Murder Murderer Murdered

Each of us are implicated in killing – by denying, repressing, controlling – some part of our own nature. These denied areas of your own sensitivity or potential can fortunately be resurrected through self awareness of your deed. If you flee from a murderer, it depicts a fear that is threatening your confidence or something you feel threatened by.

Murderous rage in dreamer: It is observable that repressed sexuality or traumatised childhood love leads to feelings of murderous rage which may not be expressed socially, but do appear in dreams; may also express childhood anger linked with emotional bond with mother being damaged. In this case the dreamer will be the murderer – even if in the dream the murderer appears to be someone else. The murder will then be the killing of any love or emotional connection or bond between child and parent. The child often thus murders its own feelings of love for the parent in order to survive apparent or real desertion – as for instance a child being put in foster care. The bonds are so instinctive and strong; to survive parting the child may have to hack away any emotional links.

Freud says, “Has different ‘moral standards’. In dreams we rape, pillage, murder and adventurously act in ways we would resist with horror in waking life.”

Example: I still denied that I wanted to mutilate or destroy my sister. Impossible. I had no such evil in me.  When at length I did admit the evil in me, it was with outrage: of what therapeutic use could it be to discover that I had wanted to destroy, murder, my sister – at a time when I could scarcely think? Freud has this interesting comment to make: ‘A child is absolutely egotistical: he feels his wants acutely, and strives remorselessly to satisfy them, especially against his competitors, other children, and first of all against his brothers and sisters. And yet we do not on that account call a child ‘wicked’ – we call him ‘naughty’.

Example: It was something like a semi detached and sited on a slope. I was outdoors and I think felt or knew that we had just taken over this house. But I felt uneasy as if something from the past was linked with it.

Then I was at the back of the house, on the part sloping down from the back wall of the house. I noticed things covering what turned out to be a big hole dug against the back wall, deep into the soil. This was where I felt most ill at ease about the place.  The hole had been covered with bits of board and other odd pieces of junk. I lifted these at the left of the hole and looked in. Sticking out from the side of the hole, about three feet down was the dead body of a young man. I could see the back of his skull had been smashed in. But although he had obviously been under the soil for some time, and had now been uncovered, the body was still in good condition, being slightly dried out or mummified.

I felt really guilty and connected with the body, as if I had been part of his murder, and was wondering frantically what I could do to hide or get rid of the body. Part of the problem was that pulling it out risked being seen with it.

In ‘being’ the body in the dream the man said, “But it wasn’t until I got into the role of the dead body that any depth of feelings emerged.  Almost as soon as I was in the role of the dead body I began to think about and feel things connected with the way I had killed my sexuality as a teenager.  Gradually these feelings deepened and I was describing my feeling hatred in regard to sexuality and how the masses were pulled along by their genitals into some sort of conformity and performance.  I felt anger and loathing for what I felt at the time were the cattle human beings were. At the time I despised and hated them. I also felt repugnance at the way people talked about sex or appeared to enjoy it.  It has to be understood that in that period in history in the UK, most of sex was depicted in terms of smut, dirt, animal desire, hidden pornography, or loveless fucking. I wept deeply, at times hardly able to breathe, with the pain of seeing what I had done to myself.  I said sorry over and over.  I saw that I need not have killed my love and sexuality, but could have expressed it in a tender and loving way.

Killing: Repressing or stopping some aspect of oneself – as when we kill our love for someone.

Where the dreamer imagines the death of a beloved relative: Freud believed this was because rivalry and hatred between brothers and sisters was deep rooted though unconscious and, in adult life, concealed by apparent warm affection. One reason for this, he suggested, was that for the child the idea of death meant no more than being ‘gone’: to wish another dead, in early childhood, is simply a way of wishing him removed from the scene. There are however other reasons. In moving toward independence we may find it difficult to establish our own decision making and feeling responses because our parents are so deeply engraved into our ways of behaving. In order to make a break from this we often kill them off in our dreams in one way or another. See: the section of father under archetypes, especially the part of killing father or burying father.

 Example: I know what this is about — waiting for that impulse. I’ve created two golden ceremonial knives. I’ve got to cut my way out of the membrane. . It’s my flesh, as I strike out I feel it stabbing, it’s like someone is hacking their way in (hacking movements). I’ve done it, I’ve got it – crying gasping. I killed him – then I severed the arteries. I killed them. I cut the life blood. Then locked myself away never got up again – collapse’s – I got knocked down. I killed them. . (Guilt). The anger came from deep in the soul. I killed them so I could survive. M. went mad; alcoholic brag artist, my dad. That’s my guilty secret, I’m a murderer, killed them from within like a cancer. Undermined them all the time. They’ll be sorry – most of them are, but I’m wonderful, because I am a murderer. I killed to survive. Law of the jungle. All this shit about suffer the little children unto me. . Paradox I died to survive the matador. Comes’ into the ring crippled. Buddhist Mafia – protection money.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the body about in the dream?

Do I feel involved and if so in what way?

Can I identify with the murder or the body?

See Being the Person or Thing – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Emotions and Mood in Dreams