A Dreamer’s Eye View of American Politics

What are American voters really thinking as they cast their ballots in our quadrennial Presidential elections? What are their strongest feelings and deepest concerns about the candidates?

Since 1992 I have been researching political imagery in dreams, gathering several hundred reports of dreams in which major political figures appear as characters. These dreams open a fascinating window onto the deeper-lying emotional attitudes Americans have about the world of politics.

Although I intend to gather dream reports over the course of several more election cycles, the research I have done to date leads me to posit three different categories of “political dreams.”

One, as Political Cartoons of the Mind. These are dreams that use a few simple images to express in succinct and sometimes very humorous ways the dreamer’s political perspective. For example, a 36-year old man from Florida dreamed, “I’m playing golf with Bill Clinton. I’ve heard people say he cheats, and I understand what they mean, because he frequently improves the lie of his ball. But he encourages the people he’s playing with to do the same. He says, ‘It’s just a game, and just for fun!’“ This dreamer voted enthusiastically for Clinton in 1992, but he wasn’t so sure in early 1996 (when he had this dream) that he’d vote for Clinton a second time. As the golf imagery of his dream puts it, he’s worried that President Clinton is a “cheater” who frequently “improves his lies” and then tries to smooth-talk other people into letting him get away with it.

Two, as Personal Symbols. These dreams use the figures of politicians as “personal symbols” to express strong emotions that the dreamer is feeling toward some matter in his or her current life. An example would be a 62-year-old man from Indiana who had separated from his wife and was sadly trying to decide whether or not he should divorce her. During this time he dreamed, “I talk to President Harry Truman for seven hours. We talk a lot about the problems of the Presidency — the loneliness of one man having to make decisions.” The dreamer immediately noted the pun about President “True-man,” and saw the dream as a metaphor of his personal struggle to figure out for himself the best, “truest” decision to make about his marital problems.

Three, as Dreams of Political Reconciliation. These dreams, though relatively rare, have the power to change a person’s political attitudes, compelling the dreamer to reconsider his or her accustomed beliefs about a politician. In one case a California woman, age 32, was surprised and deeply troubled when Newt Gingrich and his Republican allies took power in Congress in 1994. But then she dreamed,

“I’m at some sort of school gathering, and Newt Gingrich comes in to give a talk. I’m impressed by his intensity, his intellect, and his awareness of people’s life problems, although I don’t agree with all his arguments. But he talks a lot about self-reliance, and I do agree with that. Then I tell him a bit about my ideas, and he listens. I wake up, wondering if he thinks my ideas are good or bad.”

This woman remained opposed to the conservative agenda of Gingrich and the Congressional Republicans. But, having had this “dream dialogue,” the woman believed she better understood Gingrich’s charismatic appeal, and she even recognized certain political principles on which she and Gingrich actually agree.

There are, of course, many different ways to interpret such dreams. A Freudian might see the President as an oedipal symbol representing the dreamer’s father, while a Jungian might view the President as an archetypal image of inner masculinity. And, a neurologist might say all these dreams are simply the nonsense we should expect to be spit out by the brains of people living in a media-saturated society.

But after talking with many of these dreamers in detail about their experiences, I’ve come to believe that their dreams often have a genuinely political level of meaning: their dreams are creative efforts to make better sense of the political world in which they live. Based on this evidence, I would propose that one of the functions of our dreams is to help us integrate our inner and outer experiences — connecting our personal hopes, desires, and fears with the social and political realities of our community.

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