Dreams - "Big City"

(Pascal - man, age 40)

Dream:

"I am walking around a peaceful area on the countryside. It looks like a familiar neighbourhood. I meet one of my friends and he suggests that we should go to the city to meet a person that will give us drugs, that we can later sell in order to make money. We arrive inside the huge city, where we are at the centre surrounded by tall skyscrapers and streets with a lot of cars and traffic.

"We discover that body processes will mirror dreams when the body is encouraged to amplify and express its involuntary signals, such as pressures, pain, cramping, restlessness, exhaustion, or nervousness." - Thomas Arnold Mindell

The city is rather futuristic, it reminds me of Tokyo, despite the fact that I have never been there. There are no sidewalks or any people around. We wander around and we can't find the meeting point with the person who sells drugs. My friend suggests, that we should go down the elevator to the “basement” of the city. He says that every man there will have drugs and we can just steal them from anyone and sell them. We are in the elevator plunging down very fast into a big gloomy car park at the bottom. When we arrive, something happens and my friend has to run away. I think he is being chased by somebody. I'm left on my own. I decide to give up on the idea of stealing, and while I'm walking across an abandoned dim car park I meet a man on my way. I don't trust him at first, we talk for a moment and he wants to give me a chunk of money.

[Dreamer’s association: nothing comes to my mind about drugs but when a man at the car park offered me money in the dream, it reminded me about the recent situation at work when one of my employees offered me his help with some casual work. At the start I hesitated because I didn't want to trouble him and just wanted to do what I was doing by myself. But I accepted his help.]

For a brief moment I hesitate to accept it but then I take the money. He tells me that i can keep it as a loan until he will be back. He also says, that now he needs to go, and he will explain everything to me when we meet again. He left me a lot of notes of small value. At the end of the dream I walk in the countryside again and I have pockets full of notes that are popping out and I am trying to push them back in."

Dream interpretation:

This is an inner journey of the dreamer in search of his connection with the Collective Consciousness which appears in his dream as a tall skyscrapers. This picture brings a Tokyo to the dreamer's mind, and in fact Tokyo is one of the “highest” cities in the world. Skyscrapers represent the structures of the Collective Psyche in his dream. His disintegration from the collective is manifested as none existent sidewalks and no people around - just cars in the big traffic and fast lifts in the tall buildings. This picture mirror's his introvertion in reality. The elevator illustrates the link between the Collective Consciousness (skyscrapers) and the dreamer's own unconscious (gloomy basement). The dreamer associates the money in his dream with a real situation when one of his employees offered him help. In the space of Collective Unconscious money relates to the perception of the material world and materialises the taboo energy when repressed may easily drive one to a complex. We need money but in the same time we don't like what money represents. James Hillman (Jungian analyst) associated money with a devilishly divine energy. Carl Jung on the other hand, was strongly convinced, that the money energy is essentially rooted in the archetype of the Great Mother which stands behind a creative force in life as well as art and ideas. A powerful archetype that, depending on its correspondence to the dreamer’s unconsciousness, can either nourish and support his Ego, or swallow it up in Psychosis.

The dreamer's lack of money in given context is referring to the mother complex that possibly results in feelings of isolation in reality. This complex (def. a group of unconscious associations, or a strong unconscious impulse lying behind an individual's actions and reactions) is embodied by his friend. The complex is also manifested in the dream in the form of the plan; in order to make money, they need to meet someone in the city who will give them drugs that they can sell. Led by his friend in the dream (under the rule of the complex in reality) he is unable to find the destination of his journey - the money (the Mother). His way down the elevator is a metaphor of connection with the deeply rooted feelings; unconscious feelings and memories that also reflect on the aspect of his Shadow (def. repressed unconscious aspect in our personality, it is the source of both our creative and destructive energies). There, symbolically he partially breaks through his Ego dependence on the complex. The dreamer in a mythological sense needs to go to the dark to be able to come back to the light again. He is only able to accomplish that after his friend disappears. From the Ego perspective it feels as if he was abandoned at first. However, on the subconscious level there is no good or bad as it all comes out from the same source; the Self (def. totality of the body and the mind). Ego categorises our feelings as good or bad which creates complexes in the Psyche that lead to repression of some emotions and after time could possibly result in neurosis. The dream suggests that some of the old mechanisms which the dreamer uses to cope with life perhaps are no longer useful to him. The dreams speak in symbols and leave us with the riddle to solve. The keys are to be found in the dreamers associations.

Psyche tends to lean towards the future in the same way as the individuation process. This symbolic detachment from the complex (described in his association; after a moment of hesitation he decided to accept help) is an inclination of developing belief in himself as well as developing the connection with the collective consciousness. And both are the products of the individuation. The ending fragment of the dream refers to the inner fragmentation of the dreamers Psyche; money symbolically came to him in the form of a loan, and its acceptance equaled connecting with the Collective Consciousness, (def. deeply rooted unconscious component of the Psyche which is not shaped by personal experiences but inherited genetically) at the cost of losing the part of the Ego layered with the complex principle. The idea of the loan embodies the dreamer's interconnection between his Ego and the Collective Consciousness. That's why embracing an ability to receive help is something he is not used to, and makes him uncomfortable and suspicious. But to accomplish the goal of the inner journey revealed in the dream; to unlock the creative energy which is tied around the mother complex he has to come to terms with himself in regards to acceptance and tolerance of himself along with his projection on others.