Debra Winger + Robert Stickgold

Are dreams vehicles of prophecy?
“I was never able to agree with Freud that the dream is a ‘façade’ behind which its meaning lies hidden—a meaning already known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from consciousness. To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can, just as a plant grows or an animal seeks its food as best it can.” –C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

One of the most acclaimed actresses of our generation, Debra Winger got her first starring role in Thank God It’s Friday. In 1980 she received a BAFTA nomination for her role as a cowgirl in Urban Cowboy. Two years later she co-starred with Nick Nolte in Cannery Row and opposite Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was also twice Oscar-nominated as Best Actress for 1983’s Terms of Endearment and 1993’s Showdowlands, the latter of which earned her a second BAFTA nomination.Winger has been seen most recently in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married and in the HBO show In Treatment (pictured).
Robert Stickgold is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He serves as the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition where research focuses on the role sleep and dreaming have on memory and emotion. He is also investigating alterations in sleep-dependent memory processing in patients with schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and PTSD. He has edited two books and his latest title, Learning, Memory and Sleep, An Issue of Sleep Medicine Clinics, is set to publish in March of this year. He has published two science fiction novels, and over 100 scientific publications, including papers in Science and Nature, and his work has been written up in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.