Elias Howe and the sewing machine

In 1846, Elias Howe had a problem. He was trying to design a sewing machine to handle mass manufacture.

But he was stuck.

These were – of course – the days when all sewing was done by hand using a sewing needle: sharp pointy bit at one end, hole for the thread at the other. Howe tried to incorporate the sewing needle into his design, but it wasn’t really working.

Then he had a dream.

History has recorded different versions of his dream, but basically it was this:

He was captured by a tribe of cannibals. Their king gave him 24 hours to come up with a solution for his sewing machine design. If he failed, he would be killed.

He tried – and tried – and tried – to no avail.

The king summoned his warriors, who marched Howe to a huge stewing pot to cook him for their dinner. As they neared the pot, the warriors thumped their spears on the ground, and Howe suddenly noticed that all the spears had a hole near the sharp pointy end.

Thump, thump, thump, went the spears.

Aha! Howe thought in his dream, for my sewing machine to work the hole needs to be near the sharp pointy end of the needle!

He promptly woke up.

Legend has it he went straight to his workshop. His design was a success: it was the first lockstitch sewing machine, enabling the mass manufacture of textiles.

What a dream!

One of the many functions of dreams is to try to solve problems.

Not always practical problems like Howe’s. They also try to solve emotional problems, issues, or challenges.

Let’s look at Howe’s dream from a different angle:

Howe had woken from his dream excited. He had discovered a solution to a problem. He would have called it a good dream, I imagine.

But what if he had missed the message about the placement of the hole in the spears?

As he edged closer to the cooking pot in the dream, and then woke up, I imagine his heart would have been pounding, his breath shallow. He might have said, “That was one of the worst nightmares of my life!”

Let’s look at his nightmare from a dream interpretation point of view:

I consider everyone and everything in a dream as representing something about the dreamer.

The king who wanted a result in 24 hours is perhaps the part of Howe that puts himself under tremendous pressure, the pressure of a tight deadline. (The threat was death in the dream, a true dead-line.)

Dreams often use word play. Maybe the warriors represent Howe’s worries. Is he a worrier? Will his worries be the death of him, mentally, emotionally – or physically, perhaps resulting in a heart attack?

The cannibals are perhaps the part of Howe that is eating himself up as he consumes himself with his goal of designing the sewing machine, or as he consumes himself with worry. Was this project all consuming? Were there other priorities in his life he was ignoring?

The stewing pot: I wonder how much Howe was stewing on his frustration.

Overall, in his dream, things were closing in on him, pushing him towards his end. How much were his worries and all-consuming goals closing in on him in life?

As it turned out, Howe’s dream revolutionised the world, and changed his life for the better. There were some hurdles to jump along the way, including successfully suing Isaac Singer (he of the Singer Sewing machine) for patent infringement, but that’s another story. Howe became rich and provided for his family.

If I had been around in 1846, and if Howe had asked me about his dream, and if we had explored some of these questions together, I wonder if he might have found a way to be equally – or more – successful while taking the pressure off, spending less time worrying, more time creatively flowing, and possibly seeing solutions at an earlier stage.

Note: my interpretation of Howe’s dream is offered as an illustration of how to approach dreams as metaphors of the dreamer’s situation, and how to begin to identify the various parts of the dreamer’s psyche. In reality, I use (and teach) a number of dream interpretation tools and techniques, and when I work with clients, we explore a dream together.