On(e) Stage

Have you ever noticed that you’re not quite yourself in dreams? The lead character in your nightly drama is called the dream ego.

The Dream: I’m in an odd-shaped structure, something like a tent except that it’s solid. It has various entrances, some of them in surprising places. I get up on a stage which has been set up inside this very large, yellow-ochre structure and begin to give a speech. I’m full of self-confidence as I begin. “Girls inherit their lungs from their mothers . . . .” I trail off as I begin to realize I have no idea where boys get their lungs. I try to find a way to retreat, to get off the stage. I escape through a back exit I hadn’t known was there. The “I” in the dream (dream ego) has dark brown curly hair and a perky demeanor. She doesn’t actually look like me.

Interpretation: The part of me that internalized the opinions of my mother and the female culture of my youth is beginning to realize she doesn’t know everything. She is in retreat. Her domain, the half circle of the tent, shows itself to be incomplete. She is missing what Jung calls the animus, the part of a woman--symbolized by her inner man--that enables her to take on the world.