by Mark English
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Sorting through some personal papers recently, I came across some scribbled notes about dreams and hallucinations. I have never considered dreams – my own or anyone else’s – worth recording or trying to analyze in any serious way, but have always maintained an interest in the various manifestations of consciousness and the functioning – and malfunctioning – of the brain.
Dreams have a special fascination, mainly because they seem to give us a first-hand glimpse into the workings of our brains. Operating outside the normal imperatives of waking life, the brain takes on a (sometimes disturbing) life of its own.
Various kinds of waking experience also give us insights into the workings of our brains. Especially under stressful conditions, unexpected things happen: hallucinations, visions, so-called mystical experiences, devastating waves of fear or dread, unexplained convictions.
With respect to peculiar waking experiences, my own have been (mercifully) few and far between. One such experience was utterly terrifying and occurred in early adolescence. No drugs were involved. I may write about it another time.
A far less harrowing episode occurred a couple of years earlier. It involved a failure of visual processing. Three spatial dimensions collapsed into two. The scene before me decomposed and I could no longer distinguish form, just color, a kaleidoscope of color. Quite beautiful actually. Even (in the context) strangely liberating. Again, no drugs were involved.
As a child, I did not know much about the brain, but this experience gave me a sense of the precariousness and the general nature of the visual system. There were obviously all sorts of complex mechanisms in play, and this brief failure of the system had allowed me to look behind the curtain, as it were, to get a glimpse of the not exactly raw but non-integrated data that lay behind the finished product which the visual system normally presents us with. What was normally integrated had, for a time, disintegrated, revealing not only the precariousness of the system but something of its distributed, layered and constructive nature.
Dreams and hallucinations involve not only visual processing but also a more central feature of the brain, its narrative-generating function. In dreams, the narrative-generating function is given free rein, being largely detached from sensory input and the constraints and imperatives, both physical and logical, that moving around in the real world necessarily entail. In this respect dreams have parallels with hallucinations (where sensory input is overridden or is processed in anomalous ways).
The stories we tell ourselves in our waking hours to orientate ourselves within the social world derive largely from stored information but real-time sensory input is also important. As we all know, there is a tendency for these stories to become detached from physical and social realities. Such tendencies are exacerbated by processing failures in individual brains, brought on by stress, disease, aging, etc..
Take the following example. Late one night my mother was in hospital recovering from major surgery. I got a call from the hospital asking me to come in because she was upset and they thought I might be able to calm her down. It turned out she was sleep-deprived and showing signs of paranoia. She was convinced that the nursing staff were not humans. They were aliens from another planet. But, being a very level-headed and intelligent woman, she was also aware of the silliness of this conviction and in fact embarrassed about it. So it wasn’t too hard for me to reassure her.
Capgras delusions involve integration failures in respect of the various brain processes associated with the recognition of and responses to known individuals, especially close friends or relatives. The sufferer will recognize the face and body in question but, because the usual emotional responses associated with this recognition do not kick in, he or she will have a strong sense that this is not really the person normally associated with that body. In this manner, loved ones may be perceived (for brief or extended periods of time) as hostile intruders. I have had the experience of having to deal with transient episodes of this syndrome in aged relatives. It’s quite common, I believe.
The prevalence of political conspiracy theories based on body doubles is obviously a different kind of phenomenon, but I suspect that there is a connection here, that these kinds of narrative resonate largely because – like the best thrillers – they draw on universal patterns of thought.
In the past many political leaders had body doubles who were deployed for practical purposes (such as ensuring the safety of the actual leader), and this phenomenon naturally led to speculations and fictions of various kinds. Many of these stories came to be believed. I am suggesting that the prevalence – and persistence – of such beliefs calls for an explanation. Why are people so attracted to these stories and why do so many believe in them in such a dogged way?
There are many well-known examples, more or less fanciful substitution conspiracy theories which were believed in by significant numbers of people. The ever-original Kurt Gödel devised his own theory. On the basis of precise measurements he made of facial features in newspaper photographs, Gödel convinced himself (but nobody else as far as I am aware) that the man honored in the massive 1951 ticker-tape parade in New York City was not the real General Douglas MacArthur.
Another case, relating to Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslavian President, I was going to present as a typical example of a fanciful substitution conspiracy theory. But this one may have some basis in fact. A Croatian man I knew years ago was convinced that Tito was not the man he claimed to be. I didn’t take this very seriously at the time, but I have since done a bit of research on the topic and found that a wide range of people had serious doubts about the official story. Moreover, a declassified NSA document lays out what appears to be a strong case, based on a careful phonological analysis of Tito’s speech patterns, that his origins were not Croatian. The Josip Broz whom Tito claimed to be was born in the village of Kumrovec in northern Croatia but Tito’s accent strongly suggested Russian or Polish origins. Accepted opinion (represented, for example, by Wikipedia) continues to ignore or dismiss this evidence of foreign origins. Though now a matter more of historical than political significance, the question of Tito’s origins did constitute a serious issue for my Croatian acquaintance and many of his countrymen who had been hearing for decades the anomalous speech patterns and accent which American security services finally came to analyze – and acknowledge.
As I indicated above, what got me thinking about these topics was coming across some scribbled notes from the past. One document related to a dream which my mother had – and told me about – twelve years ago. It has nothing to do with body doubles or conspiracy theories. It may, nonetheless, be of interest. I quote verbatim from my notes…
Last night’s dream involved the disruption of a church service. In the dream she was a school-aged child, though an adult friend whom she had not known in childhood appeared in the dream and spoke to her. The church in question was specified by name. It was not one she had known as a child but was the church she was married in.
In the dream she sought out and gathered together the noisiest things she could find: tin cans and “a strange kind of metallic vessel” – she wasn’t sure what it was but she was “pretty sure it would make a noise.”
“I tied all these things together and crept up towards the altar where the priest was moving to and fro. The array of objects made a very disruptive noise and the priest swung around and here’s this girl shaking [the objects] madly to make as much noise as possible. There was nothing anyone could do, it was such a surprise. I wanted to irritate him, to stop him doing all the things I hated, worshiping this God who wasn’t there.”
“I walked out [of the church via] the side aisle. People looked the other way. They would see what I was doing as wrong and I knew I was doing wrong – but I had to do it, to try and stop them. I threw the noise-making contraption onto the ground outside the church…”
I am not saying that this dream has any great significance but it is amusing in its way. It also bears witness, I think, to longstanding frustrations and to an independent spirit adamantly opposed to (what was perceived as) obfuscation and mystification.
Comments
5 responses to “Dreams and Peculiar Waking Experiences”
[…] is an abridged and revised version of a piece which appeared recently at The Electric […]
“Dreams have a special fascination, mainly because they seem to give us a first-hand glimpse into the workings of our brains. Operating outside the normal imperatives of waking life, the brain takes on a (sometimes disturbing) life of its own.”
I love that. Dreams are thus at the threshold, the limenal land at the frontier between our supraliminal conscious selves and our subliminal unconscious selves. This frontier is also inhabited by spontaneous thought, parapraxies, free associations, epiphanies, and most commonly our spontaneous emotions. Indeed the emotionality of dreams is easily observable to anyone whose had one. They give window into the workdings of our spontaneous unconscious self. As Freud observes in in his The Interpretation of Dreams,
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
This dream road is the existential borders between the controlled and the uncontrolled in human experience. Dreams exist at an internal border between the controlled and uncontrolled within our own minds. Externally this border is between controlling one’s fate or submitting to it. I would say this is a conflicted border to say the least.
This would make sleep and in particular dreaming a function of the conflicted human mind. Modern theories of dream function are steeped in the language of conflict. An overview of the lexicon of humanities wonderings about dreams reveals a plethora of contentious terminology, such as quest, temptations, suppression, repression, and regulation. Such contention reflects the conflicts peculiar to the advanced, sophisticated human mind. Indeed, as species become more mentally complex, such as mammals, sleep becomes more elaborate, prolonged, monophasic, and REM/dream associated.(1)
Perhaps then sleep can be seen as a kind of cease fire in the human conflict of mind that is more characteristic of our willful and intellectually driven wakeful hours. In sleep the intellect is made to stand down from its efforts at control and hegemony over the self, which enables the mind to escape the abstraction and reduction of neocortical oppression and engage in a purely spontaneous, passionate, personal, wholistic, and wild discourse with itself. Perhaps the well observed psychosis of sleep deprivation is the emotive mind’s rebellious spontaneous attempt to assert itself emotionally by encroaching on our wakeful hours in order to overcome the madness of prolonged dispassioned ataraxia. Perhaps sleep and dreams facilitates a healthy balance in the minds inherently conflicted nature.
Since Dreams arise out of the healthy human mind, that would make them completely different from patholigical hallucinations. They are by definition meaningful since they arise out of healthy human experience. It is for us to find the reason and meaning within them rather than dismiss them as unreasonable or chaotic. Your dream of the noise array of objects disruting the stayed relgious ceremony certainly has profound meaning to you an dperhaps some meaning to us all. As John Steinbeck observed in his East of Eden (1952),
“I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in it’s dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and the chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.”30
Thanks for an interesting reflection.
1. McNamara, Patrick, Robert A. Barton, and Charles L. Nunn. Evolution of Sleep: Phylogenetic and Functional Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
jofrclark
I agree that dreams operate in a kind of threshold or frontier or borderland territory and that they share characteristics with certain spontaneous waking phenomena. But we need to be wary of taking too literally or hypostatizing the metaphors we inevitably use to discuss our mental experiences and also of thinking in terms of dichotomies.
You rightly emphasize the complexities of the “conflicted border” between the controlled and the uncontrolled.
I wouldn’t put it quite like this myself but I see what you’re getting at.
This is too dichotomous for me! You seem to be separating out and even personifying the “emotive mind” whereas I would be more inclined to see emotional elements as being more integrated and pervasive.
I agree that dreaming is essential to mental health. My point was simply that both dreams and hallucinations are driven by internal narratives (as opposed to being driven or shaped by external stimuli).
I see random processes as playing a large part in dreams. This puts me in conflict with those who are committed to most systematic (and supposedly rigorous) methods of dream interpretation.
It wasn’t my dream! But it certainly says something about the personality and nature of the dreamer. To provide a fuller interpretation, certain biographical details and facts would need to be taken into account. But I don’t know that satisfactory detailed or definitive interpretations are ever possible.
The Steinbeck quote interested me. The general culture of that time was deeply marked by Freudian and related ideas.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Such an interesting subject. Thanks for bringing it up.
I would support your idea of emotion being more pervasive and integrated. I believe that has been a poorly developed idea in Western culture which spends far more time talking about thinking and intelligence and equating rationality with reasoning. The idea that emotionality contributes equally to reasoning as opposed to inhibiting it is hardly a broadly expressed cultural or philosophic formulation. I think that the inadequacy of that strictly rational formulation of reason is behind Dan’s current piece that searches for reasonable “standards.”
I suppose my presentation of intelligence and emotion conflicting is dichotomous, but I see it more under a yin-yang formulation where the two, will being radically different and indeed complementary in their process (and thus conflicting to some degree), are both needed and must work together to form the whole of our reason as you suggest.
I’ve experienced what could be described waking dreams or visions twice. The first while I was doing a ‘telepathy’ experiment with a friend decades ago. More recently, a very vivid vision while listening to a friend talk about his recollections of a previous life.