Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D.

Dream researcher, author of "The Spirituality of Dreaming," director of the Sleep and Dream Database. Everything about dreaming interests me. Everything.

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"The dream's affinity for moments of interpretive crisis shows itself quite generally in medieval autobiography; dreams often attend an individual's radical reassessment of the self and the world" - Steven F. Kruger, "Dreaming in the Middle Ages" (1992), 154

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"But the most curious circumstance of the mind in a state of dream, is the power it has to become the agent of every person of which it dreams. It carries on conversation with several, asks questions, hears answers...and it acts all these parts itself" - Thomas Paine, 1807

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

After the film on 6/17 will be an IASD panel on Dreams & Theater, with an amazing trio from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Tim Bond, OSF's Artistic Director; Jessika Williams, one of the lead actors in A Midsummer Night's Dream; & Amy Miller, poet and OSF content editor - 2/2

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

A big day of dreaming and the arts: on June 17 at the IASD conference in Ashland, OR we will premiere "Never Just a Dream," a documentary film about dreaming and divination in South Africa, with director Alisa Minyukova and anthropologist Brittany Birberick on hand for Q&A - 1/2

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

Here's a post about new developments in AI dream interpretation, responding to an article by Mark Blagrove and colleagues that was recently published in the International Journal for Dream Research -

https://t.co/QM59pNpaPJ

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"And the value of dreams for giving us knowledge of the future?... It would be truer to say instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in every sense" - Sigmund Freud, "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900/1965), p. 660

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

The barn swallows have discovered the Dream Library - Pythagoras would disapprove, and they'll make a mess, but I like them

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"Working together creates an intensely shared experience. It helps us see our personal moments in a more universal light... In working on dreams together, the empathy that you receive from others, and the empathy that you show towards others, can be deeply moving. You cannot act in someone else's dream without walking in their shoes. And if the people working on dreams with you are very different, if perhaps their backgrounds are opposite or antagonistic to your own, dreaming together can discover a path towards reconciliation... The very act of dreaming together implies a recognition of our collective humanity" - Jon Lipsky, "Dreaming Together: Explore Your Dreams by Acting Them Out" (2008), 26

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

This Saturday, in Ashland, Oregon I'm giving a talk on dreams and Shakespeare as part of the "Art to Action Series" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival - as part of the talk, four actors from OSF will perform the most dramatic dream scenes from several plays - I'm very curious to see what it feels like to bring these scenes together in the same space

https://t.co/Ygg83qX8aO

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

Happy birthday, Sigmund Freud! Born on May 6, 1856 - Next year I'll bake him a Sachertorte in the kitchen of the Dream Library...

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

Here's a post based on the comments I made during a panel on the new translation of Charlotte Beradt's classic book "The Third Reich of Dreams" - April 22, sponsored by the Seminar in Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Studies at Princeton

https://t.co/KYadEItkgv

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

The idea that dreaming is play, the play of the imagination in sleep, can also be expressed as the idea that dreaming is freedom--the actualization of freedom, freedom as practice, freedom-in-itself and freedom-for-itself

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

I awoke this morning with the following dream, which I titled "Breakfast not Sheriff":

A nice police officer drops a photo of one of his kids, it falls on the muddy ground….oh oh, that’s too bad….Later, I am outside on the driveway and a pickup truck suddenly drives up from below in the garden, I don’t know how it got there, and I am alarmed….The truck is white with green lettering on the back window, and I am sure it will say “Sheriff,” and this is a law enforcement officer and somehow we are in trouble….but when I really look, the lettering on the truck’s window says “Breakfast”….I look closely to make sure, because I am worried it might really say "Sheriff"….but no, it says “Breakfast”….

My first thought about the dream is, that's weird, I don't often see and read words so clearly in a dream.
A couple hours later I start driving into town, and within a few minutes I see two Sheriff's deputies in their white and green trucks driving in the opposite direction. My second thought about the dream is, that's weird, I can't remember the last time I dreamed of the word "Sheriff," and here I see two of them right after such a dream.
About fifteen minutes later I pass a Sheriff's deputy in a parked truck, watching the cars go by. I look in my rear view mirror, and see him pull into traffic behind me. My third thought about the dream is, oh shit.
Okay, I'm driving just below the speed limit, my hands are at 10 to 2... I see him pull up and around a couple cars to get closer to me. I reach an intersection and the light turns yellow just as I go through. Maybe he'll stop...? No, he doesn't stop, he speeds through the intersection, and by the time he's turned on his lights I'm already pulling over to the side of the road.
Five minutes later, the deputy lets me go with a warning to renew my DMV registration tags or else the next time I'm stopped, they'll tow my vehicle.
Yes, sir, thank you, sir.

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"The boundary of sleep did not simply divide the conscious life of the individual, it demarcated rival moralities. The waking [Victorian] world of continence and self-control stood in direct contrast to the wild abandon of dreams" - Rhodri Hayward, "Policing Dreams" (2004), 165

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

A dreamer's highlight this year at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry's classic play with a title drawn from Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred" - directed by OSF Artistic Director Tim Bond, w/a great cast

https://t.co/4WZiPsi2mj

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

Tristy Taylor is leading a Dream Theater Workshop on Saturday, May 23 at the Performance Works NorthWest in Portland, OR - Tristy is a great teacher, dream theater is lots of fun, and it's a good time to try something new!

https://t.co/bi6ocnlPsW

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"We have the power to shift course. It's our disconnectedness--and lost understanding about the amazing capacities of nature--that's driving a lot of our despair, and plants in particular are objects of our abuse. By understanding their sentient qualities, our empathy and love for trees, plants, and forests will naturally deepen and find innovative solutions. Turning to the intelligence of *nature itself* is the key" - Suzanne Simard, "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" (2021), 305

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

Bookcase installation in the Dream Library is making progress...

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

At LynchCon 2026, "The Darkness of Future Past," I will be giving a talk on "The Gift of David Lynch's Dream Logic" - more info here:

https://t.co/1X5zmMXXgp

[Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D. @KellyBulkeley]

"The sociology of the dream must contain two parts: the first to study the function of the dream in society; the second, the social framework of oneiric thought. Two problems, tightly tied together, for it may be that society provides a framework for oneiric thought to make it socially usable" - Roger Bastide, "Sociology of the Dream" (1966), 200