Doctor

Our dependence upon authority figure for a sense of wholeness, or to deal with anxiety. The dream doctor can be the healing process within us – or the unconscious wisdom we have concerning our needs and well being. The doctor might give us advice for instance, or help us with anxiety about health.

The doctor can be a figure you look to when feeling desire for intimacy or to be looked at and touched. Occasionally the figure of the doctor presages or is a supportive agent in the process of dying. There might also be fear of illness or of being hurt/damaged by an operation or medical procedure involved in the dream.

In some dreams the doctor appears to represent intellectual curiosity or rational thought, but perhaps with an open mind.

Seeing a doctor can also suggest fear of illness or of being hurt/damaged by an operation or medical procedure.

Dreams of collapse and destruction are more prevalent before a woman’s menstrual periods. Just before menstrual bleeding the endometrium is thicker and its surface more spongy or “wrinkled” before it sloughs off and menstrual bleeding starts. At this time several women report dreams where they need to iron wrinkled clothing. One woman reported, “I was in the bathroom ironing.”

Women with negative attitudes toward their menstruation (“the curse,” “falling off the roof,” “on the rag”) showed 15 percent of their dreams during the first two days had concerns about their body health. While those with positive feelings toward menstruation (“my secret friend,” “my monthly visitor,” “Mother Nature calling”) had less than 2 percent of dreams showing concerns.

Example: When I was working hard renovating a great big dance hall to turn it into our house, I developed a pain in my right arm so bad I went to the doctor. He told me I had tennis elbow and it could never be cured. He added that I should avoid exertion.

I thought what a load of b*******s he was saying. I know my body has the ability to heal itself, but I didn’t know how. As I was working to renovate our house and it was difficult, and the pain had continued for six months without any change, so I surrendered to the process of Life active in me and I asked what I could do. The answer was quite detailed. Holding in mind the pain in the arm I waited for the responses to arise from within. Soon, spontaneous fantasies and ideas bubbled into awareness, almost as if someone were explaining the situation to me. I was led to understand that during the past year I had not only been working hard physically to renovate the building, but because of divorce, family conflict within my new relationship, plus the change of home, I had experienced much stress and anger. During my sawing, plastering and hammering, I had discharged much of this anger and stress. As with any hard work, the cells in my right arm had broken down, but the anger and tension had prevented the cells from regenerating adequately.

As this insight emerged I could see what a shrewd summary of my recent unconscious attitudes it was. The emerging explanation went on to say that each cell is a tiny individual life, and in the body, they each take on a particular task. Some live as workers in the muscles; some are thinking beings in the brain, and some act as transformers, as in the liver. Each cell depends upon the others to co-operatively share food, oxygen and pleasure. The cells in my arm didn’t mind the hard work, but they also needed to share the pleasures of eating, music and love making. I had been unconsciously deluging them with anger and tension, and denying them laughter and relaxation.

So when I ate I would consciously allow the pleasure I felt in my mouth to be felt by the rest of my body, particularly the right arm. When I made love, I attempted to relax and let my whole body feel the pleasure, not keep it in the genitals. I frequently concentrated on my right arm, relaxing it and allowing pleasure felt elsewhere to flow to it. Within a week it was completely free of the pain, and the problem has never returned.

Example: While visiting Amsterdam in the summer of 1966, my husband and I returned to our hotel rather early one afternoon because he had suddenly become very ill. No specific symptoms appeared and he lay down. He soon fell asleep and dreamed that he was visited by the best doctor in the world, who told him to take a massive dose of Phillips milk of magnesia.

He awakened and ordered a taxi to drive me to the nearest apothecary. I went to five before I found a shop which had one dusty bottle of Phillips milk of magnesia. He took a massive dose and by the next morning he had completely recovered.

Idioms: Doctor something; have an animal doctored; doctor the accounts; doctor in the house.

Useful questions and hints:

Do I suffer from worries about my health, and does this dream reflect them?

What is happening in my relationship with the doctor?

Am I in a healing situation, and if so in what way?

See Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions