“Perchance to Dream”
Hamlet
Polley and I grew up on an interesting cusp of American history. Born in the late 1940’s, we were raised by parents who survived the Great Depression and World War II, and who ingrained in us the work ethic. Polley’s father usually responded to his children’s trivial (and not-so-trivial) complaints with “Stop your bellyaching!” I once told my father I was bored. He found work for me to alleviate my boredom. I never expressed that feeling again. Respect for authority and God and country were not simply taught but silently expected. And then we grew into the sixties, a culture which challenged all conventions, especially blind loyalty. We learned to think critically.
Years later, reading about the time period I grew up in, I gained some insight into the struggles that earlier generation had in making sense of it all. One post-war strategy was to drag out Sigmund Freud to explain how a European civilization, Germany, a nation known for Goethe and Durer, Beethoven and Bach, could also become a dictatorship which history identifies with systematically throwing babies into ovens. Freud’s Id became a favorite culprit. Everyone has the potential for evil if the conditions are right for the “beast” to surface. Imagine you are a teenager who enters the high school cafeteria. Your Id, representing your primordial drive to survive (and thinking in monosyllabic logic) says, “Me hungry. Me want to scoop up mashed potatoes with hands and stuff mouth.” Meanwhile, your Superego, always in conflict with the Id, argues, “I know you are hungry, but if you scarf up those mashed potatoes with your paws, you will never be elected class president.” The Ego tries to balance both the Id and the Superego. I am certain there are more sophisticated and artsy works that illustrate this theme (the movie Pressure Point with Bobby Darin, and the novel, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, are two), but my favorite is Forbidden Planet, a 1956 film starring Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis. Of course, when I first watched this film in the theater when I was ten, I knew nothing about Freud and the Id, especially my Id, and the most interesting character to me was Robbie the Robot. After the movie came out, all of us wanted the Robbie the Robot toy, but my parents were not going to shell out around $8 on a toy. My friend Walter had one and we watched it blink lights and move around the floor and make scratchy techno noises which was about all it did (you can purchase an original Robbie the Robot toy now for around $11,000). Still, he was my favorite movie character.
Robbie aside, Forbidden Planet had a theme. Commander Adams from Earth lands on Altair IV and meets Morbius, a scientist who has uncovered the vast, technologically advanced machinery created by an ancient and now defunct civilization, the Krell. The Krell created devices which transformed one’s thoughts into material actions—the Krell did not have to leave the recliner to throw another log on the fire—they simply had to imagine it, and it was done. Why the Krell disappeared is, at first, a mystery. Morbius has a beautiful daughter who makes the visiting earthmen (who have been in space a few light years) drool. At night, (this stuff always happens at night), a monster visits Adams’ spaceship and rips apart one of the crew. The epiphany, of course, comes at the climax of the movie, when Morbius realizes that the nightly monster is generated by his own Id. Fearful that the visiting earthmen will take his precious daughter away, Morbius’ dreams become reality and the beast attacks the supposed threat. Robbie the Robot cannot fight the beast because he has been programmed to not harm his creator, Morbius, and, well, the beast arises from Morbius’ id. The Krell, like all human life forms, absorbed in petty feuds with their neighbors, could control their conscious behavior, but they could not control their dreams—-or their Ids which materialized and wreaked havoc on each other to the point of obliterating their civilization. Theme 1: we can control our conscious behavior, but we cannot control our dreams. Theme 2: The Id is the driving force that helps us survive, but, unchecked, the Id has the potential for incredible harm. One of the scary lessons arising from the holocaust was the realization that all humans have the potential to behave badly.
This concerns me because, like many other Parkinson’s people, I experience nightmares that are vivid and scary and violent. Polley and I call them Parkinson’s dreams, dreams in which my Id surfaces in the form of nasty animals and aberrant humans.
In one dream I am in a cottage in a lovely rustic setting when I hear a commotion at the back door. I open it and, standing on its hind legs, baring its fangs, is a monstrous tiger who swipes at me with its huge paw. I furiously struggle to fend it off. In another Parkinson’s dream I hear a scratching at the cellar door. I open the door to investigate, and I am facing an oversized gray/black wolf, mouth open and teeth dripping with drool as it tries to engulf my head. I punch and flail in defense. In another dream I push and shove a brown/gray grizzly away from my tent flap. In the latest Parkinson’s dream my nemesis is a group of enormous-headed boys who bear a striking resemblance to some of the elementary school blockhead bullies I faced in the Bronx. I strike out with my fists. I am a big fan of most animals, so that is why my Parkinson’s dreams are not chock full of attacks by bared teeth chipmunks or overbite squirrels.
Not only are these particular nightmares extremely vivid, but they make me physically lash out in defense while I am sleeping. The ultimate victim of all this fending off and punching and flailing and pushing and shoving and striking in my defense is Polley who bears the brunt of my defensive counter punches. If this keeps up, she will have to wear a suit of armor to bed…..or pack heat in the form of a stun gun. And these Parkinson’s dreams know where to hit me where it hurts the most—my insecurities, failed relationships, fracturing disappointments, my weaknesses as son, brother, husband and father, all surface with the Id. These Parkinson’s dreams draw from the deepest recesses of my fears. I won’t share these.
“Most of us are temporarily paralyzed in the dreaming phase of sleep, so we don’t act out our dreams. However, people with RBD [Rapid Eye Movement Behavior Disorder] do act them out.
Studies estimate anywhere between 15 and 85 per cent of Parkinson’s patients also suffer from the condition.
Prashanth Reddy, consultant in movement disorders at King’s College Hospital in London, explains: ‘A normal sleep cycle lasts between 90 minutes and two hours.
At the end of each cycle, you enter a phase of sleep where you dream, which lasts between 15 minutes and one hour.
In most people in that state, muscle tone is lost and there’s a biological switch that disconnects the brain from the body so we don’t act out our dreams.
But in people with RBD, the switch malfunctions, and they tend to act out their dreams.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2782719/Parkinson-s-The-bad-dreams-warning-sign.html
And you know what, for me, is the scariest thing about all this? As I imagine is also true for other neurological disorders, the worse aspect of Parkinson’s is that I have lost trust in my brain. All human brains deceive us some of the time. We see water on the hot surface of a summer highway when no water is there because our brain tries to make sense of something it does not recognize. For years I thought my brain and I had a good relationship. Of course we argued about decisions, oscillating between what was best for me in the long run and what I wanted to do at the moment. Aside from trivial tiffs, I thought we were on the same page. That has changed. I cannot trust my gray matter to NOT conjure up threatening dreams when I am most vulnerable—when I am asleep.
Each night I go to bed wondering if the beast will surface….and knowing there will be no Robbie the Robot to keep me safe from myself…or keep Polley safe.
Sleep tight….and don’t let the beasties bite.