Dreams and Memory

Mon, Apr 16, 2007

I can no longer remember whether or not I dreamed about Charles Whitman last night, or, once I heard about the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech, I somehow mixed that association with my increasingly vague memory of the dream during the day. The impression I have of the dream is that I thought it was terribly important to tell someone who Whitman was, or to make him understand that I knew who Whitman was.

I believe I first read about Whitman in a Stephen King novel, or perhaps Danse Macabre. The invention of premonition—its folk psychology—is, I assume, well understood; but I wonder if someone has examined how mass media influences or creates it by managing trauma.