Facade

In some house dreams, great stress is given to the front or façade of the house. Sometimes it crumbles away revealing what is within; sometimes it is painted or changed, and so on. The façade thus represents your front shown to the world, your social self that may hide quite a different interior. See: house.

This is the more public or expressed part of your nature, or attitudes you use to meet ‘the world’; a ‘front’ or façade, used to create an impression, or the point of stress where you as a person contact others and meet impacts, and so are more vulnerable. For instance the back of a house or building would be a  more private area. So a front door would be where you meet and decide whether to allow someone into your life.  Your social self or face.

Dropping the façade is about the attitudes or feelings we may mask our real emotions with in everyday life – for instance a child may scream if someone it dislikes gets near it, but an adult will probably tolerate the nearness, or refrain from expressing displeasure.

A great secret is that behind the façade we may erect to tell people who we are, each of us want to be capable of loving and supporting at least one other human being. We want at least one other person to be glad we exist.

Example: We’re curious, so one of us goes up and opens the door and steps through. Then says, “What a joke! There’s nothing over here at all, it’s just a door to nothing!” See, the door isn’t set in part of the building, as if multiple stories, it’s just somewhat more than door-high, maybe 1 story, and then sky. But you can’t see there’s no roof. And there’s a space nearby, a break in the wall, and the one who went through the door steps through that, showing it’s just a façade. We all find this curious and funny, so we go through and find a big stadium-like space between office buildings.

Example: I dreamt I was in a place far from home, yet it seemed to be where I was staying.  A small room. My brother (who I’ve been estranged from since childhood except for unavoidable family holidays, at which time we “act” pleasant enough and put on a normal exterior façade of “family”) and his girlfriend showed up in the room with me.  They point to writing on the wall which shows I’ve let 17 days pass after his birthday and didn’t send any acknowledgement in that time.  They feel I’m bad and point to this as evidence.  This is funny becuase I feel he’s doing this to point the finger back at me and deflect away the reason I’ve avoided him all these years.

Example: There was the one side where everything was wonderful as my mother told me it was. This was a sort of façade, a superficial façade where I loved my mother, she loved me, she was wonderful and everything was happy. The other side, the side which I couldn’t face in my conscious mind, was this unhappiness underneath, which my conscious mind under the drug told me was so.

• I realised that she was weak, unreliable and bad and I couldn’t bring these two sides of my life together. When, finally, something snapped in my brain at about five when we had this terrific row about our sexual play, I think it really came to a head, and I couldn’t carry on with these two sides of my life any longer. They clashed, and I just couldn’t find any basis for a proper relationship with my mother knowing what she was, knowing her demand for love, and knowing her demand for implicit obedience. I couldn’t find any way of living with her, and therefore I had to cut her out of my life, which I have done for the last thirty years, and with her, of course, all other deep human contacts, particularly with women.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What impression do I have of this façade – or what impression might other people have?

Is any change going on – and if so does that express my personal situation or feelings?

Do I connect or feel repulsed by the façade?

See Processing Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming– Defence Mechanisms and Resistances