"If I am working a lot, I dream of desks. If I am running a lot, I dream of treadmills. This protagonist can't sleep, so he dreams of never sleeping."
"Deborah, last week I had a dream that you and I were having coffee, since we are soon going to have coffee. You brought your pet groundhog and spoke to me in German. The only words of German I know are bitte and nein. And that was all you said to me, while stroking your groundhog."
"Perhaps your unconscious was using a groundhog to indicate that you were tired of waking up every day to another editing proof from me? As for my speaking German, perhaps it confused me with Freud, who plays a role in the story-in that the protagonist's psychologist believes that Freud's interpretation of dreams is the apt one for his patient."
"Freud's thoughts on the whole latent-slash-manifest function, repressed memories, the subconscious, and the id are fun to explore in fiction, because they're open-ended. They make it easier to access the man's childhood and spin more chaos from that."
Recurring dreams align closely with daily activities, producing dream imagery that mirrors waking life, such as desks for heavy work and treadmills for running. A character who cannot sleep dreams of never sleeping. A dream about having coffee includes a groundhog and German speech, with limited German vocabulary used in the interaction. The psychologist in the story favors Freud’s approach to interpreting dreams, linking latent and manifest content to repressed memories and the subconscious. Alternative theories are implied to lead to different, potentially less engaging narrative outcomes. Freud’s concepts are presented as open-ended and useful for fiction, enabling access to childhood details and generating further chaos.
Read at The New Yorker
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