Many people are surprised to hear that dreams can be useful in understanding one’s psyche. Most people don’t think twice about their dreams, or at best think they are curious or entertaining. And for much of my life, I was one of them – until I began psychoanalysis. Once I started looking at my dreams with my analyst, all of a sudden, it was like opening the gates of an entire world I had no idea existed. Ever since, I am thrilled when I have a dream, and I write it down immediately, even in the middle of the night. And when I do take the time to work on a dream, it always yields something important – some deepened understanding of myself that only a dream could offer.
Dreams serve an interesting dual function. On the one hand, they serve to protect our psyches from unbearable feelings and thoughts, instead encoding them in ways that are all but unrecognizable. Even nightmares do this – the feeling invoked in a nightmare is real, but the imagery is still quite cryptic and camouflaged. On the other hand, these camouflaged images are hints that we can use – with some practice – to learn about those more difficult parts of ourselves and open up to more of our internal world.
To illustrate the power of dreams, I would like to share a short dream of my own, and part of its analysis. A dream analysis is never “complete”, Freud said – and if you’re new to this, you will soon see why. I chose a dream that is short so as not to have too overwhelming an amount of material, (and thus also limit the length of the post), and also one that reveals issues that are in some ways familiar to many people so that perhaps you can relate.
Also, I made the dream in italics, and have italicized any dream elements as I wrote about them in order to distinguish them from the associations or other material.
Here is my dream:
I was to be part of a performance, which was a mixture of theater and singing. At some point, the participants were told that as part of this performance, we would have to get a tattoo across our abdomen – the tattoo was to have some words on it, and our abdomen would be bare during the performance. I felt uneasy about this, knowing that I would be left with this tattoo even long after the performance was done.
In working through a dream, one begins by thinking and feeling into the various elements of it, looking into what the associations are with each. For example, for one person being in a performance can have associations of intense anxiety and stage fright, whereas for someone else, it is an opportunity to shine, gloriously sharing his or her talent. For this reason, analysis of a dream without the dreamer will always be lacking. Also, it is helpful to remember what happened the day before the dream, as it can be very useful in the analysis. Unfortunately, for my dream above, I did not remember it right away, so I don’t have this piece of information. However, there is still plenty to work with!
In fact, even this short dream has so much material that I’m a bit overwhelmed! So, I will begin to think about the various elements in it. To me a performance is a chance to shine, the culmination of weeks or months of preparation. I am a singer, and usually get to perform pieces I love, and I usually enjoy myself onstage (not without some adrenalin, but it doesn’t overwhelm me). I enjoy sharing my talent and enjoy the compliments afterward. In the dream, however, the performance was to also involve theater and movement – not something I am familiar or comfortable with yet. However, there was also singing, which I do enjoy, so it’s not entirely unfamiliar. In symbolic terms, I can think that this is about being on display, being watched, being evaluated, and maybe being judged, somewhere I am not entirely comfortable. This is where remembering what happened the day before, or perhaps what was happening the day of the dream, would be helpful. Was I anxious about some important meeting? Was I thinking about some aspect of my life I’m uncertain of? (I do have a personal association here that I will keep private, but my point here can stand without the actual association.)
Next, there’s the tattoo requirement. I immediately think of the practice of “branding”, where everyone is made the same, somehow claimed for one “herd”. However, in this dream, the performers weren’t getting the same tattoo – we were to each have some phrases that would be constituents of a larger message. This makes me think of the saying, “written on one’s forehead” – as in, something about the person that is totally obvious to anyone who just looks at him or her, maybe even something that he or she would prefer to keep private. The tattoo would be on the abdomen, which would be bare – again, I think about being on display, being more vulnerable than I am used to. Being an overweight woman (and working on this issue), I dress in ways that attempt to conceal my abdomen, so this dream may be showing me my anxiety about this excess being obvious to others. There can be many other associations to the idea of being written on, people reading me, and so on.
In the dream, I am uneasy about the tattoo as being a permanent part of my body, despite the performance itself only lasting a short time. To me, this is the most poignant element in the dream. The emotional struggle in the dream is the question of whether I want to be told who I am (the director of the performance dictating the tattoo requirement) or not. It shows my awareness that I am always changing, and that who I am does not need to be written in stone – or in this case, in flesh (also a reference to my working on my weight issue). It’s interesting that I came up with the association “written in stone” – that’s another thread I can follow further.
I will stop here, but I could keep going with more associations and possible connections. You may have other thoughts about this dream – and I welcome them – please post them below if you choose. Dreams are so multifaceted that their analysis can really go deeply almost indefinitely. There can be many layers and levels to the dream at the same time. I have other associations I am not sharing in this post, and I may have more after I publish this. However, I hope I’ve piqued your interest in dream work and I do believe that I have conveyed my message about the usefulness of dreams and their potential in self-discovery. Hence, the title of this blog (and the explanation below) – I Dream, Therefore I Am.
* I came up with the title of the blog, which feels very poignant to me, because the way I see it, we are all dreaming ourselves into being – through sleeping dreams, waking dreams, reveries, daydreams, and so on. As I analyzed my dream, I became aware of something that I wasn’t aware of before – hence, I have dreamed more of myself into being. I wondered whether someone has used this phrase before, and discovered this while searching online (here):
“I dream therefore I am afraid
I am afraid therefore I think
I think therefore I hope
I hope therefore I am
I am therefore I dream.”
(Tladouque, “Steps to Maya Pyramid”)
The message in this quote is different from what I am expressing in this post, but I still thought I would share it, because it expresses the cyclical, spiral nature of self-discovery and growth.
Loving Psychoanalysis 