Is This Man Taking Over Your Dreams?

ThisMan.org

By Liz Neporent

Some people search all their lives for the man of their dreams, but a new phenomenon takes this concept to a whole new level.

It began, according to the Web site ThisMan.org, in January 2006, when a psychiatrist's patient said she'd been having recurring dreams starring a man she’d never met. She drew a sketch of him, which her psychiatrist kept on his desk. When another patient saw it, he too claimed the man often appeared in his dreams. The doctor then sent the portrait to some of his colleagues and many of their patients also recalled the mystery man from their dreams.

Since the picture was posted on the Internet several weeks ago, the site reports that at least 2,000 people from all over the world say they recognize This Man, as he is now known, as a frequent visitor in their dreams. The Web site says its aim is to identify This Man and bring the common dreamers together so they can understand why he appears. Seems like a worthy cause -- unless of course, the whole thing is a con.

Like most experts, Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard Medical School clinical psychologist and author of "Committee of Sleep," smells a hoax. “The picture is very ambiguous, almost like a police composite sketch, so it looks a fair bit like a lot of people,” she comments. “This makes it easy to suggest that you know him from your dreams and if you are open to that suggestion then you will think you remember him.”

In fact, Barrett says that if This Man really is visiting the dreams of people around the world it's probably due to mass suggestion rather than some mystical connection. "Once someone has seen his picture, they are more likely to dream about him over the next few days, thus perpetuating the myth. Any visual stimulation you see while you’re awake might show up in your dreams,” she points out.

It also helps that the sketch is so vague and nondescript, it could be anyone. Posters on the site have compared him to Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine, actor Danny DeVito and Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz as well as neighbors and strangers they’ve met in passing.

Sleep specialist Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Canada agrees. “I taught a dream course for more than 15 years and I never came across anything like this. ‘Scam’ seems to be the likeliest explanation,” he says.

The fact that the site sells pricey tee shirts and mugs prominently featuring This Man’s face is probably not a good sign, Smith notes. And it does raise an eyebrow that the domain name for ThisMan.org is owned by an Italian guerilla marketer who once wrote an article about "the origins of the subversive use of the hoax in Italy." Sounds like a hoax unless someone actually tracks This Man down in the waking world to ask him why he insists on invading the dreams of others, it’s probably best to give this urban myth a rest.