What are dreams?

Many people would answer by saying “Dreams” is a beautiful song by the British American rock ‘n roll group Fleetwood Mac.


Others would recall that Rebecca du Maurier begins her wonderful novel, “Rebecca,” with “Last Night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again.” Alfred Hitchcock used this iconic opening to begin his film adaptation of her book. Many works of fiction have employed dreams as a part of the story, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” to Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” to the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series.

Similarly, there have been dream sequences in countless films, such as “The Wizard of Oz,” “Spellbound,” “Inception,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and, of course, “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Freud

In his seminal book, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) taught that dreams are the way the unconscious communicates with us, often revealing fears, conflicts and aspirations. He said the unconscious is where symbolism interacts with our intentions or desires. Freud likened the mind to an iceberg, with the visible conscious small than the submerged pre-conscious and unconscious.


In a sense, the Old Testament of the Bible says very similar things but tells us that dreams are the way God (if that’s what you believe) communicates with mortals, utilizing messages, precautions or warnings and revelations. One of the best known of the Biblical dreams is about Joseph in which he predicted his own rise to power in ancient Egypt (Genesis 37:5-11). Joseph also interpreted Pharoah’s dreams, which led him to predict seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of drought and famine.

Contemporary psychoanalysis still adheres to the Freudian concept, emphasizing that dreams are the path into the unconscious mind, more often than a means of predicting the future, although that also seems to happen occasionally.

NOTE: It is necessary, and appropriate, before I go too much further, to emphasize that I am far from expert in these matters and everything I write about dreams and the unconscious should be read with a heavy dose of skepticism. With this cautionary note, I must also state that I believe in Freud’s theory and have, over the years, had many opportunities to confirm the relevance of it with my dreams although, generally, I usually do not comprehend what a given dream means without someone helping me understand it.

Understanding symbols and archetypes is integral to understanding dreams. There are literally dozens of books, in print

Jung

and electronically, about symbols and archetypes, including the classic “Man and his Symbols,” by Carl Jung (1875-1961). Over the years, I have had many dreams with symbolic representation and have explored some of them.

As example, for years I had dreams with alligator/crocodile figures (I hate those creatures, even to the point of shivering in fear when I see them in videos and films). I also had dreams of being alone in an abandoned street and attacked by someone with a knife or gun, although I always survived.

One of the novels I am almost finished writing (“Wrong Me”) is about a murder and includes a raven. Edgar Allan Poe told us a thing or two about ravens but it is only recently that I checked a symbols book and found that ravens sometimes represent death. It was a relief to confirm that I appropriately used ravens in my story.

My novel has nothing to do with Ingrid Bergman.

Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) was born in Stockholm the same year my mother was born in Brooklyn. I’m not sure if my mother knew about that coincidence (I suspect she did) or if it influenced her, but I do know that Ingrid Bergman was my mother’s favorite actress.

Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”

Bergman was also one of my favorites. Although she was marvelous in every role, she is particularly known for her role as Ilsa Lund in the best American film ever made, Casablanca. However, she was captivating in every role. She won three Academy Awards, as many as Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, one less than Katherine Hepburn. Bergman won her best actress Oscars for Gaslight and Anastasia, and best supporting actress for Murder on the Orient Express. Bergman also won a Tony for her 1947 performance on Broadway in Joan of Lorraine and two Emmys, including one for her performance as Golda Meir, who was once the Prime Minister of Israel. She also made a film, Joan of Arc, in which she is magnificent, earning an Academy Award nomination.

Her face appeared on the cover of many movie-oriented magazines, such as Photoplay and Movieland, as well as on the covers of Time, Life and Look magazines.

Photoplay magazine 1947

Life magazine 1946 as Joan of Lorraine

Look magazine 1947

Time magazine 1943 – as Maria in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For most of the 1950s, Bergman was unwelcome in Hollywood because, while still married to her first husband, she had a very public affair with the Italian director, Roberto Rossellini, who she eventually married. The actress and model, Isabella Rossellini, was one of three children born to them. In 1950, then Senator Edwin Johnson, who opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s progressive policies and would likely be highly regarded in today’s administration, spoke on the floor of the Senate criticizing Bergman’s affair, saying she was a “powerful force for evil,” forcing her to leave Hollywood until 1957 when she made the highly regarded and financially successful film Anastasia. Throughout this period of exile, she was often lauded for her courage in withstanding countless mindless attacks as well as her dignity. Here, in a wonderful Dick Cavett interview, she talks about this period:



But this posting is not intended to be an abbreviated biography of that excellent performer and exceptional human being. For that I would encourage you to seek other sources, including four full-length biographies as well as Wikipedia.

Ingrid Bergman died in 1982, after eight years of combatting breast cancer. Her friends, fellow actors and lovers (of which she had quite a few) described her as “unpretentious,” “undemanding,” “indifferent to her looks, her clothes, to everything except her art.” James Agee wrote that she blended “poetic grace with quiet realism” in her acting. Paul Henreid, who portrayed her husband, Victor Laszlo, in Casablanca, mourned her, saying, “She was so terribly beautiful in her youth. She was a very strong lady with great desires and emotions and she led a colorful life.” Marlon Brando wrote, “Ingrid Bergman was magical to me. She made me think that screen acting had great value. She was otherworldly and beautiful but very, very real.”

She was adept at comedy, as well as serious drama. In her last film, Autumn Sonata, directed by the great Swedish film maker, Ingmar Bergman (no relation), she portrayed a classical concert pianist, who values her career more than caring for her two daughters, a story not far from her own life. It is a magnificent performance.

Despite her using as little makeup as possible in her various roles, Bergman’s last words, reportedly, were, “Do I look all right? Give me my brush and make-up.”

I am aware of dreaming almost every night. Often, I remember the dream for a minute or less but that memory usually does not persist at all if I don’t immediately write it down. I keep a small notebook at my bedside for that reason. Most of the time, unfortunately, even when I remember the dream, I don’t bother to write it down.

Last week, on a Sunday morning, I scribbled as much as I could remember of a dream because it was so striking.

In this dream, I am walking to a movie theater when I meet Ingrid Bergman. We acknowledge each other with glances but I don’t think we speak. I lose sight of her when we go in the theater. The film is a documentary about her life. I see where she is sitting and I want to sit next to her but I can’t decide on a seat. Should I sit to the right of her or to the left? A little boy spills something (perhaps a drink, perhaps popcorn) on me. I go the men’s room to change my pants when an old lady comes in. It’s not clear how old I am in the dream. I am wearing underwear so this doesn’t bother me, or her, and I continue to dress. Later, I am at a bakery to pick up four cakes for the party being held to celebrate the film. I know Bergman will be there and I am anxious to get going but I can’t attract a cab. Finally, the baker offers to drive me to the party but I am not sure of the address. We drive into an obviously suburban community with a series of circles surrounded by very nice homes. My cell phone is not working and I can’t call anyone to find the address of the house I want to visit.

I wake up.

I rarely dream about real people, other than family members, and don’t recall ever before having dreamed about a movie star or other famous person.

Many years ago, I wrote a short story called “A Conversation Between an Author and his Dream-Maker.” I wrote the story as if it were a session with the ‘dream-maker,’ who responded as if he/she were a therapist, i.e. guiding the questioner (the ‘author’) towards answers rather than providing a direct response. Before beginning the conversation, the story had a brief introductory statement, similar to a novel’s epigraph (a quotation preceding the text, usually to set the tone for what follows): Wherein the author attempts to find answers to puzzling questions he knows cannot be answered from a source he is sure does not exist; questions he cannot prevent himself from periodically repeating.

At the time I wrote the story (which did not find a magazine interested in publishing it), I was trying very hard to understand dreams as well as the whole concept of the unconscious.

Leonard Nimoy as Spock

Spock, the character played by Leonard Nimoy in the Star Trek television shows and movies, was a character with whom I was highly sympathetic and to whom I could relate. He was unfailingly logical and committed to facts. His inflexibility in confronting the variability of the human condition added, for most viewers, an element of humor to the episodes but I generally regarded him as completely reasonable and appropriate. In many ways, he displays some of the traits of autism (whose very existence as a disorder is challenged by the neurodiversity paradigm, which views autistic behavior as a variation of the human condition rather than an indication of a disordered state).

This is another topic about which I am relatively ignorant and will not dwell on, other than to note that the current debate about the relationship of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination to autism is promulgated by incompetent and/or incompletely educated people. The only published data supporting an association has repeatedly been shown to be full of errors.

In considering dreams and the unconscious, I have a Spock-like viewpoint: it does not make sense.

If our unconscious is a vital component of our well-being—and I believe it is—containing memories, feelings and thoughts that are not recognized in our conscious minds, why is it so inefficient? For the unconscious to be informative, it first must create symbols and metaphors and then must package them into dreams and then needs to have us remember the dreams and, finally, has to make sure we have writing materials nearby to record what we remember. I sometimes feel I should speak to the unconscious and talk about simple engineering and productivity and, yes—that word keeps popping up—efficiency. These messages from the unconscious are often exceedingly important. Instead of sending them directly—door to door delivery, if you will—we first send them to a costume shop where we find the most unlikely outfit and then we bring them to the most complicated layout of railroad tracks and load them onto a pump trolley—a simple railroad car manually powered by its passengers—and then send that vehicle whizzing by our closed door where we may or may not see it and, even if we see it, may not remember that we saw it.

Duh! (one of my least favorite expressions, an exclamation meant to comment on something foolish or stupid, or so obvious it shouldn’t be stated, but, nonetheless, the word seems entirely appropriate for my view of the unconscious). Duh!!

So, why is Ingrid Bergman, dead for more than 40 years, teasing me in this way? I know there are some people reading this blog post that are much more perceptive than I, that can examine and analyze my dream. Why are we going to a movie theater? Why can’t I decide where to sit? Why do I decide to go to a bakery? What do the cakes mean? Why four cakes? Why not one or three of some other number? Who is the baker driving me? Where is the party? Why can’t I plug my phone into a power outlet in the baker’s automobile to recharge it? Is GPS available for directions?

What does it all mean?