I'm staying at an Airbnb. I am there to take photographs which will help with marketing for the Airbnb. The decor is unusual, eerie, and there are giant taxidermy pieces on the walls. There is a lion and a large serpent. They are larger than in real life. There are also dried up large sheets of leather on the walls. I can see the animals are hollow inside, they are hanging up and have very rough stitching, like the taxidermy is not well made. I move some magazines, so as to include them in the photographs, but I don't want to mess with them and the room too much. I then go out of the Airbnb, but I get locked out and have to go to get a key to let myself back in. On the way back there are people around and I fly past them as they seem threatening. It starts to rain a bit, but then there is sun on the window. I take a photo for the Airbnb. There is then somebody I knew in elementary school sleeping in a bed. She's an artist and I'm excited to see this childhood friend. She asks me if I'm there to help with the ceremony. She's an adult now, and maybe she was expecting me for this. I see canvases and art pieces all around. 
She goes to the kitchen and she brings out Parmesan cheese and honey. In the ceremony we are going to put the cheese and the honey over the canvases. This ruins the paintings. I do as I'm told in this because I know I'm there to support her. I'm not a painter, but I am observer and helper. Part of my role, I think, had been to bring the cheese there, and the ceremony was something to do with our friendship.


I am in the middle of Bristol and can see across to the Clifton campus, which is on a hill. 
It's mainly concrete with high rise buildings of yellow sandstone. A cinematic or theatrical grey curtain comes down over the buildings and then came down completely and disappeared. I can then see the blue sky. On the campus there and there's lots of activities going on of people walking around. I then see the tree in the middle of the campus. It has rounded leaves, a stem and roots, and suddenly the tree starts to run towards me. I can see it has eyes and there is fruit in the tree, and it's as if the tree has got hair. It is running along and the roots are running. Other people run away left and right, and it's coming at me, which is frightening, but then it runs past me. I then see the Temple Quarter Campus, which is a modern campus, with glass buildings. I go into a room on that campus and there is an elevator there. There's a man in the elevator, and he's selling many types of exotic fruits, so it is very colourful. The lift is going up and down, and each time it stops people can come and buy food. People are asking for millet, because they think it's more healthy than rice. I have a bag of the millet, but it looks like black eyed peas, but without the blackness to them, and larger than millet usually is. I talk to the man and he says he has run this store for 17 years. He's got shirt and trousers on, which are sort of blue and black colour. He is telling me how he gets food from around the world. I recognise that he's talking in the same accent from an area of my country that I’ve got, so I am pleased with that. And then because we are speaking the same dialect and are from the same place he gives me extra millet. And then the dream ends.

The dream was told and painted as part of a Dream Salon aimed at demonstrating beneficial methods for discussing and interpreting dreams. Mark Blagrove then gave a talk about the possibilities of malign uses of dreams and dream interpretation, and the possible use of apps to enable these malign uses. The PowerPoint for the talk is on the science page here.    

I have gone to the countryside by bus. It is Autumn. There are about six of us, some are friends and some are strangers. There are fields and trees and hedgerows and a narrow path with embankments on both sides which becomes a gorge or gully. I see in the distance about 6 people, very upright, with military-like bearing and red coats and black trousers. They do not look benign and so we need to evade them. There's now a dark grey cliff on the left side and a muddy path that drops down about 5 or 10 meters to a field. I slide down the hill side which has fine shale, like soft, dark grey lava. At the bottom I land on the path and I am with my friends again.  

In the discussion the dreamer said that the feeling of sliding fast was very visceral and lasted all day. He then told us of his current and recent severe life stresses. A comment was made that the dreamer did land on his feet in the dream, which is positive. The dreamer spoke of how important the local landscape and his friends are to him.

Julia composed the painting as a story board, with its parts separated by the white space between paragraphs. Many words related to friends and friendship were found to be present on the pages and Julia incorporated them into the painting. These include in the top scene: friends, two men who were friends, their friendship. In the middle scene: my friend, my self. And in the bottom scene: friendships, young man friend.      
 
The Dream Salon was the closing event for an exhibition of international and surrealist art. 

It is a hot, sunny day and I am at a picnic. I am lying down with a friend, we are piled on each other.  Other friends are on a blanket, and I wonder why they are a bit away. In the distance I see three mountains, which have snow on the top third of them. Because they can be seen from the city they remind me of mountains in southern California. My friend tells me that she has seen some abusive posts about me from an ex of mine. My friend is anonymous when reading these posts as everyone is anonymous on that platform. In the posts my ex says I am a ‘fiend for love’, and asks ‘did I ever really love him?’ I am confused and shocked about this. We had been with him the day before, playing golf, and he had obviously made the posts right after that. Next, I am on my way to a soccer game in an uber. On the journey I let a childhood friend of mine know about the incident through Snapchat, which I would use back then with friends. I then get out a short distance from the sports ground, which is orange. I get to my team, which is in a huddle. They are with my dad, who is the coach, and I realize that I am back in my childhood. They have a green uniform and he has a black uniform with a cap and clipboard. We are then having a snack, maybe at half time. It is toast with lots of thick mayonnaise and sardines. I think that maybe this is the type of snack my grandmother used to have. 

The event was hosted by the Neuroscience and Psychology of Sleep Lab. In the discussion the dreamer spoke about living in the UK away from her family and friends in southern California. 

During the painting process Julia incorporated the following words into the painting:
Top left, in the grass: 
intense sensations
feels hot
slightly warm

Further along the grass, and referring to the grown up and childhood scenes:
the two opposing 
ages in respect of the evaluation 
distinguished between 

Next, on the grass, and referring to the ex who had sent abusive posts:
dreams which
foretell future events,
whose object was to misguide him or lead him

On the pink picnic blanket:
explanation
of a romantic nature

In the head of the small figure of the dreamer coming away from the car:
kinship

Next to the huddle of school friends:
A reminiscence 

It is winter and I am in a castle, possibly in the ballroom. There is a Christmas party going on and my boss is giving a speech. He says something that's really offensive and rude, it is disrespectful to the group. It's sort of attacking one person, but is actually attacking the whole group. So everybody decides to leave. However, I want to say to the boss that I feel sorry about a colleague who has had to leave the company during the year. I am the last to walk out and so have the opportunity to say this to the boss. But, instead of saying it, I just say "Merry Christmas”, as the boss looks so sad because people are walking out. As we leave, I see there's a perfect dinner there, like in a restaurant, and so we do stay, with four of us at a table, and about forty people there in all. I am then worried because  I may have to pay for the dinner, but then I realise it is the others who have to pay, each about 30 euros, and I don't have to pay because I said, “Merry Christmas”. Everyone is then eating. Afterwards I go with my boyfriend out of the castle. There is a sunrise and it is also spring. We go to our car, which is a mixture of a two-door and a four-door car, each of which in waking life I have owned. My boyfriend drives the car but somehow at the same time we are trying to find it. We are discussing where the car is parked, but this is awkward because there's also another person in the car and she's not happy because my boyfriend and I are arguing. She asks if she should get out of the car because of this but I say, no, as I decide it should be me who leaves. I tell my boyfriend that I'll find another way home. He drives off and I become annoyed because I had assumed he would drive around and come back to pick me up. I then see two cats, one climbs onto my shoulder and one is on the ground. I phone my boyfriend to tell him about the cats. 

The dream was told as part of a Dream Salon on the last day of the Schallaburg Castle and Museum exhibition Träume ... Träumen / Dreaming ... Dreams. For more on the exhibition see the post on our art-related posts page. 

Julia chose pages so that the left one had one long paragraph, for painting the dinner scene, and the right-hand page had four paragraphs, for painting the subsequent events.
In reference to the boss's offensive speech, there are the following words discovered during the painting process on the lower left-hand page:
a bomb
as 
​a speech
the outrage
that immediately
detonation

and on the top right-hand page:
the speaker had finished
The other speakers   
he supposed
a specially successful speech.   

I am sleeping, lying naked in bed, and realise that there is a large anaconda moving inside me. I can feel it through my skin and it is very solid. It is mainly green, with black and yellow stripes, and white underneath. I wonder how it has got inside me. It makes eye contact with me and then puts its head down. In my dream I then wake up and realise that it is now not an anaconda but a baby inside me, which is soft. It is fully formed, at eight months, and is moving. I wonder, is this real? I know that now I know what it is like to have life inside me. Through my skin I can see that it is white, and my skin is light and golden. I know that he needs me and that I need him. I feel that the anaconda was female and the baby was male.       

Julia chose this page for the painting as it had a small (footnotes) paragraph for the anaconda at the bottom and a large paragraph for the baby at the top. She had also noticed the words 'The child' at the top left. During the discussion of the dream she saw further child and mother words on the page and incorporated them into the painting.

When the dreamer first told the dream at this event she started by saying it was a dream within a dream. Such false awakenings are rare, the person dreams they have awoken and knows that they have been dreaming up to that point, so the experience has similarities with lucid dreams, but the person then does not realise that they are still asleep and dreaming.      

I am clearing out a box of old keepsakes. The box is made of cardboard or thin wood, with a lid, and has been in my closet for years. It has long-forgotten trinkets in its compartments and I am wondering which to discard, as they are not valuable. My friend is helping me and takes out a double crystal ball. She holds it so as to show it to me. It is made of two glass balls, joined together, and is yellowed with age. It would have been worn as a pendant and may have been given to me many years before, possibly by a boyfriend, but I don't remember. I am thinking that I want to keep the crystal as a keepsake, as it would have been precious in the past, but I am then very surprised to see that inside it there is a black spider, which is alive. I then see bugs inside which are moving. They are like the inclusions of small animals in amber, but those are frozen in time. I wonder, how did living things get inside the solid glass? I am repulsed and decide to throw it away. 

For the painting Julia chose page 13 of the edition we use of The Interpretation of Dreams because it had two paragraphs in the top half of the page, on which to paint the box and its lid, and a long footnote in the bottom half, for the hand and crystal balls.      

My husband has spilt some wine or whiskey on a surface. He didn't pick up the bottle and so I need to collect up all the golden liquid. I'm then going on a retreat with my friend Zoe, she hadn't been invited, and we're both going to Brighton for the day. I take a wrong turn and there's a traffic jam ahead looking like a spaghetti junction, down a hill, only resembling an Italian village. We decide to turn around and go swimming in the mixed pond at Hampstead. I'm then showing slides on a big screen of a retreat last year. The slides show a dramatic sea with realistic waves and a boat.  Zoe is talking and obsessively smoking, she wants to join our group at the retreat, I don't want her to but don't object. Alex takes stuff to the boat and I'm proud of him. I'm next in a bed and a man is next to me and gives me a small kiss and he says we will meet again at the pond for a swim. I am then at home and there's building work going on. I'm in a chair and my mother is lying down on a bed. I have to have an operation: There is no more anaesthetic and no glass eyes. A man reaches and takes out my left eye, leaving a long, crude, diagonal scar in its place. I'm crying but my mother says not to cry and just talks about what she's been doing. I'm thinking that she is a narcissist because she's telling me not to cry. I get cross and I shout but I can't get the words out, I want to say that she's a narcissist. Alex has then bought me a leather passport holder, I know this and I’m curious he hasn’t given it to me. I'm then near my daughter's school in Camden, passing by a tube train stop named library 22. I cycle through a pedestrianised town square and bump into her teacher, Miss Law. She's with other teachers setting up an event. I go to Gail's, the cake shop, to bring her something but nothing is left except two muffins and a cheesecake. I wake up feeling very nauseous.

I am having to return from a holiday with my husband because the holiday destination has become dangerous. The place has dark colours, blacks and maroons. I am then on the plane, which is calm. After flying back to the UK we go to my childhood hometown. I realise we can't go to what was my parents' home and instead go the house of a family that my family knew at the time. I break in at the back of the house as we need to charge our phones. The son in that family comes to the house. There is going to be a party in the garden and I recognise my old friend Johnny Two Hats, but he is not friendly. I then need to fight people in the garden ninja style and realise that I am on my own in doing this. A lion then appears and I have to fight the lion. I try to lock it in the house but people keep letting it out, but not on purpose, just when they are opening the doors to go in. I then have to fight the lion in a cage, like in Mixed Martial Arts.   

This dream salon was part of an afternoon of talks and presentations for World Sleep Day at the Cardiff University Brain Imaging Centre, hosted by NaPS, the Neuroscience and Psychology of Sleep Lab. The schedule for the day is here. NaPS researchers gave a talk on how sleep processes memories, and the sleep lab methods that are used to study this. Mark Blagrove then gave a talk on what role dreams might play in this within-sleep processing, contrasting this with our proposal that dream-sharing has an empathy-eliciting and group bonding effect, and that this effect may have led to dream content having evolved across human history in parallel with the evolution of story telling.   

A film made by Cardiff University of Mark Blagrove's talk, the telling and discussion of the above dream, Julia painting the dream, and Julia explaining the composition of the painting, followed by a speeded-up film of the painting process, can be seen here.           

Dream of ceramic artist Abigail Schama, one of the artists in the Freud Museum exhibition Women and Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists.  

We have bought a quite ordinary house in the Somerset countryside to move into. It has an unremarkable garden with three outhouses in it. Two of them are empty greenhouses, at right angles to each other, the third is wooden and painted pink. I thought I could use the garden for raku firing but see that the greenhouses are in the way. At the back of the garden there is a public pathway with a further lawn beyond it which we had agreed to buy. I don't know what we bought it for, or what to do with it, as it is as unremarkable as the garden. On the lawn a wolf is sitting. Behind the lawn there is a grand National Trust property and a beach. At the beach someone has found a treasure chest while beachcombing or mudlarking with old papers inside, personal items, maybe letters, and I start reading them. I am excited to find out about someone from the past who has written them. But a young woman with a black bob and yellow coat says that they are hers, which is disappointing to me as I had wanted to delve into a stranger’s old possessions. In the next door house there are bohemian neighbours, one of them is a long-haired man; they play music and I wish I could join them but they are oblivious to me. I know that the previous owner of our new house made mediocre pottery and I think that she's trying to copy me, even though she is not interested in my work. I also know that I am having to clear out my old house. I am then given a lift to the local town which is next to the lawn. It is a charming, bustling, medieval market town with cobblestone streets. I'm sitting on the high wall of a bridge. My guide jumps down and I want to follow her but it is perilously high. I then slide down and onto some wooden rubbish bins which break my fall. There are two schoolgirls in brown uniforms with capes and berets; maybe it is their end of term. I go into a large haberdashery shop that has banks of sewing machines. There are two women working there who are eating cheese sandwiches. I ask them to teach me how to use a sewing machine because it would be a good way to meet other creative people. But they say they do not teach sewing and they scoff and say ‘not’.

Details of this Freud Museum Dream Salon are here.  The Salon was held during the museum's Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists exhibition, which Abigail Schama is part of. In the discussion we explored with Abigail how the dream may be related to her being at the museum and to being part of the exhibition. This included reference to the old house, to the wolf (paintings of the dream of the Freud's patient the Wolf Man are on the first floor landing of the museum), to old personal papers (many are on show in the museum and exhibition) and to interactions with creative people.   

The event was funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, as part of the UK Festival of Social Science 2024. 

I am on what looks like the New York subway system, but it’s cleaner and above ground and goes to suburban places. The train is silver and dark blue. It’s sunny. I am in a hurry to get to a presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I overshoot my stop and have to walk back to where I was supposed to meet a friend of mine who is going to come to the debate with me. When I get to where we're supposed to meet my friend isn’t there, and so I'm waiting for her. Other people are milling around, outside the large building. The building is old, like from the 1930s, red brick, with hard limestone around the square door. I feel a sense of anxiety, waiting for her and feeling the need to go inside, being pulled in two directions. But then I see three women that I went to high school with and end up in a conversation with them and catching up. They have black shirts and I have a black jacket and white trousers. I was friends with one of the women when I was very young, but she was more like an acquaintance when we were in high school, and she was quite conservative. Eventually they peer-pressure me to go inside the debate with them but without my friend, who I'm still waiting for.

The dream was told shortly before the 2024 US Presidential election. The Dream Salon was part of the Surrealisms Paris 2024 conference, held by the International Society for the Study of Surrealism and hosted by the American University of Paris. The conference was a commemoration for the centenary of the founding of Surrealism. Details of the conference are here.

An accelerated 7-minute video of the dream being painted is on the DreamsID YouTube channel here.   

I am outside a building which is as an amalgamation of places and buildings that I know. I go inside through a pointed-arch door, the door has a cold, round, brass handle on the left-hand side. The door is made of old wood with three decorative vertical panels. Inside there is a white corridor and a door. I want to it but, although there is no-one around, I hear a voice which says ‘you don’t want to go in there’. There is then a group of people around, like on a tour, and one of the group says ‘I am scared’ and is not able to go into the room, and again I am told ‘you don’t want to go in there.’ I go further down the white corridor and there is a wooden door which leads onto a room like a broom cupboard. A hand opens it but a person says to me ‘you don’t want to see it.’  I then go down the hall, there are now no people around and I see a small door to a crawl space. I open it and listen and call ‘hello’ to see if anyone is there. No-one answers. I crawl along and the space is not straight. I go up, over, down, it is a windy maze. There is then an old room, like a library but without books, it has wooden walls and a long oak table. The table has a red fabric runner along the middle of it, with tassels on the side. The library is dimly lit, no-one has been there for years, but it is not dusty. As I am about to explore it I am yanked to another part of the house. I am screaming with frustration and anger that I cannot get into the rooms, which are all locked. They have beautiful doors, arched and old, which makes me want to go into them. There is no answer as to why I can’t go in. In the end I find a narrow corridor, which gets me away from the people who are stopping me going through the doors.

This dream was told as part of the Minotaur Ballet Surreal Swansea exhibition of contemporary Surrealist artworks and performances, 8th - 26th October 2024, held to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Surrealism.

Dream of author and journalist Karen van Kampen
I’m wearing a long, luxurious, camel-coloured winter coat that reminds me of a coat I tried on in waking life but didn’t buy because it was too expensive. Along the bottom inside of the coat is a large pocket or pouch in which I’m hiding someone who I seem to know. So I can keep enjoying my dream, I convince myself that I’ll remember who they are when I wake up. There are people running around me, screaming for the person who is lost, yet I don’t say anything. I tell the person that they’re safe with me and I decide what I’m doing is a good thing. In my dream, I awaken and write down my dream so I can relax and enjoy it instead of thinking about research for my book.
Suddenly I’m in front of a door with a large rectangular opening. Behind the door is a restaurant, and if someone wants to eat or work there, they have to fit through this kind of oversized mail slot. I’m trying to get a job there, but I refuse to try and fit through the slot. I tell the manager that it’s unfair to make people do this. It’s body shaming. He points to a tall, burly man who slides through the slot with ease. I tell him that I don’t want to work there, even though I need the job because my bank account is empty.
I find myself on a barren golf course in Northern Ontario. I’m carrying a large sack, and it’s filled with my dreams. I’m going to carry the dreams with me into the morning to write about them. It’s early spring. The grass is brown, and the trees have no leaves. I find a heart-shaped puddle that reflects the sunshine, making me feel like everything is going to be OK. I remember my daughter pointing out a heart-shaped puddle here on one of our walks during the first COVID lockdown. The bag is so heavy that I stop walking. I open the bag and let a few dreams escape. They are like tiny screens playing videos of my dreams, but I can’t see what’s happening on them. I watch as they float through the air, drifting away. Then I wake up.
 
Karen van Kampen's waking life background at the time of the dream 
I’m writing a book on the science of dreaming, so I’m spending a lot of time recording and reflecting on my dreams. Leading up to this dream, I was also exploring some new work opportunities. Our son is applying to university while our daughter has just started high school. Recently, we drove by the golf course that was in my dream, and it reminded me of one of our long walks during COVID lockdown when our daughter found a puddle in the shape of a heart. At the time of the dream, we were awaiting the results of my husband’s heart scan, a routine follow-up test after his heart surgery a few years ago.
       

Six people, including me, lie on the ground in our back yard, in 2 rows of 3 or 3 rows of 2, each on a thin cloth or towel, as if each lies in a garden bed without being “raised".  Some are friends, some unknown.  I say, “Since I had cancer, this is what I do – lie down when I feel like it and rest mid-afternoon, if need be.”  I put a black, white and gray cloth headband back on as I stand and talk with a friend.  I introduce her to another friend.  Conversation ensues. There are fruit trees, plants, flowers, and raised beds in the yard.   
 
Next is a scene of friends, including me, lying on the floor of a building by the coast – again, bodies on cloths, in parallel rows. The proprietor of a nearby restaurant, which owns part of the beach, comes over and hands me a business card with an offer of that private beach for us to lie on, provided we have dinner at his restaurant.  It seems like Cattlemen’s, maybe a chain, or a well-known, long-established restaurant on the coast.  On the one hand, lying by the water appeals to me, but if access to that beach is granted only by dining at his expensive restaurant, it isn’t worth the price.  I don't accept the offer.
 
In a final scene people are staying overnight at a house like ours – in the living room – and try to sleep.  I may be on the small red sofa.  The light goes on and won’t turn off, no matter how much I try toggling the switch by the door.  One of the would-be sleepers rises, from the fuss with the light, to see if he/she can help. The dream ends. 

I have gone to a music festival with a girl I know, who is skinny and has a shaved head. It is nighttime and the event is now over, the stages and shops are closing down. There are lots of people from the local village there, they are dressed older than we are, with brown and black clothes. I am trying to find a toilet in the village. We find public toilets which have a urinal and a separate toilet cubicle next to it, with a green plastic door. There is an old lightbulb, and dark texture on the ceiling. I see a baby monkey on top of the toilet. The monkey looks creepy, covered in slime and blood, and is maybe new-born. My friend though says the monkey is cute and scared, and that other people might hurt it, and so she holds the monkey in her arms. We go with the monkey into the street, which is lit by streetlights. Outside there are two men and other villagers, who look like monkeys or evil spirits, with red eyes. We walk out of the village and see a man peeing onto a bush. He is messy, slightly bald, and maybe homeless. He calls out aggressively at my friend. The monkey is irritated at this, gets down from my friend’s arms, and rips the skin off the head of the man and places the face onto his own face. The monkey says, ‘I look like you, now.’

 
Julia chose pages 364 and 365 of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (Wordsworth Editions) so that when turned by 90 degrees the top page (p.365) had three paragraphs and a footnote so as to hold the festival, girl friend, toilet, and urinal, respectively. The bottom page (p.364) had two large paragraphs, one on which to paint the villagers with peeing man, and one for the monkey peeling off the man’s face. The first part of the artwork that Julia composed and painted was the festival tent, striped red and white, with the red over the printed lines of the page, and with stars above for the night sky made from painting around all the o letters in that section. Near the very end of the group discussion the dreamer mentioned that he comes from a communitarian culture, whereas his partner is from the US and is part of that individualistic culture. He said that they both learn and take on aspects of each other’s values as a result. In talking about the painting after the event an attendee pointed out that the stripes of the festival tent and the stars are like the US flag! As these features were painted at the beginning of the process it was a poignant synchronicity that the dreamer only spoke of his American partner at the end of the event!       
 
Julia also highlighted the found poem:
 
I have dreamed
far more
into
retaining the
interpretation
of dreams. –
the forgetting
the amnesia of
applying my
value 

Whereas we usually discuss and paint a dream that is told to us live by the dreamer, here we took a dream of André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, published in 1924, as part of a symposium, at the 41st IASD conference, commemorating the centenary of the creation of Surrealism and the publication of The Manifesto of Surrealism.

'I arrive at Paris and descend the staircase of a train station very like the Gare de l'Est. I experience an urge to urinate, and get ready to cross the square, on the other side of which I know I'll be able to relieve myself, when a few steps away on the same platform I discern a urinal of small dimensions, in a new and very elegant model. I am no sooner there than I ascertain the mobility of this urinal and become aware, as I am not alone there, of the inconvenience resulting from this mobility. After all it is a vehicle like any other, and I decide to remain on the platform. From that place I observe the disquieting manoeuvers, not far from us, of a second "flying-urinal" similar to ours. Failing to draw the attention of my fellow travellers to the disordered movement and the consequent risk to pedestrians, I step down and succeed in persuading the the imprudent conductor to give up his seat and follow me. He is a man under thirty who, on being questioned, proved quite evasive. He lets on that he is a military doctor in possession of a driving license. Being a stranger to the city where we are, he makes it known that he comes "from the back country" [de la brousse] with no other details. I try to convince him that although he is a doctor that he may be sick, but he enumerates the symptoms of my illnesses, starting with the different fevers. He shows none of these symptoms, which anyway belong to the simplest clinical category. He concludes his explanation with these words: "At worst I have general paresis" [the most malignant form of syphilis]. The examination of his reflexes that I at once undertake, is not conclusive (normal patellar ligament, feeble Achilles ligament, called tendinous in the dream). I forgot to say that we have stopped at the threshold of a white house and that my interlocutor constantly goes up and down a flight of steps one story high. Following my examination I try vainly to learn how he spent his time "in the back country." While making a new ascent of the steps he finally recalled that he had put together a collection there. I insist on knowing the contents of the collection. "A collection of five shrimps" [he says]. He descends the steps again: "I swear to you, dear friend, that I am very hungry," and so saying he opens a straw valise I had not noticed before. He profits from the occasion to let me admire his collection, made up of five shrimps of very different size and looking like a fossil (the hardened carapace is empty and absolutely transparent). But innumerable intact carapaces fall to the ground when he raises the upper part of the valise. He answers my astonishment, "No, there are only five—those over there." From the bottom of the valise he takes out a roasted back of rabbit, and with nothing but his hands he sets about eating by scraping with his nails on its vertebral column. The flesh is distributed in long filaments like that of rays [fish] and seems to have a pasty consistency. I can hardly stand this disgusting spectacle. After a rather long silence my companion says to me: "You will always recognize criminals by their immense jewels. Remember that there is no death, only reversible directions [or senses]." '

Dream reprinted from Spector, J.J. (1989). André Breton and the Politics of Dream: Surrealism in Paris, ca. 1918–1924. American Imago, 46, No. 4 (Winter 1989), pp. 287-317. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26303837. Dream originally published in the first issue of La Révolution surréaliste, December 1924.

Spector writes that the flying urinal and valise both represent Marcel Duchamp, referring to Duchamp’s readymade Fountain (1917), a urinal bought from a hardware store, and to Duchamp’s production of small suitcases which contained many miniature reproductions of his artworks. An article on such Boîte-en-valise / box in a suitcase is here and a photograph of one, with a miniature of Fountain, is below. Spector suggests that the dream is based on Breton’s appreciation of Duchamp’s unique ‘elusiveness’ and ‘intellectual equivocation’ while asserting his own superiority and prudence, ‘attentive to the safety of others (the risks of the flying urinal, ignored by others)’ and being a ‘real doctor’, parading his ‘army medical training and technical vocabulary’. Spector highlights Breton’s ‘disgust with Duchamp’s greedy gesture of pulling a rabbit out of his valise rather than a top hat – a post-Dada trick of a kind that Breton had rejected.’ He also states that the penultimate sentence of the dream, on recognising criminals, ‘brings to mind his identification with the glamorous role of the criminal Fantômas. The Surrealists admired this popular film character for defying the police and for his ability to slip through the net of bourgeois authority.’ To Spector this alludes to Breton’s ‘position as antibourgeois revolutionary’.

In this symposium Mark Blagrove described the history of surrealism from the First Manifesto in 1924; Bernard Welt (Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University) reviewed and showed clips of surrealist films and also films, such as of Buster Keaton, beloved by the surrealists; Loren Goodman (Yonsei University, South Korea) reviewed and gave examples of Dadaist and Surrealist poetry, including that of Tristan Tzara, and then led the attendees in the production of exquisite corpses, each comprised of lines taken from different dreams of the attendees. At the start of the symposium Mark had read out Breton's dream and Julia found pages on which to paint it. At the end of the symposium Julia showed the final painting and described how she had composed it, including how she had chosen one page (used for the left page of the painting) because at the top it had a short indented poem which she used to create the shape of the urinal. A five-line footnote at the bottom of the right-hand page was used for painting the five shrimps.

The finished artwork was exhibited at the gallery of the American University of Paris as part of commemorations for the centenary of the founding of Surrealism. 

​I am looking out of an upstairs window at night. I see a valley and a churning brown river flowing uphill, all lit by the moon. I look closely and see that the river is in fact a herd of wild boar running up a hill, the light on their fur looks like a rippling brown river. I look again and now see it is only one boar, running through the undergrowth. I am then in the lower back garden patio of my childhood home, which is an old Victorian house. The patio is square, concrete, and sunken. It is surrounded by a trellis with green plants growing on it. My cat Mumu is climbing amongst the greenery in the trellis. I want to hold him, but he does not want to be held and eludes each of my grasps by hiding amongst the plants. I get hold of him and see that he is wounded, with a graze that is forming a scab on his right side. I feel guilty for not keeping him safe and fear that when my wife sees that he is wounded I will be blamed.     

I am outside an old house, I don't know where it is. It looks like a hotel, very posh, with gold light coming from the windows. I peer through a window and see a large room with old furniture. I knock on the door as I want to use the toilet, but there is no answer. I go in and look around what is a large reception room, there is no bathroom to use, it is empty but with wooden, very ornamental furniture. It is not really creepy but is instead inviting, drawing me in with curiosity. I find a keyhole in a furniture drawer and look for the key, and then find more keyholes and more keys. There are twenty to thirty keyholes and I unlock them in turn like a combination lock. The keys are all metal and of different shapes and sizes. I enjoy this and feel like I am piecing together a puzzle. From this dark, brown room with wooden floors and wooden furniture I go into a room that has concrete walls and is undecorated and not well lit. Having unlocked the locks seems to have allowed me into this room. The only furniture in this room is tables, on which are cardboard boxes. In the boxes there are objects that I know had been mine many years ago, including tools and a pottery vase and other pottery items. I had not seen them for years. I then see a friend who says 'congratulations, you and your things are free to go'. I leave, but without the objects, and have a feeling of relief.
​

Julia chose pages to paint on with a large indented paragraph on the left-hand side, so as to depict the house seen from the outside, and three indented sentences on the right-hand side which had shapes like keys. In reference to the vase and other pottery items, Julia highlighted 'and hollow containers', and, as the objects were from earlier in life, Julia highlighted 'told the story of the forgotten' and 'reminiscence of a scene in my childhood'. Regarding the undecorated concrete room, Julia highlighted 'enclosed in my cavern', and, in reference to the friend, 'dreams, expressed a friend'.         

In the discussion the dreamer told of liking physical or mechanical puzzles, and of recently having evaluative thoughts about past friendships. 

This Dream Salon was organised by University of Wales Trinity Saint David as part of the Philosophy Conversations series of online and face-to-face public engagements, funded by and in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Philosophy.          

I come out of the toilet on a private jet, having washed my hands. I walk on the red carpet down the plane and look out of a small window. Below is my home country, Latvia, it is Autumn, and I see green trees, brown trees, some dead trees, and possibly some water or a lake, but there are no houses. The plane is travelling from the UK to Latvia, it is flying low and I know it will be landing in about 20 minutes. I am aware of the presence of the pilot and a stewardess, although I don't see them, and I know I am in good hands. I sit down at a pink sofa, sitting opposite my grandfather. I am surprised as he looks as he did in his 30s, with black hair, black t-shirt and smart black jacket. He looks at me very lovingly, I feel warmth between us and I ask 'Why are you here?' Behind him I see my grandmother, standing and being busy, she looks as she did when younger; she is mature and protecting and reassuring. She is wearing a brown skirt and grey top. I don't want to focus on my grandmother and so go back to my grandfather. Without actually speaking I ask him 'Why are you here? Why now?' I know he is there to support and protect and guide me. 

We discussed the relationship of the dream to the dreamer’s intention to soon return from living in the UK to her home country, Latvia, where she was brought up by her grandparents.

Below is a photograph of Julia describing and discussing the painting of the dream. In reference to the dreamer's grandfather and grandmother, Julia highlighted in the painting the words 'relation' and 'the two relations'. We were very glad to have this event at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, which is the largest training centre for transpersonal psychotherapy in Europe.         

I am a guest at a summer house with a group of people. In the dream they are my friends, but at the same time I don't know any of them. The dream occurs in two scenes. The first in the living room, where all the people are together and prepare to pack and leave to their homes, but I have forgotten to pack. The second scene takes part in a bedroom. Everybody leaves and I am in the room with a woman and a child. The child is about three years old, the woman might be her mother. I am with the woman and young girl in the bedroom, playing with the young girl. Suddenly, a very large anaconda comes through the brightly lit door into the bedroom. It is striped with brown and green and beige. It looks at me with its long eyelashes revealing the face of a female snake. “She” moves to the bed, where she then lies comfortably, in a spiral. At first, I was surprised, then fearful, thinking it might attack the child, and finally I am calm.

During the discussion of the dream Julia highlighted the words: 'You were born Latin', and 'in Latin my own course', referring to the dreamer saying during the discussion that she was from Latin America and is in the middle of important changes; 'postponement', in reference to the delay in leaving; ‘In my dream I make fun’, in reference to playing with the young girl; 'powerful', referring to the anaconda; and 'female - child – the child - I know will be attacked - was very young', in reference to the fears for the child's safety.

We were very honoured to hold this Dream Salon at Cabaret Voltaire, which was the birthplace of Dadaism in 1916. In that year artists, poets and other literary creatives came to Zurich and to the Cabaret Voltaire to escape from the war. Dadaism then spread to other countries, and led to Surrealism, with the first Manifesto of Surrealism being written in 1924. Our Dream Salon took place in the historical hall of Cabaret Voltaire, where performances such as of Hugo Ball had taken place in 1916, details are here. Photo below is of Julia describing the finished painting and the painting process to the audience, other photos are of the Cabaret building and setting up the dream salon. An article about Hugo Ball, founder of the Dada movement, can be read in The Collector Magazine here. A 1967 short documentary by Greta Deses, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, and with contributions from Max Ernst, Gabrièle Buffet, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Richter and Man Ray, and with a reconstruction of a performance at the Cabaret, can be seen here. 

A woman's dream: I am in a large bedroom, which looks like an open plan apartment, with my large untidy bed and five smaller beds. There are five young men in the room, all wearing trousers but no shirts; smooth-chested and with bare, white torsos, like Greek statues. I am sitting next to one of them. I can feel our legs touching. I feed him a piece of carrot cake with a shiny chocolate topping, telling him to 'pay attention' to the topping, and to eat it while it is still warm. I think his lips look like the lips of a man I know and I have to check who this boy really is. Another young man arrives and tells me he is at medical school. He seems to be much more mature than the other boys. He stands up and says that he will go grocery shopping for me. I look at my bed and think I should tidy it up, so I go and do it.

Julia chose pages so that there was one large paragraph on the left-hand side, for the large bedroom scene, and a small paragraph on the bottom of the right-hand side, for the lips. She highlighted the words 'Eighteen years was the age', and 'the young man' and 'a young fellow', and 'youthfully', in reference to the young men.   

(Details of the anniversary conference are here.)

I am at a puzzle competition. My ex-husband is there as well, trying to solve the puzzles. I am excited as I want to win and am good at puzzles. The first one is a very large jigsaw with large but flimsy pieces. Many people are doing this, indoors on a carpet, but I am dismissive of it as it looks like a children’s puzzle. I also see an art game with blue, yellow and white shapes on a canvas, and, outside, an action game, like dungeons and dragons, with actors playing it. I don’t want to do these and instead try a fourth puzzle, placing scrawny, long weeds, with daisy flowers, on the middle of three concrete steps that are outside. I also place many of the flower heads on the bottom step, following a pattern I have for them. The environment is concrete, like a campus. I am very happy to focus on arranging the flowers rather than doing the other three puzzles, which my ex-husband is working on.      

In the discussion the dreamer related the theme of the dream to her work in a high-pressured role that involves much collaborative problem-solving, and to seeing some small flowers growing when told of the death of a person close to her. Julia chose pages from Freud's book that have four paragraphs, so as to match the four puzzles in the dream. At the top of the right hand page was found the words and phrase 'all the problems discovered in the dream remain unsolved', and, below it, 'call for a long examination', and, on the left page, 'reconciliation with a friend' and, in two places, the number 4. 

We were interviewed by BBC journalist Neil Prior about our book and our work, and he then told us a recent dream, which Julia painted. The article is here. The following is Neil's dream. 
I am now 44, but in my dream I am 14 or 15 and transported back to my boarding school for blind and visually impaired students in Worcester. There is a fountain on the grass at the front of the school. I am carrying a large braille typewriter. As it is 30 years hence, I am utterly confused as to what lessons I should be attending and where my files and textbooks are. Nevertheless I possess a superpower: I know everything that will happen in the next 30 years. To laughter, I try to explain to my classmates that by 2023 their mobile phones will be several times more powerful than our entire school network. I know who will win that year's FA Cup final, who will win the general election and which horse will succeed in the Grand National. I am desperately trying to put bets on with a bookie or call my partner Sarah, who I did not meet until 2013. However, everything on which I try to make a phone call is anything but a mobile - a pocket calculator, a TV remote control (which has a red, a yellow and a green button at the top) … nothing can connect me to the present day.

In the discussion Neil told us that he sometimes has dreams of being younger, set at a time when he still had his sight. 
For the painting Julia chose a page (page 341) because it has a separate footnote at the bottom, which was suitable on which to paint the TV remote control. During the discussion she highlighted on the painting the words 'I was working principally on my own', which refers to Neil's difference from the other students who did not have Neil's knowledge in the dream. 

It’s daytime and I am driving a car through a rural setting. There are green hills on both sides and green mountains in the distance. The car is travelling at speed, but there’s no noise. I have my two dogs in the car, one is a golden retriever and one is black, but they are different sizes than in waking life, each dog is the size that the other dog is in waking life. The dogs are in the back of the car and my two grandchildren are strapped into their seats in the middle of the car, they are much younger than in waking life. On the winding road the car becomes out of control, I feel paralysed, my legs won’t move to the brakes, and I am pushed back in my seat and so I do not hold the steering wheel. There is a sharp bend and the car veers off the road. It goes through a hedge and then stops, but there is no crash. Throughout the dream in the car I am calm about the situation, not at all panicking, but I am also watching myself in the car and while watching I am very frightened.