Dreams: "Crash"

(David - man, age 33)

Dream:

I am at work. It turns out that the supplier that works for my father's business messed up delivery. When I went to see what happened, I found out that the man also sells drugs and I bought some from him and I took it before the date that i went on after work.

"Spinning knot that is on my heart It's like a bit of light and a touch of dark You got sneak attacked from the zodiac But I see your fire spark" - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I am rather ambivalent about drugs, I neither smoke nor take any drugs myself. But in the dream I feel very relaxed, as if I have all the pressure and all stress released like air from a bloated balloon. Being right in the middle of the town square, I take all my clothes off and strip completely naked, and nobody pays attention to that. From a distance I can see my date. The girl looks great. A redhead, in a black cleavage dress that clings to the slender girly type of body. I cannot associate it with anyone from reality, but when I see her in a dream, it feels as if we know each other. And I know that she likes me, but when she sees me waiting for her completely naked, she freaks out. She is angry, and turns on her heel and disappears around the corner. As I follow her, I get lost among the small streets that all look the same to me. While I sit on the bench to catch my breath I notice that I have my clothes back on me. After a while I realise that I am sitting in front of my father's business, and it feels like I'm at work again. I run into my father, he asks me about something related to work, and I answer him with the number. When we talk I notice that I begin to feel somewhat intimidated and overwhelmed. My father is pleased with my answer and disappears inside the building. My date shows up again. She seems happy to see me and asks me to come with her. As we turn down one of the streets, I see a huge man who looks like a wrestler or basketball player with a big gold chain around his neck. Somehow I feel very intimidated by him, as if I suddenly turned into a little boy next to him. I get in his car with my girl, but she loses interest in me and talks with him instead. I am sitting in the back and we are going somewhere in the car together. The man is driving the car and my date is sitting next to him on the front seat. I am starting to feel like the fifth wheel and I hate the fact that I am sitting in the back. When I get the feeling of frustration mixed with powerlessness, in a split second without thinking I start to choke a man who loses control of the vehicle and we crash. The car crashed completely but luckily we all came out unscathed. Surprisingly, no one was angry nor blamed me, we just said goodbye and each of us went our own way.

Dream interpretation:

The way we live our lives resonates with the parallel reality which lives on the subconscious of our mind. As our personality develops we give life to objects in our mind with attributes of other people such as our parents, family or peers, as well as internalise the energy shaped as the memories. Beginning of the dream reveals an unconscious fear of castration; fear associated with fulfilment of one’s desire. David associates it in his dream to the father figure. In other words, his individualism is restrained by the authority which cuts him off from his own desires. In adolescence, the father figure is essential in the process of shaping perception of a child's reality. At the same time a child may envy his/her father for he takes away the attention of the mother who in the child's eyes embodies anything that he/she may desire like the food, love and feeling of comfort. As a result, when later in life we have no control over the outside world, we pull strings that resonate with the same fear of rejection which we internalised at the time before we developed our personality. The delivery man personalises the connection between David's adolescence and his maturity, and consequently an access to drugs in the dream represents the access to what hides beyond his Persona. David's nudity, in that sense uncovers intention to be able to reach beyond the frames of his Ego. The chase after his date that follows, puts a light on the subconscious needs to feel accepted. In the Lacanian metaphor, the dreamer castrates himself “in the name of the father” which translated in the human language suggests the inability to indulge his desires, in order to retain the image of his Ego and surrender to the frames of reality that have been imposed on him. Such restraint in the conscious part of mind makes the dreamer chase his hidden desires in the dream, instead of living them in reality. The suppression of feelings in the subconscious mind will often find its outlet in the form of fantasies that may occupy one's mind, but which are in fact only a substitute for the repressed object of the true desire. In the context of David's dream, it may be a desire for power, control or perhaps a longing for acceptance on an even deeper level. In the car, he takes the rear seat which symbolises that he has no control over himself in that regard. The car that represents the state of his mind is driven by the powerful man who represents the power itself, that he can't access. The castration fear rooted in childhood turns the dreamer into a little boy, takes control over his libidinal force, and pushes him into a backseat on the way to fulfil his desires. An internal struggle, when the sense of his adult Self refuses to surrender to the complex, he leads to an accident and symbolically crashes the car. Which, to the dreamer's amazement (in the dream reality), has no consequences. In other words, an accident symbolises a subconscious objection and a desire to break free from the inner strangle. As it turns out, rebellion against inner complexes doesn't bring any punishment he could expect as the little boy that he has become for a moment in his sleep. On the contrary, it echoes with the sense of inner self-respect. The end of the dream indicates that the dreamer’s mind assimilates new responses to certain stimuli that have so far aroused certain complexes in his subconscious.

Dreams: "Departure"

(Vienna - woman, age 28)

Dream:

Somehow I was aware that someone I know, the man I like, was about to fly somewhere by plane with one of his friends. I decided to surprise him and join him. When he noticed me coming inside, his eyes lit up and he looked very surprised, but at the same time was very glad to see me. He hugged me and kissed me, and I was so happy that he reacted like that.

"We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.” - Stanislaw Lem

I went to take my seat and he came with me. We were holding hands together and acting like we were in love. When we sat together I felt cosy and comfortable. He told me he was very glad to see me and asked how I finally made my decision to come. And I couldn't answer. The plane was about to take off and we all had to sit in our seats. He said that it looks like someone is sitting next to us by the window, so I have to take a different seat. I noticed that indeed, there was some stranger sleeping at the window seat. I replied that actually it's him who needs to change to a different seat, because I bought mine in order to have more space for my legs. He looked at me with his puppy eyes and I remembered that he once told me that he hates flying because it's always inconvenient for him as he is tall and doesn't have much leg room. So I got up and sat elsewhere. I was sitting in front of him a bit further. He looked at me with his eyes, and we made eye contact from time to time. I noticed that in a row behind him was sitting his friend. They are no longer in touch. The plane was waiting to take off but eventually it never did. Like there was no where to go. It happens to me often in my dreams.

Dream interpretation:

Symbolism of the plane in the dream space, points to ambition to stand up above the challenges of reality. In Vienna's dream, the plane is about to take off, and its eventual departure would manifest reaching that state, and take her beyond the troubled mind. In order to achieve such a state, she decides to suprise her friend ( a man for whom she has feelings). Subconsciously, she connects his figure in her dream with an escape/solution to the conflict taking place at the depths of her unconsciousness. Her observation, that she feels relieved when in the dream she realises, that her surprise brings him joy may suggest that, in a sense, Vienna gives away the initiative of her own feelings into someone else's (in this regard her friend's) hands. In consequence what she feels at the depth of her Self may as well highly resonate with how she feels to be perceived from the outside. The figure of a stranger sleeping by the window symbolises the obstacle on the way to fulfilling the emptiness that resonates with the reassurance of her inner sense of love. When it turns out that the seat is occupied by someone else, one of the two (either Vienna or her friend) needs to take a seat elsewhere, which is necessary for the plane to take off. But, such a course of events stands in the way of filling the deeply a unconscious void which echoes through her mind when she feels that she is not being perceived outwardly (by her friend), in the way she would wish so. Her plan was to surprise her friend and join him i.e to connect with the male aspect of her personality that is personified in her dream as one of her friends from reality (man that makes her feel fulfilled). Nevertheless, it is her who decides to surprise and join him on the plane, in order to overcome subconscious struggle in the first place. And yet, again, she is the one of two, who sacrificed her comfort (seat) in order to make it possible for the plane to take off. Does this bring the intended effect? The plot of her dream uncovers the strategy of her psychic complex which is likely to be the best known way to cope with reality. However, it doesn't bring her full satisfaction, which in parallel with the dream allowed would lift the plane (herself) off the ground. Vienna takes a seat on the opposite side, from where she is watching her friend looking at her. Her new seat reflects the perspective in which she subconsciously perceives her own person in reality. The situation in the dream takes place in a vague sense of being in someone else's (her male friend) reality. To put it another way, being seen by her friend's Glaze (in Lacan: the sense that the object of our eye's look or glance is somehow looking back at us of its own will), rather than being in the centre of her own Self. In the sequence of the passengers' seats taken in the final scene of the dream, we can see that Vienna is not at the centre of her own plot, instead, the place she takes somehow defines her friend's future in opposition to his past embodied in contrast as a friend of his (with whom she no longer has contact). She notices this man ( whom she recognizes only from the picture as one of the old friends of the man she likes) sitting in the row right behind her man, which symbolically defines the past of the man while she herself, embodies his possible future. However, she is still not next to him, that is, with him. The dream ends where the plane is circling without departing. What may raise the question why the plane does not take off again?

Dreams: "Grade"

(Boris - man, age 46)

Dream:

"I am on the school bus. At one of the stops when the door opens I am surprised to see a big river instead of the road. I see a man swimming upstream of the river.Someone says that a lot of people around here just swim like that to work every day. The river seems quite wild and dangerous and I am amazed at this man's courage and his dedication.

“Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.” - Breakfast Club

When I arrive at school I need to use the toilet but there is a queue and it turns out that only three people are allowed in despite there being so many more toilets inside. I say to someone that this is stupid and ridiculous to make people wait. Finally after I came out of the toilet I changed my trousers, but it turns out that I have put on someone else's trousers. I feel as if they do not match my adult personality and there are some stains on them as if they had traces of childish carelessness. It turns out that I came back to school after a long break to finish the last year of high school and I feel anxious whether the math's teacher will give me a pass, because I haven't attended any classes for a long time. I met her in the school hall and asked what grade she was going to give me. The teacher informs me that I will only get two, because as a rule she cannot give me a higher grade because as she says if someone "knows but doesn't care", gets only two. I was relieved because I just wanted to pass, but with the relief comes the thought that I could do more."

Dream interpretation:

School trip symbolises a journey to the memories and emotions that relate to Boris's adolescence. Reliving emotions repressed from consciousness in the dream often points out to unresolved inner conflicts linked to the same period of one's life. The man swimming in the river in a symbolic way stands in opposition to the dreamer, who is trapped inside the school bus taking him to the past. Swimming against the stream manifests intention to free himself from unconscious conflicts associated with the school period in his life. At the school, Boris has to queue in order to use the toilet. He is waiting with a sense of absurdity to limit the toilet capacity for no rational reason. The urge to use the school toilet in the dream is a metaphor of his need to release certain traumas related to childhood. He lives in the constant conflict of his adult Self, which continuously has to act-out itself in reality on the adolescent note, which can often not be adequate to the situation. To put it otherwise, Boris feels frustrated by how irrational are his uncontrolled responses (that resonate with the child's trauma) to certain stimuli to reality. The presence of this undeveloped (childish) part of his Self in his unconsciousness is symbolically uncovered when he puts on someone else's pants by mistake, a pants that resonate with some kind of immaturity which does not suit him in his opinion. His final grade, is in fact a symbol of closing the chapter of childhood that is still open in the subconscious and resonates with something that, despite the passage of years, still torments him. In consequence, now an adult man in his late forties dreams about being anxious that his teacher may fail him because he has not attended classes. In a dream, he comes face to face with his subconscious fear and asks the teacher how she intends to grade him. The teacher's words, "If someone knows but doesn't care" (can only pass with the lowest grade), can be interpreted as an liberation despite avoiding what is known in therapy as “working through” these difficult childhood emotions. In a sense, such "success" brings relief but leaves a scratch in the image of his Ego. The symbolic absolution is essentially the result of a self-acceptance that arose naturally over the years at a deeper level of the Self.