JOURNALS -- PART TWO (1986-present)
Changing My Image
Over the years I have had a number of dreams
-- usually not lucid -- where I am not myself.
Some of these dreams are rather silly, such
as being Star Trek's Captain Picard on the Enterprise. Others are
more profound, where I am acting out some tragic character in great peril.
The tragic characters are usually personalities which I fabricated and
assumed while dreaming, and do not represent any actual person I consciously
know.
I've not read or heard about the condition
of dreaming of being another person -- and especially being an unknown
person fabricated during the dream -- so I found these dreams very interesting.
I won't attempt a psychoanalysis of them.
I have even had a few such dreams, when lucid,
of being another person, as in the following dream description.
I have had dreams in which I can actively
alter my appearance, size, or even personage. Recently (last night,
as of this writing), I dreamed I was looking into a computer screen and
saw the reflection of my face. But it was not my face, it was my
father's face when he was perhaps in his 40s or 50s (I'm 43 now, and he's
83). As I saw this face I was astonished to realize that it's not
me, and this suddenly triggered the lucid state. I realized then
that I was dreaming, and I instantly decided to conduct a dream-experiment.
I tried to change the reflected face into that of a blonde-haired man (I
have dark brown hair). But perhaps my subconscious had other ideas.
The image of my young father's face "morphed" into that of a -- black woman!
I was quite surprised at this. Still lucid and conscious, I tried
again for the blonde image but it was not to appear. I found this
rather amusing, somewhat frustrating, and inexplicable. (I'm afraid
to ask what the Freudian interpretation of this would be! I'm certainly
anything but gay. Or black. Or female. Or transsexual. Or transvestite.)
Back to Dream Journals Part Two Contents