D/I Life History Dreams

Sun 30th April. Yesterday a friend/colleague shared her dream with me. It was a wonderful example of what I call a life history dream, and since I have her permission I will add it to the website (permission being lacking with others that are good examples).

The dream was in three clear episodes. In the first the dream ego confronted the figure of a doctor: it was not clear whether it was male or female but for my friend the aura of such an authority figure would be masculine. The dreamer asserted that she would do what she knew was good for her regardless of what the other said, she would take cortisone because she knew it was good for her back ache whatever he might think. This episode reflected reality, my friend being now able to assert her self in that and similar situations. She recognized this episode as showing her anima confronting her animus but could make no sense of the following episodes.

In the second episode the dreamer pulled out from under the bed of her eldest son a book which she had lent to him before she had read it for herself, and he had never returned it (this was factual in respect of the lending). The dream son did not like this retrieval of the book, which he also had not read. My interpretation was that here the dreamer was re-claiming something of importance of herself which she had given away before using: clearly this was her own authority, given away before ever being used, to the earliest authority figures, mother/father. Under the bed signified the unconscious, both her own and her parents', from which it was retrieved unused. My friend confirmed that neither of her parents had known how to use their authority. The sequence was clearly going backwards in time.

The last episode was very rich and would have repaid much work in a session. In this one the mother appeared and told the dreamer there was something she must see. It was a tin tobacco box that belonged to her younger son. When she opened it she was shocked and upset to find that it contained white tablets of some drug, a needle and syringe, and a beautiful, glittering golden chain with pendants. Her younger son was also upset that she had found this and retreated cowering to a corner, trying to fade into the wall.

The word white immediately showed that we had reached the true self, hidden in the deep unconscious symbolized by the tobacco box (also an evocative symbol for a negative womb). I should have asked how many tablets; clearly the true self is already showing a split from the womb. In the dream, and to me later, my friend used a word that sounded like gare, a term used by addicts for their paraphernalia. I should have followed this up and will do so next time we speak. The needle and syringe suggest to me the anti-libidinal while the golden chain reveals the great value of what is hidden in the box as well as its incorruptibility. The associations or meanings of these symbols are multiple. The chain reminds me of the chains carried by Rufus in Collin?s image (see essay Colin Alive), meaning burden and captivity. The needle and syringe suggests that becoming her true self would be dangerous, criminal and ultimately fatal: the message her mother gave her as a baby and repeated in the dream with the other message, burdensome restriction, often given to babies. The use of an addictive drug to symbolize the true self suggests the maternal message that the happiness that comes from being true to oneself is false and will ultimately prove destructive. Translating all this into Pleistocene reality it means "express your true needs and you will be abandoned". In prewar Europe it meant that a much stressed mother could not cope adequately for her baby's emotional development.

There are three part selves figured in this scene, and it might seem that the mother figure represents the oldest, the dream ego the middle one, and the younger son the small child. But if you have read some of the transcripts of sessions in which older figures appear, such as Client Jane's woman old before her time, you will know this may not be accurate. The mother figure may indeed represent a part self that is younger than the son. What the episode does suggest is an issue of guilt, or possibly shame, that still requires working on between the dream ego and younger son, and that part self represented by the mother is trying to bring these two intrapsychic structures into communication. The younger son part self is concealing, blocking, but also protecting the true self. The gold chain demonstrates the transformation that has already been achieved through years of life experience and also of course therapy. The mother figure plays a positive role in the action, again showing transformation: a healing of inner relationship.

I could go on forever but will finish now, Wed 3rd May. I can't post this because the website is now being worked on, I hope, and the URLs changed!