(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.
Comments