To find out what your daydreams say about you, look out for a really good, readable psychology book. Even if you don’t agree with everything it says about personalities and daydreams, it will make absorbing reading and create some very interesting dream comparison and analysis chats among your friends. Some psychologists say that daydreamers are more creative, more perceptive, better listeners and more supportive friends.
Others say that natural dreamers are just that – dreamers only, not doers. They might be the sort of people who constantly talk about all the great things they are going to do but never actually put into hard practice the plans they dream up. For this reason they are perceived as losers and time-wasters. But maybe it all depends on the dreams themselves? For example, if you are a writer or a painter you might actually need to daydream for how else would your inspiration arrive? For some creative types of course, those daydreams may not be all sweetness and light – they might, like the works of Dali, reflect a darker deeper invisible side of our true selves. How can daydreams reveal our true selves? – are we dreamboat or nightmare personalities underneath?
Sometimes for various reasons we may feel we need to hide some of our “selves” for we all have many, and sometimes our hidden inner voices can be so well hidden that they are unhealthily suppressed. Yet they can say so much about us and a lot of that stuff can be good too! If we repress our thoughts and drives too much, they can spill over into our daydreams. Many writers and painters have explored these situations.
Take the author and playwright Dylan Thomas for example. Some of his characters were dreamboats, and some were murderous monsters in their secret “inner lives” inside their heads. The most useful, insightful, romantic and brilliant piece of writing I have ever watched on dreams, thoughts and daydreams was “Under Milk Wood” by this Welsh author. If you are interested in this topic I recommend this drama for voices, set in the moonlit and daybright cobbled streets leading down to a Welsh fishing harbour bobbing with fishing boats. It exposes the real personalities and thoughts behind the more mundane facades of their inhabitant’s lives and the results can be quite startling.
Inspired by a trip to a fishing village on the North Cornwall coast, this evocative and atmospheric play has everything – although Thomas transposed the action to a village in Wales – Llareggub! (Read that backwards !) It has Mr Pugh, the school-master, dutifully but resentfully slaving to his wife’s every bullying demand. Simultaneously, he fantasises about murdering her perhaps with “a fricassee of deadly nightshade.” Also present is a milkman who dreams of tipping all his milk into the river, “Evans The Death” the undertaker who dreams of eternal youth, a butcher who dreams of piggy-back rides and shooting offal and employers who suspect nothing about what really occupies the daydreaming mind of their maid. Polly Garter sings songs all day about losing the love of her life “Little Willy Wee.” Nearly all human life is there and exposes us all – to a greater or lesser degree. Dylan Thomas presents their sedate selves and then shows what their dreams and daydreams and nightmares really say about them, dividing them along conscious/subconscious lines.
Dylan Thomas wrote the outline for this piece while up and about early one morning in Cornwall. He was amused to see the inhabitants going about their daily early-morning routines. He read part of the script for the first time in the US at Cambridge, Massachusetts but shockingly, within two months he was dead. Just a short time after burying his own father, he died an alcohol-related death.
For those interested in sublimated ambitions, desires and aspirations and what their fantasies might say about them, this is a must-read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Milk-Wood-Radio-Collection/dp/0563388609
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Milk-Wood-Richard-Burton/dp/BOOOCCTGY
Helpful Psychology Resources:
‘In Your Dreams – The Ultimate Dream Dictionary’ – Book – Amazon
