Dreaming of War in Iraq

In earlier writings I have explored the political dimensions of dreams in relation to U.S. presidential elections, the terrorist attack of September 11, and people’s self-reports of political ideology. My basic argument is that certain dreams have directly meaningful connections and offer new insights to the most urgent questions of public and political affairs in the dreamer’s waking life. I am seeking to refute the idea (associated most directly with Sigmund Freud and Calvin Hall) that dreaming is exclusively concerned with the private concerns of the individual and does not have anything meaningful to say about the broader social world. To be sure, by far most people’s dreams do not include any overt reference to political themes. Looking at the phenomenon from a broader theoretical perspective, dreams with explicit political references are worthy of study because they reflect an unusually dynamic interplay of physiological, psychological, cultural, and even religious forces, all swirling together with creative, recombinatory tension in the private visionary arena of the nocturnal imagination.

My present study is an extension of these ideas in the context of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which began on March 19 and ended approximately a month later. When the war initially broke out I posted a research request in several liberal/ progressive publications and electronic forums, and I contacted dozens of colleagues, teachers, re­searchers, and students who in turn distributed my request to other people. To date, 25 people have shared detailed accounts of their war-related dreams with me. Six of these people are male, nineteen female. Only three of the respondents supported the U.S. decision to go to war, or at least were untroubled by it; all the other respondents were strongly opposed to the war.

Three initial observations can be made about this response to the research request. First, the number of responses was fairly small, particularly when compared to the much larger number of dream reports I gathered using the same basic method in the immediate aftermath of September 11. This may partly reflect the relatively minimal degree of personal fear Americans feel when contemplating the war in Iraq, in contrast to the sudden shock and alarming personal vulnerability that were generated by the events of September 11. Second, the gender imbalance is striking, though perhaps not surprising given that American women tend to take a much greater interest in dreams than do American men. Third, the respondents were al­most entirely from the “anti­war” side of the political spectrum. This may be partly due to the rather obvious fact that “pro­war” people are not as emotionally frustrated by the Iraq invasion as those who opposed the war, and thus are not feeling psychologically compelled to dream about it as much.

So, before turning to a consideration of one of the dreams, the following qualifications need to be noted: The dreams I gathered may not be representative of what Americans in general are dreaming. Rather, I am more interested in highlighting the creative details and meaning-rich images, feelings, and sensations that distinguish each individual dream. As someone who is strongly opposed to the war and who has struggled to make sense of the fast­moving transformations of the past several weeks, I confess to the personal interest of seeking in these dreams some insight into my own con­fused thoughts, turbulent feelings, and flashes of spiritual despair during this violent moment in our national history.

In a future writing I will provide a fuller documentation and comparative analysis of the dreams I have gathered. For this brief preliminary report, I will present and discuss a single dream.

David, a 55­year­old health care technician in North Carolina, had this dream on February 28, about three weeks before the start of the war, which he bitterly opposed (“Quite frankly, I think the invasion of Iraq is a cynical ploy to inflate Mr. Bush’s approval ratings, discredit the United Nations, and protect the interests of an avaricious economic minority”).

House Bearing Elephants and Birds Caged in the Attic

I notice a movement in the corner of my eye and turn to see something large and dark coming toward me. After a moment it resolves into an elephant with a white, one-storied house on its back. The elephant proceeds to a far corner of the parking lot on which I am standing. I study the house as I walk across the lot. It is sided with rough-textured pressboard and looks like the kind of temporary building one often sees serving as offices on used car lots. I look down to find there are now four elephants. Looking back up, I see the little building is now

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buried in one corner of a much larger, multi­storied version of itself on the backs of the four elephants. From within the original building I hear a mans voice say, “Look! I got a campaign to run here!” I see a digital clock face which reads “6:15” and realize it is time for me to go home. As I am about to leave, I remember several cockatiels are caged in the attic of the white building and I must see they are fed before I can go. I climb a ladder made of two-by-fours to the attic. The birdcages are made of wⁱre mesh and have been built between the rafters and struts of the roof It is difficult to see into one cage, which contains a normal grey, male cockatiel. I cannot see any seed dish at all in this cage and become very anxious, wondering how long the bird has gone unfed. I stand on tiptoe to look into the bottom of the cage hoping to see a dish there but, instead, I find a goldfinch in summer plumage, lying on its side, dead. I worry that if I move it I will create a bad smell and a big mess which may be unhealthy for the cockatiel. Then I wonder, with honor, if the cockatiel has been feeding on the dead bird in Lieu of seed. I am torn between the need to deal with the dead bird and my desire to get home.

The first thing to note is that this dream does not contain any explicit reference to the imminent war. It would be extremely difficult to de­vise a keyword search that could reliably identify this as a “war-related” dream. Yet for David, the dream is absolutely an explicit expression of his thoughts and feelings about the current political situation. This was his initial reaction to the dream: “The elephant, of course, is a symbol of the Republican Party which is further emphasized by the White House on its back.” The elephant moves to a position opposite (ideologically) to where David is standing, and then the house swells in size and there are four elephants instead of one ­ “much as the Republicans and Bush have increased in power lately.” The man’s voice shouting about the “campaign” is for David a transparent political reference to his scornful waking-life attitude toward the President.

The final section of the dream, with the cockatiels and the dead goldfinch, carries the political reference to a new allegorical height The ladder of two-by-fours is a peculiar symbol that David has noticed in his dreams for years, and he has come to see the rough­hewn, handmade nature of the ladders as a reflection of his underlying be­lief that he has to “make my own way up” in life. The “normal grey, male cockatiel” David could not help but associate with himself, while the “goldfinch with summer plumage” struck him as symbolizing the “sweet bird of youth” In that context, his intense reaction (“I wonder, with horror”) to the possibility that the cockatiel has been eating the goldfinch led him to this humbling personal and political realization: “To paraphrase the adage, young people fight wars that old people start. It is also true that ‘normal grey’ people live in and benefit from economies bolstered by wars, so my ambivalent feelings about dealing with the dead goldfinch could be a reflection of a desire not to acknowledge the ways in which I, myself, feed on the young sacrificed in war and the responsibility I bear because I have tolerated the actions of Bush’s government”

Of course, a single brief dream report like this can tell us very little about broader patterns in psychological functioning or the cultural imagination. But I suggest a larger set of similar dreams can be useful in that regard. David’s dream, with its exquisite interweaving of personal and political themes, and its palpable effect on him both in giving vivid imagistic expression to his waking life political attitudes and provoking deeper critical reflection on those attitudes, offers a glimpse of what future explorations in that direction may provide.

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