to someone's head and threatening to
pull the trigger in real life and they actually
do pull the trigger like the dream goes one
step further.
Whatever was most feared about to happen actually
happens.
So garden-variety nightmares there they're
just normal to a certain extent and some people
who have them don't particularly mind them.
I've heard a lot of people either say that
it's kinda like horror films that you know
there's a kind of adrenaline rush and they
kind of enjoy their nightmares and I've heard
other people who say they don't enjoy them,
but they feel like they learn something like
it's always pointing out to them things they're
anxious about that they hadn't thought of.
So many people who have nightmares of that
kind of garden variety type don't particularly
want them to go away and I think that interpreting
them just like you would other dreams thinking
about you know what in my waking life you
know feels like that feeling in the pit of
my stomach when the witch is chasing me down
the hall is you know the way to deal with
those.
But post-traumatic nightmares just retraumatize
people it's like having the horrible event
happening again night after night after night
so that it never recedes into the past and
everyone who has post-traumatic nightmares
hates having them nobody likes those and I
think that it's also not a mystery, you know,
if you were raped and you're dreaming about
a rape or your house burned down and you're
dreaming about flames every night there's
not a "Gee, why are you dreaming that" like
there is about the witch so there are techniques
that can make people stop having post-traumatic
nightmares that involve, you can coach people
to just wake up if they start, but it seems
to be even more effective to have people come
up with an alternate scenario, a kind of mastery
dream.
If the nightmare starts again how would you
like it to come out differently and psychologists
kind of happened on to this technique because
it happens occasionally, spontaneously people
have had a nightmare over and over and over
about a real event all of a sudden will have
this dream where someone comes and rescues
them or they do fight off the attacker or
in a very dreamlike magical way the whole
trauma is swept away and they wake up feeling
so much better.
And so we found that some people in PTSD groups
would hear somebody say, "Oh I used to have
a nightmare until one night I had this other
wonderful dream" and just hearing that the
next week a couple other patients in the group
would say they had.
So now we coach people to come up with an
alternate scenario of what they would like
to see happen and kind of get an individual,
I mean for the same sounding trauma, some
people would rather have someone rescue them
other people would rather like fight off some
attacker themselves.
A lot of sexual abuse survivors would most
like to tell off the abuser about why this
was so wrong and other people want very magical
you know shrink the attacker of the fire down
you know to a quarter inch high dreamlike
things so once you come up with an alternate
scenario you practice that at bedtime this
is again another variation on dream incubation
just telling yourself you know if my traumatic
nightmare starts I want you this scenario
and picture the alternate scenario and that
that works for a lot of people.
A lot of people have the alternate dream and
then never have the nightmare again.
And then in the research study some people
do that, and the nightmares stop without their
at least consciously recalling having the
alternate dreams, so we don't really know
if they have it and forget it, but it still
serves its purpose or if simply the visualization
of the scenario you know awake at bedtime
has a similar effect for some people.
OK that's really fascinating that you have
some control over this I mean if you tell
yourself you want the this dream to stop or
to reach a better conclusion that's really
fascinating.
Yes, I mean the areas in our brain associated
with memory are not quite as active but they're
certainly somewhat awake as we dream so requests
to our dreaming mind do very often get through
it's not a one-to-one, you know just ask for
it once and you'll dream on this topic, but
it's very often effective especially with
repetition more than one night.
And moving on to pets.
I know you said animals, mammals, do go into
REM sleep but you know if you've watched your
pet dog on the ground when they start falling
asleep, my dog barks and she, you know, twitches
her legs, that sort of thing so it looks like
they're dreaming, you know, as far as we can
tell but so do animals dream and how would
we know if they do or don't?
Well, that's a very good question.
I tend to assume that they do.
We know that that all mammals except cetaceans,
whales and dolphins do not have REM sleep,
they have this strange sleep where they sleep
with one half of their brain at a time, but
all other mammals alternate between non-REM
sleep and rapid eye movement sleep and their
brain has activity that looks very similar
to ours when we are dreaming . So I am willing
to make the leap and say that I think that
mammals are dreaming and whatever they're,
you know, elephant or mousy or doggie or catty
version of that is.
Some of my colleagues would not would not
say that, I mean some of my colleagues would
not assume any consciousness to other mammalian
species or only past a certain level in the
evolutionary hierarchy but yeah, I think they
have the same brain state that we dream in
I think they're probably dreaming in some
way.
The only slight evidence for dream reports
from animals are Penny Patterson who had the
gorillas Koko and Michael.
Koko died, I believe.
But Koko used to sign kind of fantastic scenarios
right upon awakening and no other time, so
she'd sign about cars flying through the sky
or she'd signed something about seeing a person
who she actually hadn't seen in six months
and those sort of signing not real fantastic
things only seemed to happen upon awakening.
So Penny assumed that those were dream reports
and you know you could argue about that but
I, you know, I think that sounds quite likely
and the gorilla Michael, who didn't have quite
as big of a signed vocabulary, but I guess
he's still learning he's certainly still alive
and well, he was known to have had his entire
extended family group killed by poachers and
then he was picked up as an infant and sold
through several iterations and eventually
went to Penny's reserve so he had a very traumatic
killing of all of his family in front of him.
And she said that he used to wake up signing,
"Bad people kill gorillas, bad people kill
gorillas", and again only in the morning so
she interpreted that not just as a memory
but as seeming like he was probably having
a post-traumatic dream about the event.
And again, that's very soft evidence, too,
and subjective but possibly, we have dream
accounts from two gorillas but just in general
they are having the same brain state as REM
sleep, so I think it's likely that they're
dreaming.
Now they're not necessarily dreaming when
they're twitching and moving though because
in humans, although there's something called
REM Behavior Disorder where you act out your
dreams, we and other mammals are supposed
to be paralyzed during REM sleep, and with
normal, healthy people and animals that is
the case.
Where sleepwalking in non-REM sleep is much
more common for people and so I think that
most times that you see much activity during
sleep, you know, when dogs are woofing or
moving their legs a lot as they, that's probably
out of non-REM sleep which just seems to be
mild slight activity in motor areas that's
not associated with a big dream scenario in
humans.
Human sleep walkers usually don't recall anything
or it's a very simple, "I was trying to get
from place A to place B", rather than a dream
account so I think when you see your dog making
the most noise and moving the most it's not
necessarily dreaming.
When you see its eyelids moving rapidly under
its eyes even if it's completely still that's
when it's likely to be dreaming.
OK, interesting I'll pay more attention to
my dog's eyes.
And when you and I spoke before, we talked
about lucid dreaming which I know that the
journal Dreaming has touched on in various
ways but and you've said it's also become
a topic in popular culture since the movie
Inception came out a number of years ago,
so can you explain more about what lucid dreaming
is?
Well the definition is simply that it's a
dream in which you know it's a dream.
At some point you're going, "This isn't real,
I'm dreaming."
Many people, once they're lucid, they then
have a lot of control over the dream.
If they're being chased down a hall by witch
they can choose, "No, I don't wanna, I don't
want to have a witch dream anymore" and you
know, dissolve the dark building into a beautiful
palace or being outdoors and some of their
friends instead of the witch.
So some people can switch a dream all around
once they know they're lucid but not everyone.
So the definition is simply knowing you're
dreaming even if the dream keeps unfolding
in a very dreamlike way.
And most people really enjoy lucid dreams.
There's occasionally people stay distressed
by scary content but usually even if you let
the witch stay there and you turn around and
ask her why she's chasing you and what she
represents once you know she's a dream witch
you're not scared anymore so most lucid dreams
are very positive and people enjoy having
them.
So what does that mean exactly?
Does that mean part of your consciousness
turned on at that moment?
Yes, the EEGs of people having lucid dreams,
I mean back in the 80s, it was established
that they really did seem to be in rapid eye
movement sleep and that was big news because
it had been sort of questioned maybe they're
waking up into some sort of fantasy waking
state.
But Steve LaBerge proved that people having
lucid dreams are really in rapid eye movement
sleep and that's a battle all that sleep labs
could tell at that time.
But more recently now that you can put on
many more tiny EEG leads and reconstruct a
much better 3-D image of what's going on in
the brain, what that shows is that the person
is basically in rapid eye movement sleep but
it's not a completely typical episode of rapid
eye movement sleep . The prefrontal cortex,
the area right behind our forehead that has
a lot to do with abstract thinking, is very
much damped down during REM sleep it's often
misstated that it's turned off or something
in REM sleep.
That's not true, there is activity there at
a lower level even in normal REM sleep.
But in lucid dreams, there is usually a little
more activity in the prefrontal cortex than
there is during other REM periods and that's
exactly the area we're noticing discrepancies.
The fact that the prefrontal is damped down
during most dreams is why we don't question,
you know, bizarre, you know, most of the time
if we're flying we're just thrilled to be
flying not questioning how we can somebody
that you know is dead is showing up in your
dream, you usually don't question how that
can be, sometimes you do.
So, that area that notices things are odd
or just even reflects on what's the nature
of this experience, that's just turned back
up not as much as on average as when we're
awake but somewhat more than in typical dreams
so that seems to be necessary for lucid dreaming.
That's interesting.
And what are you currently doing with your
with dreaming research?
Well the most recent research study that I
finished was a comparison of the content of
dream accounts to the content of sleep talking
episodes.
Finding that they were similar in many ways
compared to waking speech.
They both express much more fear than we typically
talk about awake.
They're less set in the present than our waking
topics.
But then there's some differences, like there's
much, much more anger in sleep walking than
in either dreams or awake, dreams and waking
speech have much more in common in terms of
pretty low levels of anger for most people.
And sleep talking involves much more anger.
So that was my most recent research study
and I'm not starting another one real soon
because I'm trying to finish a book which
is kind of a sequel to my book, The Committee
of Sleep, which is all about dreams and creative
problem-solving.
They both have more theoretical things that
I want to say about it but also once that
book came out while I was writing it I had
to chase down people who'd have amazing problem-solving
dreams but once it came out I was getting
letters from some famous, you know, ones with
major accomplishments that had come from a
dream that I didn't know about.
Great, more content for you.
When is that coming out?
It's not even in press yet it's probably coming
out in a year and a half I would guess.
But it's more of a focus than research right
now.
So, Dr. Barrett, can you talk about what you
dream about?
Well my dreams are probably more similar to
other dream researchers than to the average
person.
I know one dream researcher who is just out
of grad school where the person doing the
most interesting research who wanted the most
research assistance and was the most charismatic
figure was doing dream research and that he
personally had never thought about much about
dreams until getting to grad school.
But most dream researchers are drawn to the
field because we remember more dreams than
average.
Our dreams are more vivid than average.
We tend to have more lucid dreams and flying
dreams and just almost any unusual category
of dreams that that you mentioned that will
have a certain low base rate in the general
population, I and other dream researchers
have more of.
So I was just always fascinated by all these
nocturnal adventures which I did remember
more of in more detail than the average person
and I think a lot of psychologists go to grad
school and then pick a specialty within psychology
but for me it was much more the other way
around.
I was just focused on dreams as this fascinating
thing as a kid and as I got to be a little
older I realized if someone was gonna pay
you to study dreams then you better go to
graduate school in psychology.
So I don't have any way of characterizing,
you know, I have all the things we've talked
about: recurring dreams, lucid dreams, problem-solving
dreams, a few nightmares, not particularly
high rate of those, and I have dreams that
have solved very practical problems, I have
many more dreams that I think are more about
my interpersonal emotional issues where you
know I dream about people are important to
me and in the dream I'm doing something different
than the way I'd usually react to them and
I wake up and realize that that has some implications
for things to do in real life.
I have some dreams that are just so gorgeous
visually that I've started making art from
my dreams.
I've just been doing that for about three
years, but I sold some art and have some art
in art shows and it's all dream art I have
no interest in making art other than to represent
some of these images that I just want to drag
back into the waking world for other people
to see them.
I did see that actually when I was just looking
into researching this topic, I saw your artwork
and it was striking, strikingly beautiful.
Very colorful.
And can you describe what your favorite piece
of art you created?
Probably a pair.
Most dreams I just make one piece of art from
them.
But I had a dream where I was walking through
Harvard Square which is the neighborhood where
I live late at night and I was discovering
these little animals up on the rooftops and
thinking they must have been living there
all the years I did, and I had just never
looked up and seen them before.
And then eventually they were down in the
street and I was thinking, "Oh, they only
come down late at night."
And in the dream, I thought, "I've never been
the middle of Harvard Square in the middle
of the night" and that's extremely not true
but in the dream, it was.
So I was discovering these wonderful animals
that live on the roof and come down into the
streets and so I actually went down and photographed
several different buildings that were on this
route through the square but it was one of
the Harvard Lampoon building and another of
a spot called Charlie's Kitchen that are just
interesting buildings that are kind of lit
up interestingly at night anyway and they
had most captured the feel of the dream before
I started adding all the little magical creatures
up on the roof and spilling down into the
street.
So I guess I was the happiest with the two
I made out of that dream came out really just
as I'd seen them in the dream.
And what do you use for materials?
Is it a painting?
Is it a sculpture?
No, it's digitally manipulated photography.
So for a few of them, like one I dreamed about
a mask changing in all these ways, I found
that I really loved masks, so I take pictures
when I got a mask exhibit, so I already had
enough pictures of masks to start morphing
into that dream.
But for the one I just mentioned, I went down
took pictures of the building and so a real
photograph of the building was the basic backdrop
and I left the sky and the brick in certain
areas unchanged so that it kind of looks photographically
real but then I played somewhat with the surface
of the building but mainly I put in little
creatures, some of which I created from scratch
and digital programs, and others I actually
took photographs, not of real animals but
of like little carvings of already not quite
realistic animals and manipulated them a little
bit more digitally, so it's always collaged
photography with then lots and lots of digital
manipulation to give it the surreal look that
the dream had.
So dreams are also inspiration for you as
well?
Yes, definitely.
I mean they've been inspiration for, you know,
things in my research life and work as a clinician
and interpersonal relationships for a long
time and I'd only been writing about arts
and dreams but lately it's, yeah all of my
art is completely inspired by my dreams.
Well that's wonderful.
Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Barrett.
Nice to talk to you.
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I'm Kaitlin Luna with the American Psychological
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