American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else [Hardcover]

Kelly Bulkeley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2008

When politicians and pundits refer to the American Dream, they do so to evoke images of national unity, identity, and a better future. But in what ways does this metaphor manifest in the actual dreams of sleeping Americans? In American Dreamers, dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley takes the ideology of the American Dream one step further-into the study of sleeping dreams-to explore how the nocturnal side of human existence offers a key to the psychological origins of people's waking beliefs and political passions.

Bulkeley builds on sixteen years of scientific research involving thousands of dream reports to show how the playful fancies of our dreaming imaginations can be interpreted as insightful expressions of our hopes and fears about issues as varied as the environment, religion, family values, and the war in Iraq. Examining in particular detail the dreaming tendencies of conservatives and liberals, the book centers on ten people of different political perspectives-a dreamers' focus group-who kept yearlong sleep and dream journals. The dreaming and waking stories of these "ordinary" Americans (among them a cancer survivor, a lesbian horse rancher, a former Catholic priest, a young waitress engaged to be married, and a soldier preparing for his third tour to Iraq) provide raw psychological material and a window into their deepest beliefs, darkest fears, and most inspiring ideals.

Hyperventilating political pundits have described in lurid detail what conservatives and liberals disagree about, but rarely do they try to explain why they disagree-and that's the real question. At a time of bitter partisan conflict and governmental paralysis, American Dreamers calls the country back to its visionary origins, arguing that dreams can serve as a royal road to the creation of new political solutions that integrate the best of conservative and liberal ideals. If we truly want to learn something new about the American Dream in people's lives today, Bulkeley proposes we take a good close look at how well Americans are sleeping and dreaming at night.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author and former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Bulkeley (Dreaming Beyond Death) takes a step beyond the metaphor of "The American Dream" by asking, "How does the metaphorical American Dream relate to the literal dreams of Americans when they sleep each night?" His method is to examine ten Americans who, for a year, are subjected to surveys, interviews and dream journaling. Admitting that his research is no "perfect mirror of a nation of 300 million" (lacking, as also admitted, any Hispanics, African-Americans, Midwesterners, Deep Southerners, Evangelicals, Jews or Muslims) Bulkeley mines dream journal excerpts for their significance in each subject's political and everyday lives. The extent to which "people's political views are reflected in the form and content of their dreams" turns out, unsurprisingly, to be variable ("only the dreamer can ever know for sure what his or her dreams mean"), and Bulkeley's broader generalizations fall flat; still, it's an insightful look at the role dreams play in political thought for a group of (white) middle-of-the-road Americans.
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Review

No book about dreams could be more timely or more important than Kelly Bulkeley's American Dreamers. Whatever is important in people's waking lives is reflected in their dreams—politics included. American conservatives report different dreams than American liberals. American Democrats report different dreams than American Republicans. Dr. Bulkeley paints his portraits of American dreamers with a palette that reflects his scholarship in both religious studies and dream science; the results are filled with insights that will delight, amuse, and infuriate his readers. American Dreamers provides insight into the country's future, insight that is available from no other (or better) source.—Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Co-author, Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans

"Any political pundit who wants to speak with intelligence and genuine insight about the psychological motivations of American voters across the political spectrum would be well advised to read Kelly Bulkeley’s American Dreamers. Kelly Bulkeley is arguably the most rigorously empirical and psychologically subtle contemporary interpreter of the phenomenon of human dreaming. Over twenty-five years of writing and research is deployed in this urgently relevant, nonpartisan, and broadly sympathetic analysis of the underlying psychological and spiritual concerns that unconsciously organize the political views of ordinary Americans today." —John McDargh, author of Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory and the Study of Religion and associate professor of the psychology of religion, Boston College

"A beautifully written reminder of the depth of differences, and a dream of how difference might be understood. Bulkeley is on to something profound about us; we would benefit enormously if we could even just glimpse that understanding."—Lawrence Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas

"This story we tell ourselves in our dreams passes the impurities of our waking life through an ethical filter and exposes truths we have not yet acknowledged. American Dreamers is a comprehensive and very readable account of our unconscious adaptation of what is still a hazardous and imperfect waking domain. Bulkeley's professional life has revolved around dreams and what we can learn from them. This book is true to its title. He has opened the door to the sociology of dreams."—Montague Ullman, M.D., author of Appreciating Dreams: A Group Approach and clinical professor of psychiatry emeritus, Yeshiva University

"With an exemplary grasp of dream science built upon thousands of dream accounts, Bulkeley presents a multifaceted and nuanced portrait of the ways our deeply seated ideas, values, virtues, and fears become apparent within our dreams. This groundbreaking and timely work challenges us to develop a greater understanding of and respect for all people across the political spectrum."—Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, author of In the Midst of Chaos and Let the Children Come

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (July 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807077348
• ISBN-13: 978-0807077344
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,473,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreaming left and right, October 30, 2008

By 

M. E. Tappan (Lakewood, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else (Hardcover)

We are all, in ways known and unconscious, our civilization's discontents. We are not always happy. We want better lives. And we want our elected government to help us in that endeavor. Just what policies and persuasions we'd like our government to adopt to get us there says much about our own politics and our principles. To those we invest with power, we want them to be like-minded. Like a myriad of separate species, we gravitate to those who we think share our concerns. In America, that gravity pulls us in two seemingly opposite political directions: right and left, Conservative and Liberal.

Kelly Bulkeley explores, in his thought provoking book "American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else," that personal differences in political views are more than ideological banners. They are instead deeply held values that manifest in the depths of our psyche, from the reservoir of the unconscious from where our dreams come to haunt us at night. "Dreams," writes Bulkeley, "don't simply mirror people's political beliefs; they provide the raw psychological material for those beliefs."

Conservatives and liberals seem to view the world differently. And the subject of Buckeley's book focuses on the research that tells us that conservatives and liberals even dream differently. Though Bulkeley warns that the differences are not absolute, and that political beliefs are complex with shades of either political ideology woven into the individual, there are trends within the separate philosophical stances.

Bulkeley concludes, or at least posits as a working hypothesis derived from his and other's research, that conservatives are good sleepers and minimal dreamers, while liberals are troubled sleepers and expansive dreamers. A Liberal's dream more often contains bazaar or unusual elements than those of a conservative. Conservative's dreams are usually much more mundane. Conservatives report fewer sexual dreams than do liberals, with liberals reporting such dreams with more variety and in more detail. Earlier research demonstrated that conservatives had more nightmares. More recent research demonstrates an increased incidence of nightmares occurs in liberals. The reason for the disparity may be because of the chance of error due to the paucity of the sample size. But the confounding variable may be that the initial research occurred during the Democratic reign of Bill Clinton (who could terrorize the sleeping of any conservative), and the latter research was completed during the reign of George Bush (enough to keep any liberal tossing and turning with night-sweats).

Despite differences in ideologies and dreams, Bulkeley states that "we share more in common than we know: our differences are a matter of degree, not kind." Dreams, on either side of the spectrum, speak to the continuing power of American spiritual beliefs, faith and search for personal meaning. All of us, conservative and liberal alike, face common issues. We together have more dreams of frustration in our place of work than of any other subject. As a nation, writes Bulkeley, we are sick of working so hard and receiving so little in return. We long for fairness and dignity in our lives.

Perhaps, says Bulkeley, we can bridge our cognitive and political dissonances by actualizing the full range of human possibilities by recognizing the virtues of conservatism and liberalism. And that the aspects of each philosophy reside in every individual.

"I dream of a time when Americans," writes Bulkeley, "develop the psychological capacity to unite the opposites of our political culture - enacting progressive social change without losing traditional wisdom, safeguarding time-honored values while remaining open to new ways of living."

The latter portion of the book includes an appendix of "Dreams of Politics and Politicians."