I have just read Graham Greene’s final volume, comprising a selection of dreams culled from a ‘dream diary’ he wrote for many years. He contrasts events in the real world with those in his dream world. I suspect, having been psychoanalysed when younger, he attributed more significance to the contents of his dreams that this book suggests. He writes well of course, but I found his ‘dream stories’ only mildly interesting. Moreover, for all that I accept that our dreams have their genesis in and emerge from our everyday activities, worries and even trauma, I remain sceptical that too much can be read from or back into them.
All this is by of saying that as I’ve got older I either dream more or am more prone to remember their contents. Only the occasional dream hits the headlines, so to speak, like the occasion I defeated Andy Murray in a Wimbledon final. This was especially remarkable in that I was aged 64 at the time and had no right to expect victory. But it was a popular win with the crowds as I was, understandably, the clear underdog.
My most recent dream found me queuing at an imaginary post office counter, trying to get them to accept a parcel for delivery to another part of the country. The parcel itself was none too secure and had four or five different and mostly partial addresses loosely stuck on, though in my defence only one address – and the one that mattered – was complete. The man serving disappeared with my parcel, taking it to a large warehouse-like area adjacent to the shop. While I waited, interminably, a man leaning on the counter next to me pocketed my wallet, which I’d left temporarily unguarded. It turned out, oddly, that he had not been intent on stealing it and he grinned and immediately replaced it. But it was now attached by a cord around his neck, which he found more amusing than I did. Then I woke up.
Of more interest is the repetition of events and happenings in many of my dreams. One theme and five scenarios stand out, and I suspect they will be familiar to others. Or at least to those who have shared something of my working experiences.
The theme involves an impending crisis of sorts, and a crisis that causes personal consternation and heightened stress levels.
As for the quintet of scenarios, the first and probably most common involves missing trains. I find myself on the wrong platform with no way of getting to the right platform either on time, or safely (that is, without crossing the tracks). I am left watching ‘my’ train depart, and naturally it’s the last one I can catch to get to my destination. A alternative version sees me at a London terminal, almost certainly Waterloo, long after the departure of the last train I can catch to arrive in time to meet colleagues on an out-of-town campus to give an talk.
A second scenario finds me arriving to give a lecture and finding I’ve left my brief case containing my laptop on the train, meaning I have no power-point. Can I improvise?
Thirdly, I am at a conference and need to find or return to my room. But every staircase I try either ends up at a dead-end, usually an impenetrable wall, on the wrong floor. Everything around me is strange and unanticipated. I keep trying alternative stairs, but with no better luck. Or sometimes I get to my room only to find it already occupied, typically by a large and unruly family. It’s like being the subject of a psychology experiment trying to successfully negotiate a maze whilst blindfolded.
A fourth dream finds me with a choice: do I stop for a coffee and a time-out, sometimes in a hotel or conference centre and sometimes in an imaginary part of London, or do I go home? But the home is with my parents not my family by marriage. If my father is at home and I’m late I know he’ll be angry, whether or not he says anything (my father was in fact a thoroughly decent man who was rarely if ever angry). When I start to head home the landscape is not how I remember it and I’m left foundering, taking one fruitless short cut after another.
Finally, I am on the run! I’ve no sense of what I’ve done but I’m intent on not being caught. I turn off my phone and drive to the local railway station, use my cards to get out a large sum of cash, buy a ticket heading south, but in fact catch a train going north. Rather than arrive at a London terminal, I get off at Clapham Junction. My thinking is that I’m safest in the busiest of cities than heading for quieter parts of the country. But I must avoid known contacts and the many surveillance cameras. The planning get complex but the dream ends before any resolution is reached.
There is clearly a measure of continuity here. And it has to do with stressful situations, involving either insoluble puzzles or a measure of threat. I am no expert in interpreting dreams, not am I inclined to believe they afford deep insight into our psyches. But this brief excursion does suggest to me that we can revisit in our sleep aspects of our conscious day-to-day lives, and that, in my case at least, these imagined excursions can dwell on unsettling and stressful scenarios.
My nighttime expeditions obviously arise out of my personal experiences. I imagine this is common. I would be interested if there are meanings others would attach to them, if they are symptoms of …