October 2001
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THE COMMITTEE OF SLEEP: HOW ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS,
AND ATHLETES USE DREAMS FOR CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING--AND HOW YOU
CAN, TOO Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg |
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Awake and asleep, we think about the same things:
our wishes, our fears, problems that need solutions. We've all had
dreams that tied up loose ends: Yes! I should quit my job, marry that
girl, watch my driving, see a doctor about that strange mole. For the prepared mind--that of an artist, writer,
musician, scholar, athlete--dreams also may provide inspiration and
ideas that benefit productivity and work performance. In this book,
Deirdre Barrett regales readers with glorious examples of creative
problem-solving in a variety of professions. Barrett is a psychologist
on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, a past president of the
Association for the Study of Dreams, and the author of Trauma
and Dreams. She takes her title from John Steinbeck's assertion:
"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night
is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked
on it." Artist Jasper Johns dreamed of painting a large
American flag. He started that project the next day, eventually completing
a series of flag paintings that established him as a major artist.
He destroyed work he still owned that preceded these works. A biographer
noted Johns' flag images "give the impression of a finished artist
suddenly sprung from nowhere." The first movie theaters were called "dream
palaces." A majority of 108 attendees at the Sundance Institute
for Filmmaking said they used their dreams in their work. Writers,
directors, and actors report more nightmares than most other people
do, Barrett notes. They have better dream recall and place a high
value on using dreams to understand themselves and solve personal
problems. That Mary Wollstonecraft dreamed the classic horror
story Frankenstein is well-known. Here's an interesting footnote:
the 19-year-old author was pregnant at the time. "The creation
of a wondrous, monstrous entity," Barrett asserts, "undoubtedly
had immense unconscious significance." Wollstonecraft's dream
combined her knowledge of her pregnancy with a challenge given to
her and others at bedtime to write their own horror story. The group
had spent the evening telling ghost stories while a thunderstorm raged
outside. Beatle Paul McCartney said the music for "Yesterday"
came to him in a dream. He initially thought he simply had recalled
the tune, and couldn't believe he'd written it. While composers often
report dreams that include music, most people seldom mention hearing
any sounds in their dreams. Perhaps that's understandable, as dreams
come to us primarily as pictures. The Indian mathematician Srinivas Ramanujan claimed
that every one of his remarkable discoveries came to him in dreams,
as gifts from the Hindu goddess Namagiri. Seventy-two of 83 Nobel
laureates surveyed, Barrett reports, credited intuition in their success.
Their hunches, connections made below the threshold for awareness,
she suggests, may manifest themselves as visual imagery in their dreams. Sports pages often tell of athletes who credit
winning tactics to their dreams. Golfer Jack Nicklaus, as one example,
dreamed a way to improve his swing that lifted him from a sustained
slump. World heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson often reported
that he dreamed up new punches. Track star Marion Jones had a recurring
dream, a source of inspiration, in which she saw herself setting a
new world record. Dreams don't always solve problems, Barrett notes. And sometimes the solutions they present aren't good ones. We have to perform a reality check with our waking minds. But dreams do give voice to often unheard parts of ourselves. As Barrett suggests in this engaging book, we would do well to listen. |
Copyright (c) 2001
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