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Works in Progress

Summer of 2026 brings several long-term projects to final fruition, with others just starting to grow and take shape.

My contribution to the Wooden Books series is done and will be released soon–October 1 in the UK, and March 1 of next year in the US. It’s a little book, about 6″ x 6″ and 58 pages long, with all the cool graphics and design that makes the other Wooden Books so fun to read.

I also finished proofreading the final text of The Spirit of Dreaming in Shakespeare, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the next month or two.  The main themes of that work: 1) the dream references in Shakespeare’s plays and poems represent a form of subtle spirituality; 2) the theory of dreaming as a kind of play (ie., my theory) has its roots in Shakespeare; and 3) live theater at its best generates an experience of shared dreaming.

Volume II of the Apollo Project series, The Moons of Mars, is nearing completion and will be available in early fall. It continues the horror/sci-fi story begun in volume I, Escape from Mercury, including more adventures with Chere Hite, Brother X, Lucia del Toro, and the Space Cowboy.

New developments are happening all the time with the Elsewhere.to dream journaling app. New interpretation modes, new insights from the user community, new collaborations with researchers and journalists–the team is cooking on high heat! I’m lucky to be working with and learning so much from Andrew, Victoria, Gez, Kat, and Dan.

With help from Kat, Jennifer Lane, Maja Gutman-Music, and Linda Koncz, I hope to keep expanding and refining the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb). We have many more dream series and demographic surveys to add, along with some brief videos to show how the SDDb’s features work.

Alisa Minyukova has organized a fantastic weekend event on behalf of the Dream Mapping Project at the end of September, at the Brooklyn Public Library. I’m helping with the event, and scheduled on Sunday, Sept. 27 to moderate a discussion about dreams and consciousness with David Pena-Guzman, philosophy professor and author of the excellent book When Animals Dream.

At some point the Dream Library will be finished, and the book-moving process will begin. Assuming all goes well, the first public gatherings will happen next year, including a Dream Mapping Project event focused on dreams and art.

After the books settle into their new home, and assuming the world holds together a little longer, I hope to focus my writing energies on 1) the three philosophies of dreaming, 2) evidence supporting the dreaming-is-play theory, and 3) volume III of the Apollo Project, The Venus Special…

 

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Dreams and Dreamers in the Odyssey

The Odyssey warns against seeing in dreams what we want to see.

Among the many gifts of Homer’s two epic poems are vital insights into the nature and meaning of dreams, insights that are still relevant today. The story of The Odyssey was preceded by The Iliad, whose dream references provide a helpful context for the later tale.

In just the second book of The Iliad, a god-sent dream plays a pivotal role. However, in this case the dream is a cruel deception sent by Zeus to the Greek leader Agamemnon, encouraging him to launch an attack he is destined to lose. This incident in The Iliad, one of the most influential works of all antiquity, shows that people of this time were aware of the danger of believing too easily in the pleasing fantasies of dreams.

Women Dreamers

The dreams reported in The Odyssey all come from women, and they all have multiple dimensions of meaning. The first comes to Queen Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who falls into despair when she realizes her son Telemachus has secretly left home to seek his long-lost father. That night the goddess Athena sends Penelope a dream in the reassuring form of her sister to deliver a message of comfort and reassurance. When Penelope awakens she feels remarkably better, “her spirit warmed now that a dream so clear had come to her in darkest night” (4.945-946). This is a slightly deceptive dream, in that an external agent deliberately shapes a familiar dream image to elicit a specific emotional reaction from the dreamer. The result is clearly favorable for the dreamer, and yet the story also provides the audience with a higher critical awareness of the subtle dynamics of external (divine) influences on the dreaming process.

Athena is also behind the next dream reference. She sends a dream to Nausicaa, a young princess, using the form of Nausicaa’s best friend who urges Nausicaa to go to the river to wash her finest clothing in readiness for her wedding day. When Nausicaa awakens, “still beguiled by her dream” (6.54), she goes with her laundry to the river, and there she suddenly encounters a wild, magnificent, naked man—Odysseus himself. The great warrior is lost and alone, and so Athena has helpfully sent a dream that puts the king’s daughter in an amorous mood and guides her to where she, and only she, will find Odysseus and personally escort him back to the safety of the royal palace.

This is a dream that in its primary purpose is intended by Athena to serve the needs of Odysseus, not Nausicaa. Athena is using Nausicaa as a means of enabling Odysseus to continue his journey home. And yet, the dream does not harm or mislead the dreamer. It may even help her in prompting a greater degree of self-awareness of her latent romantic desires. The goddess, the warrior, and the princess all benefit from this dream in different ways.

The Odyssean Fallacy   

The most dramatic dream scene in The Odyssey occurs near the end, when Odysseus finally returns home after twenty years but does not yet reveal himself to his wife Penelope. Disguised as a beggar, he meets with Penelope to gain information about the brutish men, the “suitors” (108 of them), who have invaded his palace to press their affections on the apparently widowed Penelope. During this meeting, the queen shares a dream with the beggar. “Listen closely,” she says (19.603). In the dream, she tends her twenty geese—“I love to watch them all” (19.605)—when suddenly a mountain eagle swoops down and kills all the geese, then flies away again. Then a voice in the dream says, the geese are the suitors and Odysseus the eagle, about to return and kill them all.

When Penelope finishes, the beggar/Odysseus instantly replies, “Dear woman, twist it however you like, your dream can only mean one thing” (19.625-626): death to the suitors. But Penelope says, “Ah my friend, dreams are hard to unravel” (19.630), and she goes on to give a remarkable speech about the two gates of dreams, one of ivory for false dreams and one of polished horn for dreams “fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them” (19.638).

The meaning of Penelope’s dream and her two gates speech depends on what we think is happening between these two people. If we accept that Odysseus has successfully disguised his identity from Penelope, then we are likely to accept his interpretation, wonder at her puzzling resistance, and regard the subsequent slaughter of the suitors as validating his reading of her dream.

However, if we remember that Penelope has proven herself to be the most savvy and intelligent of women, a different possibility emerges. She does know who the beggar really is, and she poses her dream to him as a riddle. The twenty geese in her dream, in this view, symbolize not the 108 suitors, but the twenty years that Odysseus has been gone from her and their family, fighting in someone else’s war. He has killed those twenty years of their life together—does he see that? Does he see her?Sadly, no. He sees what he wants to see, in what I call the Odyssean Fallacy of dream interpretation. He offers a self-validating analysis of her dream that ignores her lived reality and foregrounds his own selfish desires. Penelope’s two gates speech, in this reading, is a subtle but unmistakable way of saying he has failed her test. Immediately after this, she announces the contest of the bow and axes. He could have won her back right then if he had properly understood her dream; now, alas, he must prove himself in another, much more dangerous way.

Not all retellings of The Odyssey include these dream scenes. But the oneiric wisdom in these passages from Homer’s ancient epics continues to shape and inspire the way we think about dreams today.

 

Note: this first appeared in Psychology Today, July 15, 2026.

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Dreaming with the Founding Fathers

The friendly dream-sharing of Benjamin Rush and John Adams took an eerie prophetic turn.

This Fourth of July not only marks America’s 250th birthday. It also represents the 200th anniversary of the deaths of country’s second and third presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who passed away within five hours of each other on July 4, 1826. 

 

More remarkable than the patriotic timing of their deaths is the fact that several years earlier Dr. Benjamin Rush, a mutual friend and signer of the Declaration of Independence, foresaw their simultaneous deaths in a dream.

 

Despite both serving as visionary leaders during the early, perilous days of the country, Adams and Jefferson became political enemies with drastically differing ideas about America’s future and how to get there. This caused distress for other revolutionary figures like Rush who feared their titanic disagreements would be too much for the fragile nation to endure. 

 

Rush then took it upon himself in 1805 to engage with Adams, initiate a regular correspondence with him, and nudge him towards an eventual reconciliation with Jefferson. To accomplish this delicate diplomatic mission, Rush used a surprising method: he suggested to Adams that, instead of discussing common issues of the day in their letters, they share their dreams with each other. 

 

As Joseph Ellis recounts in his Pulitzer-Prize winning book “Founding Brothers” (2002) “Adams leapt at the suggestion and declared himself prepared to match his old friend ‘dream for dream.’” (214).

 

There followed a remarkable exchange of dreams, interpretations, and insights both personal and political. Rush, a physician acting here as a kind of proto-psychoanalyst, slowly but surely brought Adams around to a more charitable and balanced view of Jefferson. Then, in 1809, Rush reported to Adams “his most amazing dream yet”:

 

“He dreamed that Adams had written a short letter to Jefferson, congratulating him on his recent retirement from public life. Jefferson had then responded to this magnanimous gesture with equivalent graciousness… Then the two philosopher-kings ‘sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country.’”

 

According to Ellis, Adams sent Rush an immediate and enthusiastic response: “‘A DREAM AGAIN! I have no other objection to your dream but that it is not history. It may be prophecy.’” (220)

 

At this time, Adams and Jefferson were still estranged; they did not resume their friendship until 1812. Rush’s dream thus pre-dates their eventual reconciliation by three years and their “nearly at the same time” deaths by seventeen years. To anticipate the former in a dream is impressive; to anticipate the latter in a dream is uncanny.

 

However, not even Rush’s evidently fertile prophetic imagination could foresee the poetic wonder of these two American giants entering the grave together on the Fourth of July, 1826, fifty years after the signing of the country’s founding document.

 

Other than adding a kind of mystical halo to early American history, what can we today learn from this remarkable process of dream-sharing among the Founding Fathers? For one thing, it sounds like they were having fun. The dreams they described to each other are as wild and bizarre as anyone else’s, and both Rush and Adams clearly enjoyed devoting their formidable mental powers to analyzing the curious meanings of each other’s oneiric experiences.

 

It also sounds like their dream-sharing provided them with a genuinely new understanding of recent political history and their roles in it. In addition to making valuable discoveries about their personal lives, Rush and Adams found their dreams led them to a deeper appreciation for the psycho-spiritual significance of the epic events they had helped to bring into being.

 

Perhaps of greatest relevance for our concerns two hundred years later, a practical outcome of their process was the healing of a bitter political division—E pluribus unum, with an assist from dreaming. This was Rush’s initial goal, and he achieved it spectacularly. Of course, the reconciliation didn’t happen overnight; it took several years of patient dream-sharing to get there. But once resumed, the Adams-Jefferson friendship remained strong and respectful till their symbolically appropriate end. On the bicentennial of their deaths, it seems fitting to highlight their admirable, dream-mediated willingness to set aside their political conflicts and find common ground in supporting and celebrating the highest ideals of our nation.

 

Note: this first appeared in Psychology Today, July 1, 2026.

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The Uses of AI for Interpreting Dreams

New evidence points to the potential benefits of AI dream interpretation.

A recent study by Mark Blagrove and colleagues at Swansea University in the UK found that an AI system provided dream interpretations that participants rated “as moderately accurate and as enabling some personal insight.” (105) The participants gave answers to the Gains from Dream Interpretation (GDI) questionnaire that were then compared to answers from participants in previous studies of dream interpretation in live therapy and groups. Using the ChatGPT system, the participants in this study rated the interpretations lower on the “exploration-insight” subscale, which considers the levels of waking life relevance highlighted by the interpretation. Nevertheless, Blagrove et al. observe that “the mean rating of GDI item 1 (‘My dream has been explored thoroughly by the ChatGPT interpretation’) was 7.90 on the 1-9 scale, indicating that participants saw the process as very thorough.” (111)

This study offers an early piece of evidence to support the development of more finely calibrated AI tools for interpreting dreams. First, however, several concerns and limits must be addressed.

What’s Missing from AI Dream Interpretation

Blagrove and his colleagues noted the limits of their study in its minimalist input/output process, with participants simply entering their dream (plus waking life details and associations) and receiving an AI response. There was none of the kind of extended dialogue and exploration that typically occurs in live modes of dream interpretation. But even if this process could be extended with a series of interactive responses between the dreamer and the AI system, more fundamental aspects of dream interpretation would still be excluded. In a thoughtful commentary on Blagrove et al.’s article, Leslie Ellis points out that,

“A dream group or a therapy session does much more than produce a correct interpretation. The real work happens in staying with an image long enough for the body to respond, in hearing how a phrase lands in someone else’s ear, in noticing what shifts when an emotion is named out loud. It depends on a back-and-forth that includes silence, breath, and the small adjustments people make when something feels true.”

These qualities of embodied presence and empathetic sensitivity highlighted by Ellis seem beyond the range of even the most optimistic visions of AI.

To this, I would add that a vital element in the best, most dynamic forms of live dream interpretation is a willingness, even an eagerness, to say and openly engage with hard truths, critical insights, and taboo subjects. Current AI models like ChatGPT, however, are constrained by a variety of internal and, to the public, invisible boundaries around controversial topics, which means efforts to use these systems to interpret the full range of human oneiric experience may be impossible with dreams involving certain types of content (e.g., sexual, racial/ethnic, political) and may in general lead to a subtle homogenizing of all AI interpretations. Precisely where dreams become most dramatic and interesting, current AI systems are forbidden from responding.

Where AI Dream Interpretation Can Go From Here

Several new possibilities beckon for research on this topic, along with new potentials for applying these insights in practical contexts of therapy, education, and public welfare. The greatest progress will likely come from projects that pursue the following paths:

  1. Experimenting with AI systems other than ChatGPT, systems that have been trained with higher ethical standards and are more tailored to the purposes of dream interpretation. More and more of these systems are currently available, and some of them may offer better resources for interpreting dreams. Ultimately, the best systems will be built on a foundation of focused, systematic training with large collections of high-quality dream data.
  2. Developing more detailed and nuanced prompts for the AI systems, beyond simply asking them “What does this dream mean?” or “What is a Freudian interpretation of this dream?” Writing fruitful prompts for AI systems is an emerging 21st century art form, a kind of linguistic neo-wizardry that can make a huge differential impact on the results of research in this realm.
  3. Widening the interpretive lens. As with live dream groups, where the value is hearing a variety of people’s perspectives, AI systems can also provide a broad range of possible interpretations. For instance, the Elsewhere.to dream journaling app, which I help to administer, currently offers ten different interpretation modes, from Jungian and Lacanian to Biblical and Astrological. Giving people access to a multiplicity of views can empower them to trust their own judgment and discern their own best understanding of their dream given the various possibilities. It might even spark a new interest in learning more from actual people who are experts in these approaches.
  4. Distinguishing between the circumstances in which people can benefit from live therapy and group dream interpretations, and those in which they can benefit from AI interpretation. For instance, a particularly rich and memorable dream, what Jung would call a “big dream,” would surely benefit from the deep, extended exploration of a live interpretation in therapy or a group. For other dreams, which may not merit the time or effort of a live interpretation but still contain valid and meaningful insights, an AI interpretation system might offer a useful approach.

Caution is certainly warranted in this area, but so is a sense of reasonable hope. At their best, AI systems offer radically expanded access to a growing variety of high-quality methods of dream interpretation. This should be a cause for optimism among those who believe in the benefits of greater public awareness of dreaming. Rather than replacing therapists or groups, AI dream interpretation tools can enhance their efforts, connect them to new resources, and point them in directions of deeper meaning that ultimately only humans can pursue.

 

Note: this first appeared in Psychology Today on May 27, 2026.

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When You Know Too Much About Dreams

What if you know more about the meanings of another person’s dreams than they know?

What should you do when a friend shares a dream with you, and you immediately see vital meanings in the dream that your friend doesn’t seem to see? If you are someone who is a naturally insightful dreamer and/or has studied methods of dream interpretation, you may suddenly find yourself in these awkward positions of unequal knowledge and awareness. What’s your best approach in responding?

Let’s call the dreamer your friend, whether it’s a friend, a family member, a slight acquaintance, or even a stranger. In this moment of talking about dreams, this person is your friend.

So, your friend shares a dream with you, and right away you get a strong sense of what the dream is about. You also realize this is very sensitive personal territory. What do you do?

First and foremost, don’t avoid or ignore it. Say something in response, simply to let your friend know you’re present and giving them your full attention. Whether they know it consciously or not, your friend has just shared an important truth about themselves and their experience of life and the world. You can honor that truth and show your friend immediate respect with a few encouraging words—

“Wow, that’s amazing…”

“That’s so weird…”

“That sounds incredibly scary…”

“What an intense experience…”

After that, what else might you say? Maybe nothing. Maybe you’ve said enough already.

Your friend may never have told anyone this dream. Indeed, they may never have talked about their dreams in any social setting. That’s why it is good to let you friend know how much you appreciate their willingness to trust you with this glimpse into their inner world.

“Thanks for sharing that…”

“I’m really glad you told me…”

Perhaps your friend does actually recognize the deep meaning you see so clearly in the dream, and no more needs to be said. You helped your friend just by listening, and that is all you have been asked to do.

If your friend seems open to further comments, go ahead, but always remember that you could be wrong. No matter how clear and obvious the meaning of the dream might seem to you, the fact always remains that you could be incorrect about its relevance to the dreamer. This is one good reason to proceed with humility and use a cautionary preface, something like “if it were my dream,…” when offering your friend comments and possible interpretations.

“If it were my dream, I’d be scared about losing control of a situation…”

“If I had a dream like that, the house might symbolize…”

“If I dreamed about tumbling cats, I would see them as…”

To the extent you may be right about the deeper meaning of the dream, it’s best to express your insight in terms of curiosity and wonder, suggesting to your friend the ways in which their dream offers a potential opening to new discoveries. Rather than stating what the dream means, as if you are an oracle from on high, you give your friend a sense of the dream as their own special opening to mind-enhancing possibilities.

“If it were my dream, I’d wonder if …”

“If I had a dream like that, I’d be curious about…”

“If I could go back in the dream, I’d look around and explore…”

A variation in the discussion could be to compare your insight about the dream to a similar theme in a cultural form, like a movie or tv show:

“That reminds me of the ending of Game of Thrones, when…”

The downside of making a cultural reference is leading your friend away from the dream itself. But this is the potential upside, too. Temporarily moving away from the dream can help your friend continue thinking about the deeper issues but without such a direct spotlight on the personal content.

Keep in mind that your friend may have unconsciously been seeking a way to share this dream and bring it into the world, even if consciously they don’t understand it. They chose you to share it with, probably because they sensed (accurately) that you are one of the rare people who can help with strange or difficult dreams. In this sense, you function in these conversations as a kind of oneiric midwife. You help bring a new being into the world, namely your friend’s heightened awareness of their dream, now a living part of their waking consciousness.

 

Note: this first appeared in Psychology Today, February 3, 2026.

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Dreaming and Technologies of the Sacred

This is the written version of the presentation (with a 7-minute time limit) I made on Sunday, January 11, to the attendees of the Dream x Engineering Symposium at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thanks to Adam Horowitz, Michelle Carr, Karen Konkoly, and all the others who organized and participated in the symposium.

Dreaming and Technologies of the Sacred

Thank you, it’s an honor to be here.

I’d like to share with you a working hypothesis, drawn from the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, that I believe has practical importance for dream engineering:

Any dream technology will be more effective the more sacred, and the less profane, the experiential context in which it is deployed.

Here is a quote from his 1959 book:

The first possible definition of the sacred is that it is the opposite of the profane… The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are heirophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere… The sacred is saturated with being.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane (1959), 12

I can gloss this passage by saying:

The sacred is conceived as a break into ordinary time and space, a rupture in the monotony and homogeneity of profane existence.

The sacred brings us closer to the really real, the time of origins, the center of the cosmos.

Without having more time to elaborate on this concept in the abstract, let me offer two sources of empirical evidence in favor of my working hypothesis.

First are the religious rituals of dream incubation practiced throughout history, in cultures all over the world, all of which share the goal of moving the dreamer away from the profane, and towards the sacred: by means of fasting, prayer, and purifications, and by means of sleeping in a special place, like a mountain, cave, or graveyard.

Dream incubation is the original form of dream engineering, and its guiding principle is maximizing the sacred qualities of the dreamer’s experience.

To be clear: It doesn’t matter if you believe it is an experientially sacred context, it matters if the dreamer believes it’s an experientially sacred context.

The second source of evidence is the “lab effect” that has bedeviled scientific sleep research from its earliest days.

I’ll share three comments that sleep lab researchers have made to me over the years:

  • Robert Van de Castle: after thousands of nights of sleep lab observations, he only heard of one reported wet dream.
  • Allan Hobson: he admitted the most interesting and intense types of dreams usually happen outside the lab.
  • Ernest Hartmann: he found that when chronic nightmare sufferers slept in his lab they had fewer nightmares, because they knew they were being observed all night and felt safer because of it.

From the perspective of Eliade and the working hypothesis I’m offering to you, the lab effect is a measure of how a profane setting can homogenize dreaming by diminishing its  range and intensity.

In closing, I will mention two new efforts to develop dream technologies that put the working hypothesis into practice.

First is the Elsewhere.to app for dream journaling, for which I serve as a research consultant and investor.

There is, of course, a profane quality to the cell phone for many people. But starting with its name, Elsewhere invites users to go beyond the profane space of the “this-here,” and to open themselves to another, more sacred way of perceiving and experiencing the world and their lives, through the prism of their dreams and the deep archetypal patterns that emerge when you track them over time.

The design, graphics, layout, features, image styles, and interpretation modes of Elsewhere have all been crafted by people who share this deep respect for the innate wisdom of the dreaming mind.

The second new effort represents a much older form of technology, a library, which I’m calling the Dream Library, nearly completed, intended as a long-term archive of books, journals, and art works related to dreaming.

Set in a rainforest, in a building of hand-crafted wood, the Dream Library will offer a permanent physical space for projects and gatherings devoted to the study of dreaming.

It is designed to be as non-profane as possible, and to elicit a tangible sense of the sacred potentials in everyone’s dreams.

And perhaps, one day, it will be the site of a future gathering of dream engineers.

Thank you.

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