(Pascal, man - age 40)
Dream:
"I am in a nice apartment. Something catches my attention; the beautiful landscapes that extend over the edges of the room. Strangely when I came closer, I notice that it is only a very realistic-looking model of the landscape - not the real landscape as I thought. In the next part of the dream, I am in the same room, my brother is also there. I can’t help myself but feel some sort of self-importance, as if I had achieved something.
“The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.” - Sigmund Freud "The Interpretation of Dreams"
At the same time my brother seems to feel a bit uncomfortable in this flat. This is probably due to the fact, that I have lived there for a long time, unlike my brother who just moved in. The dream ends with a strange conversation over the phone. I make a phone call and tell someone (I don't remember who) what I recall as a fun fact. That is, that my wife was trying to teach a cat poo like a human, but this didn’t work out."
Dream interpretation:
The dream ends with the dreamer’s words: “My wife was trying to teach a cat poo like a human, but this didn’t work out.". According to Freud, dreams are representation of a “disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish”. That’s the reason why often, dreams at many cases appear very random. The more repressed the content is, the more disguised shapes dream may take in order to communicate it to the dreamer. Core message brought to Pascal’s attention, and ultimately his repressed wish is contained in his words mentioned above. But what would be uncovered meaning of something so bizarre, even in the context of the given dream plot? What does it really mean?
We may assume, that the room symbolically portraits the dreamer’s Ego as a whole. Pascal associated his brother’s presence in the room with conversation he had with his brother a few days before the dream. His brother mentioned something unpleasant that happened to him at work, to which the dreamer replied, “maybe it’s the time to ask for the promotion?”. Considering the feeling of self-importance that came to him in the dream, in contrast to how his brother feels i.e. “uncomfortable”. We may draw some conclusions. We may assume that his professional gives him a feeling of comfort. On the other hand, the edges of the room which are filled with fake landscapes, may symbolically show how the dreamer is becoming more conscious of his limitations. Professional position (“fake landscapes”) which he created over the years make him feel comfortable and fill his Ego with sense of self-importance. The dreamer gets surprised when he discovers that they are not real. Fake landscapes my also reveal a sense of illusion that his Ego clings to. As Freud once put it referring to the importance of the unconsciousness and its influence on everyone’s life “the ego is not master in its own house”. The dream symbolically reveal's this inner relationship, and fact that such idea of control of ones (Ego) own destiny maybe only illusory, and perhaps in the dreamer's case also limiting.
In order to get some insight on what I take, was ultimately the repressed content that the dream brought up to the Pascal’s attention. I asked him why his wife would want to teach a cat to poo like a human. “My wife" - he replied - “very often puts a lot of attention to be too proper in my opinion”. The dreamer also said that recently he had a very bad argument with her which eventually caused him to move out for a few days. He said that his wife made him feel like the person he wouldn’t think of himself - “I was angry at myself as I thought I came across small minded, and stingy”. He also said that he felt bad when he saw his wife leaving the room and calling her mother. The dreamer, unlike his wife, felt like didn’t have no one to talk to about it. His father passed away years ago, and he never had a good relationship with his mother. The dreamer’s association of an argument and the feeling of having (unlike his wife) no one to talk to, puts a different light on content of our interpretation. We may now look at the dream from different angle. Perhaps the edges of a room portraited as in the dream and see how they outline the feeling of being alone and trapped in the frames of his Ego. Dummy landscapes which frame that picture may symbolise a wall he builds around himself where the only person he can relate to is his brother and his work.
After moment’s thought something else came to the dreamer’s mind. That is, the recollection associated with the actual thought of cat trying to sit straight up like a human (in contrast to the animal's natural posture), brought up a certain memory. The dreamer as a child, had to wear a posture corrector on his back. Despite his aversions, his mother made sure he wore it regularly. The dreamer reported that he didn’t remember who he spoke with on the phone in his dream. This shows that the unconscious can only lay out its message to the dreamer in the disguise form, the only way to “fool” our-selves from our Self and not let our Ego cut it off. After all, it was unacceptable on the first place. Also, the dreamer couldn’t remember who he talked to on the phone, but what came to his mind whilst trying to recall that from his memory, was the phone call that him make to his mother. It was the first conversation he had with her in a couple of years. Perhaps his words “My wife was trying to teach a cat poo like a human, but this didn’t work out." resemble the argument that he had with his wife, which left him feel “small minded” (surrounded by the fake landscapes). The dreamer’s wish after all is, that he would have someone to talk to talk to. Perhaps he wishes that he could talk to his mother and be able tell her how he felt in the face of the awful argument he recently had with his wife.
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