The Dream: A glamorous if superficial-looking woman has something I don't have, and I'm not happy about it. By way of explanation Clark says, “She's attractive.” I am immediately hit by the implication “And I'm not?” I'm very angry at my husband for 1) thinking this blond woman is so attractive and 2) not getting that he has insulted me.
There is an unusually tall bed near a window. As Clark climbs up a short ladder to reach the bed I goose him. He loses his footing, shoots up into the air and goes out the second story window. I am shocked, thinking he'll be killed. When I look out the window I see he's managed to grasp onto a nearby steel grid. The seat of a bicycle is not far from his foot, and it looks as if he'll be able to use it to push himself to safety. When I see he's safe the situation strikes me as humorous, and I laugh.
Interpretation: As the scene opens I'm irritated at my other half (my Animus), the carrier of my own internalized patriarchal values. When he goes out the window, however, the situation becomes alarming. The bike seat, similar in shape to the phallus, becomes the “vehicle” that reintegrates this part of my psyche. The trickster, prompting the humorous goose, has intervened to show me that I don't want to get rid of the masculine altogether (as in kill), but I do want to enjoy the temporary ascendancy that comes from being able to laugh at him, in other words, not take him too seriously.
Carla, thank you for the chuckle upon my reading of the dream! Why do I laugh when someone else is about to be hurt? Well, they say it's because I am safe. Anyway, the issue I read into this dream is bout intimacy. The bed is huge for some reason in my dream, a bed symbolizes so much in life - birth, death, sexuality. The ladder reminds me of Jacob's ladder - a struggle to get to the divine. Intimacy in the sense of intimacy with my waking life husband, or intimacy with my inner self or intimacy with God. That I play the trickster intrigues me. Why don't I just push him out the window and be done with it? No - I have to goose him which is my way of being passive aggressive. Which he isn't about to buy into as he is able to make his way to safety. Albeit a steel grid. Is there not an idiom there with "steel"? What comes to mind is "Nerves of steel". I also see more overt sensitivity with dream ego assuming Clark doesn't see her as attractive just because he says someone else is. If it were my dream, I would explore other ways I could have better handled Clark's remark. Possibly by looking at my waking life pattern of how negative I feel when comparing myself to someone else. How we all can get into the rut of feeling "not enough". Love the illustration!
ReplyDeleteEmily: Very interesting point about the 3 implications of a bed: life, death, and sexuality. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, perhaps I should have said "birth" instead of "life". Birth and death, a result of sexuality!
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