Scar
Influences still remaining from past hurt and being visible in the way you live or relate. Past experiences that have left a mark. See Example under white.
Sometimes the scars are left by the culture we live in and the splits it leaves between our life, economics, sex, religion and science. They are all at odds with each other and cause conflicts within us. Josef Breuer stated that forgotten traumas, painful incidents that had left a psychological scar, were responsible for what was at that time called hysteria. It was, Breuer wrote, the undischarged emotional energy associated with these forgotten traumas that were the root cause of hysteria. Using hypnotic techniques, Breuer helped some patients to re-enact, and thus recall, the original traumatic incident. In doing so the emotional charge was released. The release and remembering or integrating, was called catharsis or abreaction. If there is still a scar in adulthood from lack of bonding and warm love it leads to great vulnerability in relationship, and an urge to never quite make a full connection with anybody unless dealt with.
Example: I am standing in my wife’s garden. A ferret (one we had set free after trouble over them with neighbours – the ferrets belonged to my son) came down the garden to me. It was plump and healthy. I picked it up to look at it, and saw an enormous scar running the full length of its left side. I realised that although it had survived, and was well, it had been an incredible struggle, and was scarred for life. Then I realised that my son had hid the other ferrets somewhere. Patrick.
Patrick’s son had kept a female ferret as a pet and mated it so it had pups. The ferret, Blanche, was a very playful and loving animal, though prone to get excited and aggressive if food was around. One day Blanche and her babies escaped from their cage and attacked the neighbour’s chickens so Patrick hid them in his large building. They once more escaped from their enclosure and got under the floorboards of the multi-storey house. All but one of them were retrieved. But that one lived under the floorboards for six months, managing to survive somehow with water and food without being fed by Patrick. Patrick tried to humanly catch it in a cage, but although it entered the cage until it triggered the trap, it fought so enormously to get out it managed to escape from the metal cage.
Patrick had to eventually poison it as it was beginning to gnaw electric cables. The ferret therefore became for Patrick a symbol of survival against enormous odds, so represented the great injuries he had sustained in his childhood and his survival of them. But also it showed his loving relationship and care for the natural and instinctive level existing in him during babyhood. It shows how, as an adult, he had listened to and cared for that instinctive life in him through working with his dreams. The hiding of the other ferrets expressed how Patrick hid this sensitive caring side of himself from others because he had been hurt enough in childhood, and was now suspicious of how others would deal with that side of himself.
Example: I was looking at my right forearm which was bare. It was very brown from the sun, and at the top of the forearm near the elbow was a white slash. This surprised me and I ran my finger across it, and it felt something like a scar because the skin was slightly raised. The main thing about the slash was its intense white. It was so white it is difficult to know whether it was shining like light, or was simply incredibly white. Miche
In this dream Miche felt the whiteness was a very noticeable part of him, representing hurts (the scar) that had been transformed by hard work and skills (the right arm) and were now apparent to other people. Useful Questions and Hints: Were scars disfiguring you or a dreamt of subject? Where did the scars appear on the body? Have you felt scared by events or experiences in your life? See Body – Parts of – Trauma – Being the Person or Thing – Life’s Little Secrets .