THE DREAM-CONSCIOUS STATE: A PERSONAL JOURNAL OF INNER EXPLORATION
Bruce G. MarcotJOURNALS -- 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.)