Dreams - "Mirror"

(Danika - woman, age 25)

I am in the female bathroom at my university. I look at myself in the mirror. I am wearing a very sexy red dress. It is kind of a “red carpet look”. I have gorgeous expensive shoes made from deep blue silk. Everyone who walks inside compliments my outfit. I'm fixing the outfit and hair as I feel somehow bothered.

“Each of us is part heroine or hero and part coward, part parent and part child, part saint and part thief. It is in learning to identify these great archetypal motifs within ourselves, learning to honor each one as a legitimate human trait, learning to live out the energy of each in a constructive way, that we make inner work a great odyssey of the spirit.” - Robert A. Johnson

Then a transgender man comes inside. He is wearing a black lipstick. He also says that he loves my outfit and asks me if it was ok with me to do a little ritual with fire. I say that I don't know and advise him to ask the cleaning lady that was there. Then he starts doing something which looks like some sort of a satanic ritual as he is a worshipper of the devil. I am shocked and scared and I feel like I need to leave. I ran out onto the streets and kept checking behind, hoping that he didn't affect me.

Dream interpretation:

University building symbolises a collective consciousness. In the bathroom mirror the dreamer sees an image of her persona. “Red carpet look” fed on compliments refers to the subject of self esteem and the red colour of the dress in contrast with blue silky shoes reveals the complexity of the dreamer’s psyche; red is an inclination for passion, blue goes in a lock step with reason and thinking dynamics which in the dream’s context may unveil excessive concerns for the dreamer’s reputation in reality, hence the feeling of unease and need to make adjustments to her look in front of the mirror. The man who walks inside is a symbol of the dreamer's shadow in the form of a cocoon of her repressed thoughts. He embodies a picture of the animus (the unconscious masculine component of the female psyche). A transgenderity may compensate for deprivation of dreamer’s own masculine energies. He is wearing black lipstick; in alchemy nigredo (prima materia) is the first stage of development when one discovers his/her shadow. The man asks to perform a ritual which would be an invitation to integration. In the presence of her superego (a cleaning lady) being in charge, the dreamer is obliged to seek approval. Beyond the ego boundaries the ritual starts and the dreamer runs away. Neglection of the shadow is so strong that even outside of the building she feels an anxiety of “being affected” by essentially a part of herself. This rejected energy swells up and the dreamer is very likely to experience recurring nightmares.