Jung says that dreams show us the way forward; they sometimes deal with emotional pain, expressing it through symbols. These sorts of dreams help us, over time, to accept what we must.
The Dream: There is an icy river: big chunks of ice and snow predominate, but the river flows, nonetheless. A woman falls in and is carried downstream. She is near the edge of the river, and I try to pull her out but she keeps eluding me, moving downstream. At last I succeed. She is like a paper cut-out doll: a white silhouette that looks like a 1950s fashionable woman, complete with the broad-brimmed hat of the era. Only the silhouette remains, but it is her.
Interpretation: The icy river symbolizes my emotions, frozen in their inability to come to terms with my mother’s death. The fashionable woman in the water (my mother) is in danger, and I desperately would like to save her but it’s difficult. Finally I think I’ve succeeded, only to discover that she is not a real person, only the ghost (white silhouette) that exists in my mind.
In my dream, the cut out represents an illusion of the kind of pristine, "pure" femininity that was foisted on us for so many years (and still is, from certain media and religious quarters). I am letting it go, though I want to keep a memory of it for a reference. Since white is the color of death or of the spirit world in some cultures, the whiteness could be saying that this image is already drained of life.
ReplyDeleteThe river is icy cold, being snow melt on its way to the ocean. The melting process suggests emotions gradually warming.