ARE YOU SLEEPING WELL AT NIGHT?.....Monday, 9 July 2001 18:14 (ET)
Nightmares plague Republicans, says study
BERKELEY, Calif., July 9 (UPI) -- Republicans have scarier and more
frequent nightmares than Democrats concludes one prominent dream researcher.
"Republicans are nearly three times as likely as Democrats to experience
nightmares when they dream," Kelly Bulkeley, who teaches at the Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., claims in findings to be released
Wednesday at the 18th Annual International Conference of the Association for
the Study of Dreams in Santa Cruz.
"Half of the dreams of Republicans in my study were classified as
nightmares, compared to only about 18 percent of the dreams of Democrats,"
Bulkeley reports.
While Republicans and Democrats may agree with the survey's results, they
are divided on the causes of the GOP's troubled sleep. Both parties,
however, blame the man at the top.
"What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?" Kevin
Sheridan, Republican National Committee deputy press secretary, told United
Press International from Washington.
"If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I'd have trouble sleeping
at night, too," Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman,
told UPI.
Sleeping Republicans also inhabit scarier dreamlands, according to
Bulkeley who is former president of the Association for the Study of Dreams
and author of "The Wilderness of Dreams, An Introduction to the Psychology
of Dreaming."
Aggression, misfortune, and physical threats characterize Republican
nightmares, while familiar settings and friendly characters populate the
kinder, gentler bad dreams of Democrats.
Bulkeley also claims Democratic nightmares are tempered by the very
principals Democrats claim to espouse -- hope, power, and positive action.
"My speculation is that people on the right are very attuned to the
dangers in the world, and they're seeking ways to defend themselves against
those threats," Bulkeley said in his paper. "They're drawn to a political
ideology that favors things like a strong military and traditional moral
values. People on the left tend to be more utopian and open to the
possibility of going beyond the way things are now to how things could be
made better."
Terry McAuliffe told UPI his dreams of a better tomorrow come with a
fulfillment date certain:
"On Election Day, 2004, we're going to elect a Democratic President and
our long national nightmare will be over."
For Republicans, according to Sheridan, the nightmares have finally
passed:
"Rest assured that with President George W. Bush in office, Republicans
and Democrats are both resting a lot easier."
Bulkeley said he was drawn to the subject of his latest study by what he
terms a different national nightmare -- the 2000 presidential election. His
paper, aptly entitled "Nightmares and the 2000 Presidential Election,"
focuses on the dreams of Republicans and Democrats during and after the
election and discusses new data on the differences in their dream content.
"The dreams reflect, in both humorous and disturbing ways, the emotional
turmoil people experienced in response to the election," Bulkeley explained.
While the election nightmare has long passed with favorable results for
Republicans, dreams populated by unfriendly faces still show up for them now
and again, according to Sheridan. "We've always suspected Terry McAuliffe
was off in a dream land," he quipped
(Reported by UPI Science Correspondent Mike Martin in Washington.) |
