One of my grandmothers claimed she was psychic. She claimed she could see other people’s thoughts. She was very convincing in this regard.
So much so that some of my cousins and I wondered whether we were psychic too. We tried to read each other’s minds, with mixed results. Giving each other enough hints, we could sort of read each other’s minds, sometimes.
So the question remained open for me.
***
One of the better pieces I’ve read about the phenomenon of precognitive visions, or dreams about future events was in Psychology Today a few years back.
The article cites research that roughly twice as many women as men report prophetic dreams, which is interesting in itself, and provides many possible explanations for what such dreams may mean and why they occur.
But what really caught my attention was a quote from Carl Jung that such dreams may be “an anticipation in the unconscious of future achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance.”
This makes sense to me from conversations I’ve had with friends about their dreams and my own memory of dreams I have had. Such anticipatory dreams often occur when we are just starting a new job, or preparing to give a major presentation, or on the verge of some other significant event.
Our minds seem to be working out a strategy for us to at least survive that future event, which is clearly causing us some anxiety, and maybe even help us thrive. In the dream, we become hyper-aware of our vulnerabilities — of the possibilities of failure in unanticipated ways.
This type of anxiety about the future is productive on several levels, I suspect, for creative work.
Many writers wake up from dreams with ideas for solving writing dilemmas. If they can shake themselves alert enough to do so, they turn on the light and write the idea down for later use.
Later in the light of day, that idea may seem stupid or foolish or naive, but at other times it indeed turns out to be a flash of brilliance. Either way, it helps inform our future work.
NOTE: This column is a followup to my recent essay “Dreaming the Future.”
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