Dreams - "The painting"

(Pascal - man, age 40)

I'm at an art gallery at a meeting with a woman. She is around twenty five. I think she is some kind of student and I am there as a teacher of arts. She is asking me for my opinion about one painting and I have my answer ready and prepared in an envelope and I give it to her.

"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

There is also an older woman with her, her aunt I think. Now I give the younger one an actual painting. It's a bit abstract and covered with flowers. I know that under the surface of this oil painting there was another one; a silhouette of a woman. I remember when I was painting it, I had to make some adjustments because I thought at the time that the woman which I had painted on it would hold a grudge. She will think that her figure is too large so I adjusted her waist and some other parts and this made her look out of proportion. I could still see the original contours and it just looked odd. Then I covered this with the flowers. When I gave this painting to the younger woman, the older one complained and she insisted that I need to add more white paint on. I was not happy with this but I made adjustments and I took the white paint off from another painting where I painted my wife. It's strange but the painting of my wife had no white paint on it and I needed to stick the brush deep and remove other colours so that the white comes out from underneath. I put white paint from one painting on the other one and I felt very annoyed as somehow I realised that my wife is dying and the only thing that woman cares about is the painting.

Dream interpretation:

The first part of the dream reveals the duality of the dreamer’s Anima (Latin; soul). Younger women is a symbol of curiosity and individuation (Jung saw individuation as a goal of the analytical process, when one becomes a separate unity or a whole). Her aunt, on the other side resembles an image of his fixed opinions and unconscious complexes. When the younger woman asks for an opinion about the painting, he gives her an envelope with an answer which he had prepared before the question was even asked. This suggests that the dreamer may have trouble being spontaneous and possibly reveals some compulsiveness. The painting with the flowers is an inclination of something new arising in the dreamer's consciousness. It symbolises access to different perceptions of reality and his creativity. Essentially flowers are referring to the process of dreamer’s self realisation; new consciousness. Underneath the painted flowers there is another layer of the paint, which resembles an inner conflict; silhouette of the woman's figure generates the feeling of anxiety about the way it was painted (too large), and triggers assumptions that she may feel offended by that. This points out his neurotic tendencies. The older woman is a symbol of the dreamer's Superego and it's disapproval of the painting that reveals the inner critic. Such an energy is a materialisation of a depressive aspect of the dreamer's psyche. White paint symbolises a sense of purity which is hidden underneath the thick coat of oil paint. Driven by his Anima-like projection, the dreamer is moving white paint from one picture onto the other. This shows the tendency to please others. His dying wife portrays the change of the inner psychic dynamics revealed in the painting sequence which essentially describes individuation process:

a.) woman silhouette - sense of his identity

b.) adjustments forced by his strong attachment to fixed opinions

c.) flowers as a symbol of new consciousness arising from internal strife

d.) repainting portrays another inner struggle and process of developing consciousness

Frustration in the context of repainting both images relates to the inability to stand up for himself in a counter to collective prejudice.