Hiding Place
Hiding from feeling; avoiding awareness of something we don’t want to see; being protective – hiding how we really feel about someone, or our sexual feelings about someone; not knowing.
Hiding a body or object: Not facing difficult feelings connected with the body or thing. See: dead people dreams.
Hiding from something dangerous, or dangerous thing hidden: Feeling threatened either by unconscious contents or exterior situation.
The example below illustrates how we may use one emotion or situation to hide what is really important.
Hiding place: Usually it represent a feeling that you can hide from or not be noticed by people or things you wish to avoid. It can also suggest that you are hiding from knowing who you are. See Resistances
Example: I felt low and mean. I am a parasite. How, in what way? The view of mankind came back. Men and women hiding from their own pointlessness, their own featureless existences, their life without any real meaning. They lived and ate, fucked, slept, died. They laughed wept, but all without any overall direction or point to life. It was like my wife and I talking about working towards something. If one is not working together for something, even if it is to school the children, or go on a cruise, life can feel like an empty drudge.
Hiding in attic: Escape from other people; retreat from everyday life. See example below.
Example: I was sleeping in an attic. A large dog was with me – a wolfhound like I used to exercise a few years ago. I and the dog would go out together. The dog was wild and free. I enjoyed being with it. Together we did things like hunting which felt very real in the sense of not being artificial behaviour. Although I never washed I felt clean and healthy. Leon.
When Leon explored his dream he felt the attic was a place where he could exist but not be involved with people. The attic reminded him of the attic in a childhood house in which he slept, where his mother never went because of the steep ladder. So he could go there and be alone, free of other people’s presence and influence. It can also be a place you can or hope to keep objects hidden.
Example: ‘I was in my bedroom, I looked up and saw the top of some long curtains were on fire. I thought ‘My God, now my sister is setting fire to the house to hide the evidence’.’ Ms A. T.
Example: About fifteen minutes after having taken the drug, this dream which had been incomprehensible, spontaneously revealed its meaning – The underground shelter was obviously meant to be a symbol for my unconscious mind which existed below the surface and had been so well camouflaged that it could survive indefinitely without being discovered. My friends and relatives in the shelter were symbols too – of my symptoms and neuroses which could have survived the duration comfortably had not those barbarian shock troops discovered the underground hiding place. Those barbarian shock troops, I quickly realized, were symbols again – and very apt symbols – for Doctors E and M who were using the barbarian (experimental) shock therapy of LSD. They had already forced my unconscious above ground, and were now asking me to round up those friends and relatives (symptoms and neuroses) that had escaped. As soon as I did round them up, we were to be destroyed. As this interpretation unfolded, the nightmare lost its terror and became instead an encouragement: unconsciously I might be frightened at losing my neuroses but consciously I was delighted. This was quoted from Myself and I by Constance Newland.
Example: I dreamed I dared not move from home as I had murdered my father and hid the body in the rubbish tip at the end of the garden.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was I hiding or hiding from?
What was being hidden in the dream?
What do I hide from myself?
See Questions – Inner World – Active Passive – Summing Up