POLITICS AUGUST 29, 2011
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Last week, as morsels of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s new memoir began to go public, The New York Times published an odd revelation: After undergoing heart surgery in 2010, Cheney had “a prolonged, vivid dream that he was living in an Italian villa, pacing the stone paths to get coffee and newspapers.” Lacking any additional context, the scene seemed rather opaque. What could it possibly mean? I decided to call up some psychoanalysts and dream experts for their interpretations. While all the analysts took pains to note they couldn’t be sure, they nonetheless provided me with several possible meanings for Cheney’s bizarre and extended dream.
The first two experts with whom I spoke were struck by the quotidian character of Cheney’s vision. French psychiatrist Mathilde Kazes, who practices medicine in Paris, offered that “it might mean that Cheney would like to be like a regular guy, with the little twist of living in an Italian villa—far from U.S. politics? With Berlusconi?” Dr. Paula Ellman, director of the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the New York Freudian Society, agreed with the majority of Kazes’s diagnosis. For her, Cheney’s dream is “lifeless, concrete, [and] devoid of rich symbols.” It might reveal “his desires to have a life of ease, with its ordinary, mundane pleasures.”
Dr. Benjamin Kilborne, a medical doctor, anthropologist, and expert on dreams noted that the most obvious emotional content of the dream is located in Cheney’s wanderings on stone paths. “It may be a manifestation of some sort of anxiety or impatience,” he told me. “Why would he be pacing? Is it because he can’t go somewhere? Is he waiting for someone?” Kilborne added that the dream’s setting in Italy was also curious. In light of Cheney’s actions in the executive branch, he ventured that “it’s possible that he had fantasies of Roman triumphs.”
Dr. Janice Quinn, a Jungian psychologist, gravitated towards a very different position. Having worked with high ranking military and government leaders, she saw many parallels to Cheney’s case. For instance, important officials often feel a professional imperative to keep their passions under wraps, she told me. “They aren’t allowed to have any feelings that could lead them astray.” But occasionally, a vivid dream can force them to reevaluate their monochrome mental approach. “They wake up,” she says. “It’s like, look, there is more to you than just this one-sided consciousness you work with.” The exotic location of the dream gave Quinn a valuable interpretive key. “The Italians are very extroverted, feeling-oriented people. ... In Jungian terms, we would say that the Italian villa could represent the ‘feeling side’ of Cheney’s personality.” After eight stressful years in the public eye and a dangerous heart surgery, it’s possible that Cheney’s unusual dream just might have freed up some pent-up feelings.
But was Cheney’s hospital bed vision truly transformative? Dr. Melanie Starr Costello, a Jungian analyst in private practice in D.C., told me that it isn’t altogether unlikely. The combination of “disease and dreams” often precipitates a personal transformation, she says. “In times of crisis, we have dreams that seem intended to help us digest what’s going on and to provide some needed salve or insight into the experience.”
Despite their differing opinions, most of the experts and practitioners to whom I spoke were able to agree, at least, about one thing: Cheney’s dream may have possessed real significance. “If it was so vivid to him,” says Dr. Quinn, “it means it has some deep meaning.” But at the end of the day, there is only one way to get to the bottom of it: Cheney has to sit down with a trained specialist and discuss. Dr. Quinn, in particular, told me she’d be happy to help the former vice president. All he has to do is call and make an appointment.
Jarad Vary is an intern at The New Republic.
10 comments
"Bizzare Italian Dream" is a pleonasm. All dreams are bizzare. The interpretations are interesting. I'd go for the Roman triumph delusion one myself.
- IggyPop
August 29, 2011 at 6:39am
Psychoanalysts are more anal than psycho. They are worthless human junk. But this is only my opinion. As Jackie Mason used to say they will help me find my other me. But what if I do not like my other me? I better find him by myself and save $500.00. Maybe today $1,000.00. Woody Allen has been going to a psychologist for most of his life, and what did he get , a much younger woman and Chinese ton top it, and even married her. The best consultations for Cheney's dreams are the fortune tellers that advised Nancy Reagan and helped Ronald Reagan to end the cold war with Russia, "Mr Gorbachev tare down that wall". It was all predicted in the tea leaves. Doctor my wife thinks she is a chicken. Where is your wife. In the next room. Ask here to come in. Door opens and here enters a chicken. Two inmates are talking. one puts on a flashlight and tells the other climb the light to the wall. The other says no way by the middle of the climb you are going to turn off the flashlight and I will fall.
- JAIMECHUCH
August 29, 2011 at 8:44am
Oh my... I came out of the Soviet Union thinking it is way beyond the pale for a psychiatrist to abuse his or her credentials by political use. This is why Krauthammer does not exist for me (because he did this to Al Gore). But, I guess, others do this, too...
- harasan
August 29, 2011 at 12:48pm
I think--no, I must be honest--I hope the dream means Cheney unconsciously wants to die; or possibly his soul yearns to be released from his wretched, depraved, exhausted body.
- Tgossard
August 29, 2011 at 1:57pm
"Death in Venice."
- Tgossard
August 29, 2011 at 1:58pm
JAIMECHUCH, you are by your own admission afraid of what self-analysis might reveal. Why is that? What is it about your "other me" that you might not like?
- kwestlund
August 29, 2011 at 3:03pm
If Cheney goes to Italy in real life, he'll probably be arrested for war crimes. I hope he goes.
- GeoffG
August 29, 2011 at 4:51pm
It doesn't take a Freudian or Jungian to understand Cheney’s dream. In a parallel universe, Cheney retired after Gulf War I to the hills of Tuscany, to an existence of low stress and mostly good cholesterol, with calming, caressing breezes off the Tyrrhenian Sea, and with the treasures of Florence a stone’s throw away (isn’t that what Lynne was always urging on him?). But such a surrender of power and macho prerogative (not to mention the loss of dedicated phone lines and a dependable internet connection) generates its own anxiety, and morning Beltway routines (coffee, morning paper, the limo prompty at 8) of course die hard; hence the nervous pacing along the stone paths of the villa like an old beast torn from his ambient.
- lfeinber@email.unc.edu
August 29, 2011 at 7:35pm
Like it or not Dick Cheney is the best vice-president we ever had. The extreme left hates him. That is for the best. If he had been in charge today he would have drone out the criminal Syrian dictator who with impunity continues killing unarmed civilians. The ultra left is silent and deaf. Europe is silent and deaf. Obama is silent and deaf. Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are silent and deaf. You like it or not Dick Cheney fought tooth and nail for America, in all of his career and beyond. The ultra left is drowning in their own pestilence. And we continue having cheap oil, that is all what the game is about. Ask the extreme left if they walk or drive a car, ask them if they sweat or use air conditioning, ask them if they heat their homes or use a cardigan like ultra leftist Jimmy Carter the worst president and even worst ex- president the USA had. Soon to be followed by Barack Hussein Obama. The extreme left spit and spit and spit .
- JAIMECHUCH
August 30, 2011 at 3:21am
KWESTLUND I was quoting Jackie Mason. Please read slowly what I wrote. Jackie Mason the comedian eh!
- JAIMECHUCH
August 30, 2011 at 3:26am