(Pascal, man - age 40)
Dream:
"A dream begins as if I am inside of a video game. I jump from one building to another, just like a character in the game I remember from my childhood: "Mario Bros". At one point I completely broke off the ground. I am floating up in the air as if something was pulling me towards the source of the dream itself. It's fun. I keep on flying over the buildings until some force almost swallows me inside one of them. The building looks a bit like the old tenement house that I spent my childhood in. As I enter, I notice that the interior looks just like the theatre. The force that was pulling me all the way here grows stronger as I get closer to the stage. I realise that the stage with the huge red curtain is the essence of part of my Self that wanted to see me. Just as in a flash, the red curtain absorbs my dreaming self behind the curtain...
“Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein
What I find inside is another stage, just as if the red curtain was a mirror and it reflected two scenes on each side. The front stage and, an internal stage. While I find myself on what seems as a back stage, I see an audience and realise that everyone is there waiting for me to join in. I take part in some strange contest, like in a TV show. The show, is about to start and my part is to compete with another boy who I recognize as my best friend from childhood. Yet in the dream, we are strangers to each other. While we get out time to prepare for the first challenge, I start feeling anxious, as I have no idea what to expect. Each of us gets a huge plastic tube, such as one for swimming underwater. Both of these tubes are extremely large in size but differ from one another in shape. The other boy's tube looks pretty much normal, but mine on the other hand appears weird by its shape, somewhat horizontal. This is both puzzling and uncomfortable at the same time, as I expect water to flood us at any moment. At this point, I am starting to worry that I may actually drown underwater. However, afterall it turns out that there is no water flood. Instead, our task is to climb a very steep mountain with the help of ropes hanging from the top. I am trying to climb to the top, but for various reasons I cannot do it. Either the ropes cry or when I try again it turns out they are not attached to anything on top and they fall off. Eventually I find a rope that seems to be attached to something at the top and try to hold on to it. With difficulty, I finally manage to start climbing up."
Dream interpretation:
The dreamer associates the opening scene to the video game. The game in turn resonates with his childhood wich suggest a sense of disconnection from the grounds of reality in just a similar way he used to avoid unbearable emotions in the past. Floating above the ground level in the dream resonates with the awake state of his mind and flying itself reflects his dissociation from reality. While he is drifting away into the childhood fantasies, the plot of his dream takes a twist. Pascal's dreaming Ego gets devoured into the realm of his psychic complex. The theatre stage features as his Persona. And such an act of being swallowed via the the curtain into the rear stage, symbolically regresses the dreamer back to the sphere between his Persona and his subconscious mind. His dreaming Ego finds itself beneath the mask, that he puts on his Self in the walk around world of reality, and at its other side the core of his Self. There, in between is the space of the dream, the inner game is being played.
Whilst the front stage can be interpreted as the dreamer's Persona, the game that is to be played behind the scenes, is an act of the psychic complex that pushes the dreamer to compete with the dissociated part of his Self personified as the other boy at the same stage. What he finds behind the scene i.e. the rear stage, symbolises a hallway to the core of his subconscious mind. As the dream shows Pascal plays two games simultaneously. On a daily basis, he jumps through the daily tasks, whilst not being quite in touch with his deeds. The real game however, is played in parallel to reality. The red curtain that swallows him behind the scenes, is just like a double-sided mirror. On its front side it reflects the escape in the video game, a form of disassociation from his own worries taking place beneath the mask of his Persona. Whereas as the dreamer's gaze shifts inwards the same surface on its inner side reflects a psychic complex. The dreamer, just behind the Persona mask, Pascal is being put on the spot in order to compete with another boy. The other young man as an inner challenger represents the dissociated part of his masculinity. The breathing tubes refer to what is known as a phallus in psychoanalysis. While they in fact represent his manhood and personality and indeed are intended to serve as a means of expressing his individuality, they should not be confused with the anatomical meaning of the word. Water seen in the dreams often symbolises one's consciousness; a sense of being. The very thought of the water that could fill the room anytime, filles Pascal’s mind with anxiety. And consequently, there may be something that in the very similar way inherently streams through the dreamer's mind, and overwhelms him with the same sense of worry about his own thoughts and feelings. The interesting element of the puzzle posed by his subconscious mind in the dream, is the actual tool that he is given to protect himself from what is to come (the flood of water). The huge breathing tube. What use could possibly be made of such a strange breathing pipe in the realm of his life awake? And how could such a pipe materialise itself as in reality?
Pascal's dreaming Ego seems to be puzzled by the unusual shape of the tool he received in contrast to the one that the other boy was given. A dreaming Ego can't help but compare the object as it is to what appears as more normal. Such a reflection may resonate as the realisation of his own individuality, and poses a question about the way such a peculiar tool may shape one's personality? In a dream, the water never comes, instead it climbs the ropes trying to get away from the realm of this inner struggle. The ending sequence symbolically closes the circle of the dream plot. The dreamer, in his determination to climb up, yet again dissociates himself from the inner conflict in order to run away into the realm of daydreaming.
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