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Plot of the dream
In attempting to understand your dreams, it is important to honour their drama or plot. Dreams appear to be very specific in the way they use the characters, objects and environs occurring in them.
Example: ‘I was walking up a steep hill on a sunny day when my husband came running down the hill with blood pouring from his right arm. He couldn’t stop running. As he passed me he called to me for help. I was happy and peaceful and ignored him. I calmly watched him running fast down the hill, then continued on my way.’ Joyce C.
Out of the infinite number of situations Joyce could have dreamt about, this was the one produced. Why? There are many factors that appear to determine what we dream. How events of the day influenced us; what stage of personal growth we are meeting – we might be in the stage of struggling for independence; problems being met; relationship situations; past business such as childhood traumas still to be integrated; are some of them.
If Joyce had dreamt she and her husband were walking up the hill the whole message of the dream would have been different. If we can accept that dream images are, as Freud stated, a form of thinking, then the change in imagery would be a changed feeling state and concept. If the language of dreams is expressed in its images, then the meaning stated is specific to the imagery used.
Visualisationis a great way of dealing with your diffuclt dreams
In processing our dreams, it is therefore profitable to look at the plot to see what it suggests. It can be helpful to change the situation as we have done with Joyce’s. Imagining Joyce walking up the hill on a sunny day arm in arm with her husband suggests a happy relationship. This emphasises the situation of independence and lack of support for her husband that appears in the real dream. Seeing our dreams as if they were snatches from a film or play, and asking ourselves what feelings or human situations they depict, can aid us to clarify them. As a piece of drama, Joyce’s dream says she sees, but does not respond to her husband’s plight. See: Key words; Language and dreams; Processing dreams; word analysis of dreams; Settings.
Comments
I just woke up from the worst dream of my life. In my dream, there was a man, who my family knew was a serial killer and had been doing things in my town. He knew that we were watching him, so he plotted an attack on us. Not only did he show up, he brought a whole team of men and women in two cars with sledgehammers and weapons to come hurt us. He knocked on the door, so my mom and I pretended that we were a dog scratching on the doorway. We ran upstairs and they entered, stealing everything in my house – including my bike on my porch I had told my dad to hide. My mom and I hide in an upstairs bedroom, trembling. Two hours later we came downstairs to look for my dad. I told my mom to expect the worse. He was killed, in the downstairs bathroom, sliced up with a razor and covered in blood. We called 911 but no one was interested in helping. I decided we needed to do research on this man to figure out more about him.
The dream went on and on, us preparing for him, him and his men showing up. Some children were added into the dream – we all were getting sick and dying. There was nothing in the house, and we had nothing to offer these men. We sent a woman, who claimed she loved him, with some cherries to talk to him. I kept wanting to run away and fly away as this man was capable of a massacre.
Danielle – You are suffering an awful attack of anxiety. As you can see from the dream, it goes on and one and becomes more and more convoluted because that is how anxiety works.
Your anxious fears have fastened onto a mass murderer, and you have built an awful fear around it. If it is still bothering you I would suggest seeing a doctor for treatment for anxiety.
Sometimes such fears are burnt out with the dream such as you had. If so that is good.
Tony