As the presidential race heads into the final stretch, Americans are likely having wonderful dreams or horrible nightmares about the outcome of the election.

	Dan Marsula, Post-Gazette illustration Click image for larger version.

Whatever your hopes for who will occupy the White House starting next January, there is a researcher who wants to hear about your dreams on the subject.

"This is a neglected dimension of dreaming,'' said Kelly Bulkeley, 42, a California dream researcher who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

He noted that earlier researchers believed that dreams focused mostly on personal matters, but had little to say about current events of the world.

"Dreams definitely speak to our personal lives. What we worry about, our concerns about the world.''

Bulkeley has collected dreams in research he's conducted since 1992 about the psychological effect of political dreams. This fall he's collecting a bigger sampling from across the country to better understand what these dreams mean and what they say about people.

His findings in small studies so far have been intriguing: Republicans tend to have more nightmares. Their dreams contain more aggression, misfortune and physical threats to family and friends, fear, anger and sadness. Democrats have more dreams involving friendliness, good fortune and hope.

What this means in real life, Bulkeley contends, is that people on the right tend to be more sensitive to dangers in the world. They have a stronger sense of law and order and traditional authority. By contrast, Democrats tend to be more optimistic, they wish for things to be different.

Those interested in sharing their dreams can e-mail them to kellybulkeley@earthlink.net. Dreamers are asked to describe the dream in detail and include their age, gender, state of residence, political affiliation and ideas about what the dreams mean. All reports will be kept confidential. You can read more about his research at www.kellybulkeley.com

A conference, "Dreams, Art & Healing," will be held in Pittsburgh on Nov. 20-21. Presented by the International Association for the Study of Dreams, the conference is open to the public. It will be held at the Society for Contemporary Craft, 2100 Smallman St., Strip District. Among speakers will be Patricia Garfield, author of "Creative Dreaming"; Dr. Eric Nofzinger, sleep neuroimaging researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; and Robert Van de Castle, author of "Our Dreaming Mind.''

The society also is hosting through Jan. 15 the exhibit "Perchance to Dream,", which explores the connection between the inner world of dreaming and the creative process.

Visit www.dreamjournalist.com to register; for more information, visit www.contemporarycraft.org.