Dreams: "Gun"

(Dannika, woman - age 25)

"In a dream I live with my husband and my two children who are not his, but are from a previous relationship (In reality I don't have any kids and I am not married). I want to leave my husband. There is another man with whom I am in love, and he loves me too and asks me to leave my husband and run away with him. I have the same feelings about him and I want to leave my husband, but I am afraid of him...

“One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Suddenly the three of us are in the same room and my husband tells my lover to not to trust me, and he says that I have a gun in my left hand. And at this moment I am stunned to realise that he's right, and I do indeed have a gun in my hand. I hold the weapon in my left hand, hidden behind my jacket. On the outside my hand is replaced with an artificial hand. I shot the man in the head. I felt guilty but is strange feeling, I feel guiltyfor pretending that I did not have a gun and that my husband was right after all more than about the fact that i killed him. If that makes sense. After that, I still want to leave my husband and I try to escape twice, but I get caught each time. First time my husband was waiting for me outside and I had to listen to him and come back inside. I was afraid of him, but at the same time I saw a bit of decency in him because he took me with two children who were not even his and he cared for them and me on the way. Another time I wanted to lock him in the bathroom and escape, but just as I was about to lock the door from the outside, he suddenly opened the door and knew what I was going to do. I felt like I couldn't escape, wanted to look normal and wore sunglasses so people wouldn't see me cry and I woke up. In tears.

Dream interpretation:

In her dream Dannika is cast as a prisoner of her own morality, portrayed in a character of the husband. She perceives him, as if she owes him gratitude for the home that he made for her and her children. She is afraid of him and she wants to leave him, yet at the same time she recognizes a dose of decency about what he represents. These feelings in fact are a reflection of the feelings of gratitude towards her own parents. She is loyal to the figure of the husband in the dream, in the same way as in the parallel of reality she is tied to the ideals that were imposed in her early childhood by her parents. Plot of the dream twists when another man shows up. A dream figure of her lover manifests desires that are repressed from her consciousness. Dannika wants to leave her husband. This scenario reveals an unconscious moral conflict. The figure of the other man, symbolises Freudian "Id", that is, the part of her Psyche that demands to satisfy primordial instincts more than anything. The fact that Dannika intends to leave her husband and run away with her lover, can be interpreted as the urge to satisfy her unconscious desires. Her lover represents passions that need to be repressed in order to obey the Reality Principle. The scene where she shoots him resonates with the touch of the everlasting dilemma of humanity. The dilemma that arises from the conflict of the need to control one's own desires in order to be accepted and function in reality. It is her Superego embodied in the figure of her husband that metaphorically puts a gun in her hand. A gun that she didn't even realise existed, until it was brought to her attention by the figure of husband. The artificial hand, which covers the weapon, symbolises her Persona; the outer mask underneath which lays her power of free will, and consequently (in Dannika's case) the reason for repression of her emotions. In metaphor, and quite literally, "the choice is in her hands”, and she can either choose to fulfil her desires or to obey the reality and keep the image of her Persona. She shoots her lover in the head, and by doing so turns the object of her desire into a repressed part in her unconsciousness. As a consequence of this choice, she lives a life in line with her moral values, yet it is likely that she feels trapped and unhappy in her skin. All further attempts to escape are unsuccessful, and she becomes imprisoned in the image of herself that she had creates in reality. The tears of her soul are as real as it gets and she wakes up from the dream. Crying.

Dreams: "At the lake"

(Dannika, woman - age 25)

"In a dream, I see everything from a third person perspective as if I were watching a movie. I see a strong man at the lake shore who throws a body of a young woman into the lake. I see how the body sinks to the bottom of the lake and drops on the huge pile of other bodies that the same man must have killed before and dumped in the lake. There is also a woman who is very close and is watching the whole situation from hiding.

“The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions.” - Sigmund Freud

When a man takes another body from the huge pile of bodies by the lake to drown it, a policeman appears and now two men are fighting. The woman tries to run away, but she can't move because her foot is stuck between the wooden boards of the pier. During a fight, a policeman handcuffed a man to a body that the man was about to drown in a lake. Then he pushes the man into the water along with the corpse, and they both sink under the water. Weight of the corpse pulls a man down. When he is at the bottom of the water, falling on a pile of corpses, suddenly the dead body of a woman to whom he is handcuffed opens her eyes and comes to life. She asks him for help in getting out of the water. The only way out for them is to kiss. After the kiss, they both start swimming towards the lake's surface.

Dream interpretation:

The man who throws the corpses into the lake portrays the Shadow, which is the part of the personality which Jung believes defines its dark nature. Following Freud's theory, we could say that this man is the "Id" of Dannika’s psyche and appears in her dream as a mirror of her primal instincts driven by the overbearing need to satisfy her needs and passions. The bodies thrown into the lake embody her repressed thoughts (needs) and emotions (passions), which cannot be accepted on a conscious level. Anything that crosses her moral boundaries is automatically rejected. This is quite vividly illustrated in a dream when the man (the Shadow) throws a corpse under the lake's surface. The first part of the dream reflects her psychic Defense mechanism. Whilst the fight that follows, unveils the feeling of guilt: the policeman (her Superego) attacks the man (her Id). The superego appears in a dream as a policeman, to make sure that nothing "wrong" gets into consciousness, and rejects everything that is not in line with her own image of herself in reality. The woman who secretly watches the whole situation from hiding, symbolises Dannika's emotions. Specifically those feelings, that she is unable to accept and release from her subconscious. In the face of the battle of a mind against the passion, she feels powerless which is illustrated when she attempts to escape but her foot gets trapped between the wooden boards. The dream ends in pure Hollywood style. Darkness of her soul and the Shadow are thrown into the netherworld of her personality. The Shadow falls into a pile of bodies that in her dreams manifest her fears and hidden desires, which she is unable to consciously accept. At the very bottom Dannika brings this back to life through a kiss, which in fact symbolises the integration of her Shadow and acceptance of what she is so afraid of. A kiss at the lake bottom runs a parable of inner acceptance of what she is unable to let into his consciousness. When this happens in a dream, the man comes back up to the surface of the water. The dream suggests that deep in the dreamer's unconscious mind there is a pile of repressed emotions that need to be noticed, worked through, and accepted. In this way, she would be able to integrate this part of her Self into her personality and use it as her own strength. Instead of carrying it as a burden on your shoulders.

Dreams: "Spaceship"

(Guido - man, age 23)

"It's after dusk, and my girlfriend and I are walking somewhere in the suburbs of the city. We follow the road up the hill. At one point, during the conversation, we have an argument about a joint bank loan that we think to take togheter. My girlfriend gets upset and turns at a side road, leaving me walking alone in the other direction.

"All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together." - Jack Kerouac

I decide to follow her, but I realise that she has already disappeared. I decide that we will meet on the top of the hill while for now I will stay on my way. After a while I see a huge spaceship in the sky, which lands very close to me and after landing it looked like some big shopping mall. When I get there it looks like a festival and there are lots of people from different countries. When I walk around inside the spaceship which now looks more like a building I have the impression that everything is built with splendour, but at the same time I cannot get rid of the strong impression that there is something "cliché" about it. At one point, I am going up the escalator, I notice my girlfriend in one of the restaurants and wave at her trying to get her attention, but she doesn't notice me."

Dream interpretation:

An argument over a bank loan reflects the perspective of the future obligations related to the relationship. Dreamer and his girlfriend are splitting their ways, suggesting differences in their views on their future together. The dreamer is ready to give up his point of view and follow his girlfriend, which reflects his tendency to agree to the plans of his other half. In a dream, however, he is unable to find her which may be a clue that he should consider his own path. While the dreamer is walking on his own, a huge spaceship appears in the sky. This space represents the traits of his personality and individuality that he must face in order to reconnect with his girlfriend. The size of the spaceship may be portraying the overblown nature of the dreamer's Ego. The multicultural aspect of the spaceship, as one of the features memorised from the dream, reflects the openness and diversity of his personality, but at the same time the fragmentation of his Ego. In a dream, while he is discovering his own insides, he gets lost in splendour, underneath which he can also sense something cliché to it. This part reflects the narcissistic features of his personality. Which through the dream may be uncovering that he puts a lot of importance on making a good impression on other people in reality. Then, the dreamer passes his girlfriend on the aisle stairs, he tries to get her attention, but she can't notice him as he unconsciously integrates her as an object within his personality. Which may manifest itself in his relationship when, while paradoxically seeking contact with her, he is unable to perceive her as an individual.