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Applied dreaming is used to elucidate matters from the mundane to the metaphysical. Jack Maguire, a writer in New York City who was nervous about visiting his stepsister in Nashville, asked for a way to establish rapport with her. He dreamed they were both in a penthouse and he gave her a white carnation from his lapel. Maguire took a flower to Nashville. "It was a perfect gesture," he says.
Others seek insight into personal problems through a dream-manipulating ability called lucid dreaming. Some sleepers are aware they are dreaming while dreaming. In such a state, they can change imagery and plots, engage in dialogue and action with feared figures -- all of which, they say, can illuminate daylight dilemmas. Unfortunately, notes Psychologist Stephen . LaBerge of Stanford University, "only 5% to 10% of the population has lucid dreams with any regularity."
For those not so gifted, LaBerge has invented plastic goggles that can, he claims, induce lucid dreaming. Sensors on the mask are triggered by rapid eye movements during sleep; they set off a pulsing red light that arouses the mask's wearer just enough to know he or she is dreaming. LaBerge hopes to market the goggles (with instruction kit) sometime this winter. Price: about $100.
As interest in dreamwork spreads, mental-health professionals are issuing a few caveats. "Armchair psychology is not harmful per se," notes Arnold Richards of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, "but it doesn't substitute for serious treatment of significant personal problems." Psychologists warn against implementing solutions based solely on dreams. Some experts fear that manipulating one's dreams could be misapplied to repress or avoid distress.
Others are less concerned. "The myth is, don't tamper with the unconscious -- it's dangerous," says Fred Olsen, who runs Dream House in San Francisco. "I believe the unconscious is more resilient." Dreamwork can, however, create anxieties. Eugene Bianchi, a professor of religion at Emory University, recalls a young man who dreamed of joining, if reluctantly at first, a classroom full of obviously high, naked revelers. The dream, explains Bianchi, was about dream sharing itself -- "a fear of exposing oneself in the dream world, of being psychologically vulnerable." The sense of being high? "Well," he explains, "there is a certain uplift in being able to share one's dreams." As they say, Aha!