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Dreams: "At the lake"

Updated: Feb 10, 2023



(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.


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