International Institute for Dream Research

Wild Thing -or- Who Will Write the History of Sexual Dreams?

The Young and the Restless -or- Erotic Dream Experiments

Many dreams received by the International Institute for Dream Research (IIDR) speak about erotically experimenting in dreams. Michel Foucault's work on the "history of sexuality" has shown, such dreams are ancient. The dream interpretations "Strip Tease" and "French Kissing" are about modern female dreams and dreamers, while "The Young and the Restless" and "Wild Thing" are male ones. "Bi-curious" dreams are also seen as experiential forms of experimenting. Below are the dreams of a young Italian woman who evidently is exploring a variety of phenomenological dream aspects of the erotic menu and her voracious libidinal appetite.

Nadia, 21 Italian

Lately i have been having sexual dreams involving things i would never dream of actually doing in real life. Many of them are lucid. Many (although not all) of these dreams involve sexual explorations with other women. Almost every time, i stop myself in the dream and i say, "what will my boyfriend think?"

I love my boyfriend, i don't want to lose his love" and a few times i have said in the dream "well, guess what? i am just dreaming, so i'll go ahead on with it." In one dream i was sexually involved with two women and a weird looking guy, and shortly after it began i woke up. In another dream i was holding hands with a girl i knew from school, and when i saw my boyfriend walk by in the dream i immediately changed the way i was behaving.

I had a dream where i was following a girl around i knew from a camp and nothing really happened, it was just flirting. Another especially weird dream i had was where my dance teacher stopped me in a parking lot (there were grey clouds above and it looked like an early fall thunderstorm, the rain that was about to fall would have been cold) and said she had been interested in me for a while and that she just wanted to tell me that. I felt very confused in the dream as i absolutely adore her (when she's in my dreams, and in real life) and i remember her hand on my arm as i said i would have to think about it.

Before this we were at a performance and another dance teacher i have made a comment to me along the lines of "well if i were you, i wouldn't pass up the opportunity to be with her. I mean, look." As i looked at her in the dream (it was after [i think] we had both performed) i saw us together as a unit, even if only briefly, and i thought hard about it, and i felt good in the dream about having her hold my arm as we walked off, and being the masculine one in the relationship, and as she talked to me about it, i felt odd because of my boyfriend (real life) whom i adore and love dearly.

Mr Hagen's Reply: Girls Gone Wild in Italy -or- What Will My Boyfriend Think?

The "Girls Gone Wild" franchise seems to fit the erotic mindscape (a girl from school, a girl from camp, and woman dance teacher) of your dreams. The fact that you almost always think of your boyfriend and still proceed is most likely somehow part of the erotic thrill. When in one dream, your boyfriend enters the scene, you then change your behaviour. Your erotic life seems divided between; "sexual dreams involving things i would never dream of actually doing in real life.", and your explicit oneiric attractions, thoughts and feelings. In your associations that you have included you say; "I have these dreams as i feel safe in them, and i also feel safe knowing that my dreams are a safe place to explore things i feel that i would never want to deal with the reality of. When i am in my dreams, it is safe to explore."

Her influence on collective dream patterns is undeniable, Madonna shows off in her new song "Girl Gone Wild". You say that you "love" your boyfriend and yet your dreams for the most part are not about love, they are about "sex" (or what has also been called "lust"). That's the psychological problem of intimate "relationships" isn't it, how do sex, lust, flirting and love all fit together? As in other dreams sent to the IIDR, your divided real life and your more hidden from view dream life are reflected in the poetic sentiments of Nancy Sinatra's song "You Only Live Twice".

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