Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D.

The barn swallows have discovered the Dream Library - Pythagoras would disapprove, and they'll make a mess, but I like them

"Working together creates an intensely shared experience. It helps us see our personal moments in a more universal light... In working on dreams together, the empathy that you receive from others, and the empathy that you show towards others, can be deeply moving. You cannot act in someone else's dream without walking in their shoes. And if the people working on dreams with you are very different, if perhaps their backgrounds are opposite or antagonistic to your own, dreaming together can discover a path towards reconciliation... The very act of dreaming together implies a recognition of our collective humanity" - Jon Lipsky, "Dreaming Together: Explore Your Dreams by Acting Them Out" (2008), 26

This Saturday, in Ashland, Oregon I'm giving a talk on dreams and Shakespeare as part of the "Art to Action Series" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival - as part of the talk, four actors from OSF will perform the most dramatic dream scenes from several plays - I'm very curious to see what it feels like to bring these scenes together in the same space tickets.osfashland.org/45657/46763/

Happy birthday, Sigmund Freud! Born on May 6, 1856 - Next year I'll bake him a Sachertorte in the kitchen of the Dream Library...

Here's a post based on the comments I made during a panel on the new translation of Charlotte Beradt's classic book "The Third Reich of Dreams" - April 22, sponsored by the Seminar in Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Studies at Princeton psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dreami…

The idea that dreaming is play, the play of the imagination in sleep, can also be expressed as the idea that dreaming is freedom--the actualization of freedom, freedom as practice, freedom-in-itself and freedom-for-itself

I awoke this morning with the following dream, which I titled "Breakfast not Sheriff": A nice police officer drops a photo of one of his kids, it falls on the muddy ground….oh oh, that’s too bad….Later, I am outside on the driveway and a pickup truck suddenly drives up from below in the garden, I don’t know how it got there, and I am alarmed….The truck is white with green lettering on the back window, and I am sure it will say “Sheriff,” and this is a law enforcement officer and somehow we are in trouble….but when I really look, the lettering on the truck’s window says “Breakfast”….I look closely to make sure, because I am worried it might really say "Sheriff"….but no, it says “Breakfast”…. My first thought about the dream is, that's weird, I don't often see and read words so clearly in a dream. A couple hours later I start driving into town, and within a few minutes I see two Sheriff's deputies in their white and green trucks driving in the opposite direction. My second thought about the dream is, that's weird, I can't remember the last time I dreamed of the word "Sheriff," and here I see two of them right after such a dream. About fifteen minutes later I pass a Sheriff's deputy in a parked truck, watching the cars go by. I look in my rear view mirror, and see him pull into traffic behind me. My third thought about the dream is, oh shit. Okay, I'm driving just below the speed limit, my hands are at 10 to 2... I see him pull up and around a couple cars to get closer to me. I reach an intersection and the light turns yellow just as I go through. Maybe he'll stop...? No, he doesn't stop, he speeds through the intersection, and by the time he's turned on his lights I'm already pulling over to the side of the road. Five minutes later, the deputy lets me go with a warning to renew my DMV registration tags or else the next time I'm stopped, they'll tow my vehicle. Yes, sir, thank you, sir.

"The boundary of sleep did not simply divide the conscious life of the individual, it demarcated rival moralities. The waking [Victorian] world of continence and self-control stood in direct contrast to the wild abandon of dreams" - Rhodri Hayward, "Policing Dreams" (2004), 165

A dreamer's highlight this year at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry's classic play with a title drawn from Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred" - directed by OSF Artistic Director Tim Bond, w/a great cast osfashland.org/en/productions…

Tristy Taylor is leading a Dream Theater Workshop on Saturday, May 23 at the Performance Works NorthWest in Portland, OR - Tristy is a great teacher, dream theater is lots of fun, and it's a good time to try something new! eventbrite.com/e/dream-theate…

"We have the power to shift course. It's our disconnectedness--and lost understanding about the amazing capacities of nature--that's driving a lot of our despair, and plants in particular are objects of our abuse. By understanding their sentient qualities, our empathy and love for trees, plants, and forests will naturally deepen and find innovative solutions. Turning to the intelligence of *nature itself* is the key" - Suzanne Simard, "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" (2021), 305

Bookcase installation in the Dream Library is making progress...

At LynchCon 2026, "The Darkness of Future Past," I will be giving a talk on "The Gift of David Lynch's Dream Logic" - more info here: macguffin.media/lynchcon/26

"The sociology of the dream must contain two parts: the first to study the function of the dream in society; the second, the social framework of oneiric thought. Two problems, tightly tied together, for it may be that society provides a framework for oneiric thought to make it socially usable" - Roger Bastide, "Sociology of the Dream" (1966), 200

"The Third Reich of Dreams" by Charlotte Beradt is one of the most important dream books of the 20th century - there will be a roundtable discussion of the new translation of this essential work, on 4/22 at Princeton - open to all! sipsas.project.princeton.edu/events/2026/th…

Caesar: What sayest thou to me now? Speak once again. Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar. He is a dreamer, let us leave him. Pass. W. Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" (I.ii.22-24)

The upstairs bookcases are beginning to take shape...

"Dreams are virtually pure instances of narrative creation unfettered by the demands of literary traditions or intelligibility...Dreams constitute a private literature of the self, and they might tell us something about the nature of our public literature" - Bert O. States, 1993

"The Muslim philosophers, especially Avicenna, laid great emphasis in their prophetology on the figurizing function of imagination in the prophetic revelation. The human soul, provided it is pure and strong enough, can contact the unseen in waking life as well as in dreams: all that is required is a withdrawal of the soul from the tumult of sensory life" - Fazlur Rahman, "Dream, Imagination, and Alam al-mithal," in von Grunebaum & Callois (eds.), "The Dream and Human Societies" (1966), 409

"Dreams are a laboratory for experimenting with changes in our psychic life... This constructive or synthetic approach to dreams can be clearly stated: dreaming is an endogenous process of psychological growth, change, and transformation" - Ernest Rossi, 1972