Dreams of the Global Pandemic

Transcript

Welcome to Dream Auguries. Tonight, we're going to look at recent research into how the global, COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our dreams.

On November 7th, 2021, The Sunday New York Times Magazine featured a cover story by Brooke Jarvis that surveyed dream research from around the world. One common finding was that more people are remembering dreams. For example, a study at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France found that dream recall jumped 35 percent in the month after lockdown began. Another study of 3,000 Americans found almost the same number, one third, reported remembering more dreams. Reviews of social media have found more people are writing about more active, vivid dream experiences.

Prior research has shown that emotions in waking life are reflected in dreams more often than actual events are.  And so Jarvis suggests that our higher anxiety is leading to emotional dreams we were more likely to remember.  

BUT as we heard in our Third Episode, the World Health Organization has declared a global epidemic of sleep loss. Even before the pandemic, people -- globally -- were reported to be sleeping less than the recommended 8 hours a night. So, paradoxically, while the pandemic has found us sleeping less, we're remembering our dreams more.

After 9/11, Dr. Deirdre Barrett of the psychiatry department of Harvard Medical School, examined the dreams of First Responders who -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- were reporting exceptionally high levels of nightmares. Her research also showed an increase in nightmares among the general public, but not directly related to the events of the day.

As Jarvis reports:  "After 9/11, Barrett believed that she'd never encounter another event that would have such a profound and widespread influence on dreams. Now, as the new virus spread and the world began to shut down, she realized she had been wrong." Dr. Barrett called the pandemic "the biggest crisis to be reflected in dreams in my lifetime"

The paradox of less sleep and more vivid dreams was (and is) an important one for researchers  because a shortened night of sleep can be very problematic for our dream life. As Dr. Barrett puts it: "When you sleep six instead of eight hours, you don't lose one fourth of your dream life. You lose almost half -- and exactly the dreams that will be the most vivid, bizarre and memorable."

Or as psychologist, Rubin Naiman wrote: "We are at least as dream-deprived as we are sleep-derived."

So what? They're dreams. What do dreams really do anyway? How valuable are dreams to our waking life?

Jarvis' article presents a number of theories about what function dreams play in our lives. The psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann, for example, has proposed that dreams are a kind of internal therapist, helping us process memories, especially traumatic ones. He writes that dreams allow us to process memories without being overwhelmed by the emotions.

To test that theory, the psychologist Rosalind Cartwright, conducted studies with depressed patients going through divorces. What she found was that patients who dreamed about their failed relationships, later recovered from their depression. She calls dreams "a natural healer. They work," she says, " during sleep in the same way a good psychotherapist does, by relating the new to older patterns of problem-solving that have gotten us through bad spots in the past."

Research done almost 20 years ago at Harvard and the Massachusetts Health Center examined how dreams help us with problem-solving, in general. In the study, people were given the chance to play Tetris. The one group was given the chance to sleep and dream, often reported images of Tetris in their dreams. The group that dreamed noticeably improved their scores.

In the two decades since that research, Jarvis tells us: "We know that people often dream about the new things that they are leaning, and that those who do so can often perform a task better after it appears in their dreams."

The article covers much more about dreams – and specifically, dreams during a global pandemic. Dr. Barrett has collected reports of more than 15,000 dreams. (We’ve got a link to the full article in the notes for this Episode.)

But one detail from the article has been haunting me about dreams in general and their evolutionary purpose in particular. As Jarvis reports, “science has yet to discover an animal that doesn’t sleep at all… Even jellyfish, despite not even having brains!”

Don’t ask me how scientists have measured this, but the author does mention one ominous-sounding device called an “insominator.”

What evolutionary value IS sleep? After all it’s an activity that leaves you vulnerable to your natural predators. And if all animals DO, in fact, sleep – might they also be dreaming as well? Do lions dream of the antelope that got away? Do dogs dream of humans fetching soggy tennis balls in their teeth? What would an earthworm dream about?

What evolutionary value might DREAMS be? If dreaming is a way for living creatures to less anxiety and help us problem-solve. Perhaps the prescription for our current state of anxiety and high levels of stress is to sleep more… in order to dream more. As Dr. Barrett puts it: “Dreaming is, above all, a time when the unheard parts of our own selves are allowed to speak. We would do well to listen.”

Dream Auguries is a weekly reflection series for insomniacs, lucid dreamers, oracles, soothsayers, magicians and conjurers of all kinds. It's bonus content for the film, Dreaming Grand Avenue, now streaming on cable, written and directed by Hugh Schulze.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Tony Scott Green and sound design by Kevin O’Rourke. 

Good night.

Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/magazine/pandemic-dreams.html