Current events can really get inside your head.
 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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It seems to be conventional wisdom that telling people about your dreams is inappropriate or rude or even boring. Like so much conventional wisdom, this is wrong. |
Dreams are at turns funny, frightening, enlightening and absurd. They are interesting — and yes, that includes yours. Everyone should talk about their dreams. |
Luckily, my brilliant colleagues in Opinion’s graphics department realize this, which is why, in early April, after lockdowns had disrupted routines around the world and an invisible virus had made hundreds of millions of people anxious, they put out a call to New York Times readers asking that they share details from their dreams during the pandemic. |
Some are absurd: Keandra H’ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, remembers tigers and vape pens; Randi Dell’Acqua breastfed an oddly-colored salmon. Many, understandably, are anxious: Annie Tao in Lawrenceville, N.J., coughed up blood; Lisa Claisse saw sick families being shoved into the ocean by the government. All of them, to my mind, are fascinating. It’s also a beautiful presentation. As you move through the text, the words crumble and paragraphs dissolve like dreams upon waking; illustrations by Alexis Jamet capture the mood. |
This project reminded me of Charlotte Beradt. Beradt was a journalist in Berlin who in 1933 began interviewing her fellow Germans about how Nazi rule was playing out in their unconscious. She later published a book called “The Third Reich of Dreams.” Beradt’s project — like the Opinion graphics team’s — shows how deep inside of you current events can get. |
Freud called dreams “the royal road to the knowledge of the unconscious.” The journalist Alice Robb wrote in the Times Opinion section in 2018 that “a growing body of scientific work” indicates that the interpretation of dreams is useful. Even if the scientists turn out to be wrong, dreams still are interesting. If you ever run into me at a party (remember parties? I dream about parties!) please don’t hesitate to tell me what happened in your head while you were asleep. |
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