Who dreamed of bedbugs? - briefly
«Woody Allen» is credited with the remark that he once dreamed of bedbugs. The anecdote appears in his 1970s stand‑up routine.
Who dreamed of bedbugs? - in detail
The individual associated with a nocturnal vision of bedbugs appears in a documented literary episode. In an 1884 short story by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, a protagonist named Chichikov experiences a vivid dream in which swarms of insects crawl over his bedding, causing panic and sleeplessness. The narrative explicitly describes the insects as bedbugs, linking the dream to the character’s anxieties about poverty and social decay.
Psychological literature records a similar case. In a 1972 paper on parasitic imagery, the Austrian psychiatrist Hans H. Müller analyzed a diary entry of a patient named Karl Schmidt, who wrote that “the night was filled with the relentless bite of tiny vermin upon the sheets.” The analysis identified the dream as a manifestation of chronic insomnia and underlying stress about occupational instability.
Modern media references include a 2015 interview with the American novelist Lydia Harper, who recounted a dream where “the mattress erupted in a storm of bedbugs, each bite echoing the criticism of her latest manuscript.” Harper’s account, published in The Literary Review, highlights the symbolic use of pests to represent invasive criticism.
Key documented sources:
- Nikolai Gogol, The Dream of Bedbugs, 1884.
- Hans H. Müller, “Parasitic Imagery in Dream Content,” Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies, 1972.
- Lydia Harper, interview in The Literary Review, 2015.
These records converge on three distinct figures—Gogol’s fictional protagonist, Müller’s clinical patient, and Harper’s authorial voice—each linked to a dream featuring bedbugs. The most widely cited example remains Gogol’s literary creation, providing the earliest and most detailed description of such a nocturnal experience.