Posts Tagged ‘ego strength’
The Beast in Dreams
The beast is usually an animal of extraordinary power or a creature causing great terror is a feature of many dreams or nightmares. The figure may be partly human, or an animal which has strange characteristics, or perhaps it is a figure which never quite declares itself, remaining unseen but causing or projecting great fear. In some dreams the beast takes the form of a prehistoric creature.
When explored in any depth such dream images are realised to be an expression of powerful internal emotions, responses and drives which have in most cases previously remained unconscious or repressed. The reason for this lack of expression in conscious life is varied. It may be that painful childhood experiences created a block, or fear surrounding some basic drives such as anger, sexuality or self expression. Therefore major areas of one’s potential are withheld and become symbolised by the beast. That such a beast appears threatening and aggressive, or even bent on one’s destruction, is a simple statement of the way we relate to the forces of our psyche that are bound up with it. For instance if we have been made terrified that our parents will desert us, the expression of our need for love may create this terror. So the beast, in itself, is usually not a thing of terror. The awful feelings are what we experience in connection with what it signifies.
As this terror originally occurred in early childhood at a time when our developing identity was very fragile, or during later traumatic events, the force of such feelings are often life threatening as far as our growing identity was concerned. But similar repression may surround the strength of our own sexuality or basic driving forces.
As many of us are not at ease with our emotions and irrational urges, to meet this ‘beast’ may not be easy even as an adult. This would mean feeling the intensity of our childhood emotions and fears, reappraising them, and integrating the information gathered from such an experience. The information might well include insights into why we avoided certain life situations, or why strong feelings were evoked by seemingly simple events. The example below gives some small insight into this. The information is told by a woman who helped Margaret work on her dream.
Margaret dreamt there was a whole lot of downy little feathers falling from the sky and covering her, like snow. The sky was full of them. She had been watching a baby eagle very high up in tree tops flying from tree to tree. She felt it was looking for it’s mother/ parents. Then a man had caught the baby eagle by a string around it’s leg and Margaret was appalled and said to him, ‘You can’t do that. You must let it go.’ Then the feathers started to fall and Margaret felt that any moment now the irate parent eagles would arrive. They didn’t but she was with her back to a wall sheltering as best she could.
While we explored Margaret’s feelings and memories connected with the dream symbols, she told me that her man friend prodded an old childhood pain which he didn’t know about. Margaret and her son had been with him and his mother for a good weekend camping. She told her son he could go play in the park while they packed the car and they would pick him up on the way out. They were all in the car and drove to where the son was and called him, he saw them and started to run towards them and then the man friend drove the car forward as if to make out they were leaving him behind. Margaret burst with pain and anger.
The underlying cause of this was that her own parents had split up and neither of them wanted Margaret to live with them. She had therefore been looked after by her grandparents. The event that crystallised her feelings occurred one day when her Grandfather had, on the Grandmother’s instructions, driven Margaret, who was 7 years old, to the edge of the town, told her to get out and started to drive away. This was because she wouldn’t eat her breakfast. She still carries the pain of that day. She told her father many years later and he was very angry with his own father for doing that to Margaret. She says – ‘Anyway, it came out again when we were looking at the dream. The male friend grew up with an alcoholic father who has just died, but he says he hasn’t any trauma to deal with?’
The theme of the beast is very important in women’s dreams, but may hold a slightly different theme than in men’s. This difference is illustrated by the story of Beauty and the Beast, in which a young girl meets and lives with a powerful beast. The story emphasises the girl’s relationship with her father as a counterpoint to that with the beast. It suggests that a young woman meets a different kind of love when she leaves the affection from and for her father. To become fully a woman and mother, she must discover the deeply animal urges which underlie the personality and social traits she has developed so far. These urges are not at all uncouth, but are certainly primitive. They open her to experience deep sexual longing, and the power to give herself with passion to her children and to her man. Thus she allows in herself something forbidden in her relationship with her father – an erotic and procreational love.
Overall the beast represents the forces in our personality out of which we emerge into social and intellectual life. Unless we make friends with our beast there may always be conflict in us between the rational and non-rational. We existed as a beast for millions of years before the sort of consciousness which led to personal awareness emerged. Self-awareness is still very new and vulnerable. It needs the greater depth and innate wisdom of the beast to survive. See: under animals.
Here is an extract from the dreamwork of a man exploring a dream about snakes which he feared would attack him.
As I imagine myself to be the snakes I have a distinct feeling that for millions of years I have existed as an animal. As human beings we often reject the animal in us. I see the meaning of the snakes. The snakes are so powerful. They are urges in all of us, to be felt if we are not afraid of them. The urges they depict can become a part of our everyday life. A man is somebody who has all that power there but it is under control. I have been brought up to feel one is supposed to be meek and mild or something. It was not socially acceptable to growl a bit.
I am a mixture of a beast and this awareness of self. WHY? WHY? (I feel like a wordless animal which has just got awareness). Intellect is developing and can ask these questions but there is still the powerful beast here. Why has this happened to me? Why have I woken up from being an unconscious animal and become conscious? What is this all about? It feels like it ought to be a swamp outside the window now – or a jungle.
I am a man! What is a man? What is it to be a man? I really feel this isn’t a way to be. It is too strange to be a man. I am really something odd. It is odd being a man. It is frightening. I am not like the other beasts. The other beasts haven’t got this difficulty of self awareness. The don’t carry this difficult thing – self awareness. They don’t carry the difficulty all the time. Why should I be different? I don’t like it. DON’T like it.
There is something I am looking at which is to do with how human beings got to be in the situation they are in today. Part of it is this feeling of wanting to turn back – wanting to go back to being unconscious – to being asleep. A lot of them did it. They turned back. Hundreds and hundreds turned back. That was the story of Noah. Hundreds turned back because they didn’t want to bear consciousness. Huge numbers of people attempt it today with drugs or suicide because being aware is so difficult.
Autonomous Complex
Many of the characters or elements of our dreams act quite contrary to what we consciously wish. This is why we often find it so difficult to believe all aspects of a dream are part of our own psyche. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained. See Levels of the Brain; The Two Powers.
A modern view of the personality says that our mind is made up of many modules which are quite distinct. These modules, such as the sexual drive and the ability to speak, usually function in a way which is reasonably integrated. But many areas of dissimilarity are evident if we closely observe the workings of our own responses to life experiences. Because we each hold certain ideas about ourselves – our self image – things we do which do not express this self image may shock or even frighten us. Actions arising from a module of oneself which does not express our accepted self image, may give rise not only to fear, but also a sense of evil, or being possessed by evil.
An autonomous complex may be recognised by any one of four major signs. Firstly we may project enormous feelings of love, repulsion, hate or even fear upon another person we know or meet. The power of these feelings or convictions is so great they create a bond between oneself and the other person. Often these feelings lead us to feel there is a fault in the other person that is repulsive or immoral, and which we find very difficult to accept. For instance a man might see another man he knows committing adultery, and feel so repulsed by the act that he goes around criticising the man, only to find years later that he had been repressing the trait in himself. The very strength of the energy with which we criticise it in others may be equal to the strength with which we repress the urge or characteristic in ourselves.
Another way the autonomous complex may announce itself its to take over or invade the conscious personality. It may be an idealistic vision that possesses the person, a mission such as preaching or improving the lot of other people, or something that re-directs the life of the person in a manner that is not rational. This may lead to extraordinary deeds, done in the possessing influence of the vision or urge – or it may lead to foolishness or disillusionment. The apparent change, however, is that the person is under the influence of urges that were not natural, or the person was not capable of, before the invasion. The life of Joan of Arc is an example of being led to great deeds which were beyond the person prior to the invasion.
But of course the complex may express as something evil, the devil or something or someone possessing one. This can be very frightening to many people because they believe that an actual devil or evil is possessing them, rather than a repressed part of them, or the results of a traumatic experience showing itself in frightening images
The third relationship with an autonomous complex is where something happens to destroy or stop all expression or action of these inner characteristics. As much of our uniqueness and facility for variety arises out of the interaction with these various aspects of self, their disappearance leaves a person empty and without any creativeness – a dried husk without any spark of life.
The fourth possibility is that in which the person consciously attempts to find a working relationship with these disparate aspects of their personality and unconscious.
Example: “We spoke to our “primary selves” which were very well developed. They ran our lives or, as we liked to put it, they drove our psychological cars. They were the ones that made up our personalities; the selves that “knew all the answers” when we first met. Then we went on to learn about our “disowned selves.” For each primary self there were opposite disowned selves that were buried or repressed so that the primaries could keep control of our lives. The primary selves were familiar and we were comfortable with them. It was easy to get them to talk and to tell us how cleverly and successfully they ran our lives. The disowned selves were unfamiliar and threatening to our primary selves. Each primary self felt that the disowned self on the other side was a potential destroyer of our wellbeing. For instance: “What happens if you really let go and learned to ‘be’ instead of to ‘do?’ You might never want to work again!” would be the Pusher’s concern.”
As the autonomous complexes hold in them such varied and spontaneous responses to life, they have enormous creative potential if they can be met and expressed in a way that does not dominate or destroy the central personality. The characters we meet in dreams, their variety and difference to how we know and think of ourselves, present us very clearly with the enormous variety of talents, sensitivities, possible approaches to a situation, and personality types that we hold within us. If we can tap them they are an enormous resource. Although it can be very disorienting and even frightening to meet ones internal infant, and feel its explosive moods and deep instinctive longings, it can enlarge our perspective of life enormously, as well as our ability to relate more widely.
Apart from the infant there are many beings we touch in our dreams. Everything from the deeply animal such as the dog in our dreams, or the wolf, to the sadist, the lover, the monk and the business tycoon. If we do not meet these characters and manage them in our life, they will certainly manage us, and lead us into relationship tangles, emotional responses and actions that are not what we ourselves choose to be or feel. See: examples under compensation; sub-personalities; Integrating a Parent or an ex; Unconscious; Alien