Beacon Broadside

by Kelly Bulkeley

As of today a total of 116 dream reports about Barack Obama and 104 about Hillary
Clinton have been posted on the metaphysicalpoll.com website. Here are some of the questions I’ve heard people
asking about these intriguing political fables from the nocturnal
imagination.

Can we accept these as real dreams? Cautiously, yes. Some of the reports could easily be fake, but
most sound genuine to me. (For more on
the limitations of this kind of anecdotal data, see my posting of March 19.)

Why are so many people having dreams of
Hillary and Barack? It’s turning
into a perfect storm of political dreaming. First, the core supporters of both candidates (older white women for
Hillary, multicultural youth for Barack) tend to be especially active
dreamers–they are exactly the kinds of people who show up most often in dream
classes and workshops, and I think it’s natural their political hopes and fears
would find expression in their dreams.  Second,
many Democrats are genuinely torn in both directions, and one thing we know
from modern dream research is that people often experience an upsurge of
dreaming during times of uncertainty and indecision. And third, the feverish campaign coverage by
the 24-hour news media has prompted unusually intense feelings of familiarity
and intimacy with the candidates’ personal lives, to the point where we hear
and think and talk about them almost non-stop. In this kind of cultural environment, it would be surprising if we did not find at least some people dreaming
about these omnipresent figures in the public eye.

So what exactly can we learn from these
dreams? Without a doubt, the Hillary
and Barack dreams highlight the powerful interpersonal bonds each candidate has
formed with his or her supporters. There’s a good psychological reason why the electoral race is so
close–both candidates are backed by passionately committed people whose dreams
accurately reflect the emotional depths of their political convictions.  Here’s one of the positive Hillary dreams:

"Hillary Clinton and I were cleaning my parents’ attic. She
was actually a lot of fun, and we got a lot of work done."

(Posted Feb. 19 by A
Wife And Mother Who Scrapbooks)

This is a
neat little parable of Hillary’s candidacy–she’s more likeable than you might
expect, and she’s going to work hard to clean up the mess left by the previous
administration.

More
surprising, perhaps, is how the dreams also point to the personality flaws and
psychological shadows of the candidates. For Hillary, this appears in dreams of her behaving angrily and
aggressively. An example:

"I was Hillary Clinton’s personal assistant and I was miserable,
partially because we were working non-stop on little sleep, but also because
she was a tyrant. It was about three in the morning after a rally. She yelled
at me in front of a group of people for a small mix-up I had nothing to do
with."

(Posted on Feb. 25 by A
Woman Who Once Worked As An Assistant)

In at least
six reports, the dreamer does not like or support Hillary but feels compelled
to lie to her about it:

"I was at a Kmart and Hillary was speaking to a small crowd.
I began feeling really sorry for her and hugged her. Hillary asked me if I had
voted for her. I hesitated and then said Yes, even though I hadn’t."

(Posted on Feb. 27 by A
Middle-Aged Woman)

Dreams like
these suggest a perception of Hillary Clinton as strong and powerful but prone
to using coercion and emotional manipulation to get her way.

The
positive dreams of Barack are more numerous and more intense than those of
Hillary, with what appears to be a higher percentage of good fortunes and
magical events:

"I had such a great dream last night. Barack Obama came to
my church and gave a speech. I don’t remember what he said, just that he was
very eloquent. Afterwards he and his wife were standing near the doors, shaking
hands. I went up to shake his hand and I was so nervous! He was like 8 feet
tall in my dream, but when I reached out to take his hand he gave me the
sweetest smile."

(Posted Feb. 19 by A Unitarian Universalist and Mom)

The
negative dreams of Barack point to the flip side of this giddy idealization:
the potential for disappointment. Quite
a few of the Barack dreams leave the dreamer feeling unhappy, detached, and
disillusioned–they want to stay close to him, they love being part of his
wonderful movement, but they fear it can’t last:

"…He had been very nice to me on the run, when I felt I had
him to myself, but then he became more interested in what was going on in the
room and he ignored me. I felt hurt because of this and started to write him
off, feeling that he wasn’t who he said he was…"

(Posted Feb. 28 by A Student of Rhetoric in Louisiana)

The warning
that comes through in these dreams is that the higher the hopes you inspire,
the more likely you are to disappoint those who have idealized your candidacy.

I’m still
working on a more systematic evaluation of the dreams using word search and
content analysis methods, and I’ll report on my findings as they emerge. In the next posting I’ll take a look at the
more salacious aspects of the dreams–Sex! Drugs! Violent death! Celebrity cameos!–all the topics that give
dreams such a good, wholesome reputation.

Wait a minute—Do you have some kind of
political bias that’s influencing your interpretations? Who do you support between Hillary and
Barack? I was raised in a Republican
family and became a Libertarian in college; I’m now a registered Democrat with
Green Party leanings, and a strong Obama supporter. I don’t claim any special objectivity in my
analysis of the dream reports, but I’m confident of my findings and I invite
others to take a look at the dreams for themselves. Every dream has multiple dimensions of
meaning, and if you see something I’ve missed, feel free to tell me about it.

Dr. Kelly Bulkeley, author of American Dreamers:
What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals,
and Everyone Else, is a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological
Union and a faculty member in the dream studies program at John F. Kennedy
University. A former president of the International Association for the Study
of Dreams, his other books include Dreaming Beyond
Death: A Guide to Pre-Death Dreams and Visions, Dreams: A Reader on
the Religious, Cultural, and Psychological Dimensions of Dreaming; Dreams
of Healing: Transforming Nightmares into Visions of Hope; and The
Wondering Brain: Thinking about Religion with and beyond Cognitive Neuroscience.

Read Kelly Bulkeley’s introductory post to this project and his call for Americans to get more sleep.