The Sleeping Foreigner

Dreams can serve to nudge us along and attempt to get us back on the right path when we falter. It might seem contradictory, but this dream is issuing a wake-up call.
The Dream: An attractive young woman, someone close to me, is sleeping too much. She resembles the Polish cleaning woman in the PBS mystery Father Brown. I go into her bedroom and try to awaken her with a gentle hug and kiss, as my father would awaken me. She doesn't seem unhappy but doesn't want to get up, either. I'm concerned that all this day-time sleeping might mean she's depressed.

Interpretation: There's a part of myself that feels foreign. There are some family associations here: one of my grandmothers was from Austria Hungary, now in Poland. After her husband died in The Spanish flu epidemic, this brave woman who lived in Brooklyn and spoke little English worked as a cleaning woman to support her three children. She avoided remarriage; having experienced being a step-child in her own youth she didn't want her children to endure the kind of unequal treatment she associated with that situation.

In the dream I experience life from this point of view: as one who is foreign, poorly equipped to cope with the world, and saddled with responsibilities. How did my grandmother respond? She prevailed. How do I respond? I go to sleep. I don't want to engage with a difficult reality. I am comfortable hiding out in bed, happy in my retreat, and wary about confronting my difficulty.

I Can Do That With My Eyes Closed

Here's an idea: Sometimes the meaning of a dream that had seemed very obvious isn't the right one. It never hurts to try on the opposite interpretation of a dream, and see how it feels. When I did that with this dream, something interesting came to light.
The Dream: I'm driving a car from the back seat. I've dozed off for a moment. I awaken with a start, happy to realize that no one noticed my lapse. The road is pitch black, and I can't see anything but the opaque night. I don't know how fast I'm going, but I'm afraid I might be exceeding the speed limit. A father figure is sitting in the driver's seat blocking my view of the speedometer. I don't want to ask him about my speed because it might draw attention to my inadequacy. I'm surprised that I've stayed on course, even with my eyes closed. Later I understand that this particular route is not much used; it's only for people wanting to travel between distant places rather than for local transportation.

Interpretation: At first this dream struck me as very negative, and it's easy to see why. There's the black night too dark for vision to penetrate; I'm driving from the back seat and fall asleep. I'm afraid I will be judged. But wait a minute! After thinking of the dream's worst possible meaning, another way to look at it flashed into my mind: I may be in the dark, and it might not be obvious that I'm driving, but I am, and I mange to stay on course even if I make mistakes. This dream is telling me about a big psychic change in progress; the road I'm on is only used to travel long distances, to get to a different place. It's the road less traveled, and I'm getting there even if it's frustrating at times and even if I don't know how.

The Unconscious Mother

The Dream: I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I come back my mother is in my place. She is almost diagonally across the bed, with her head at the foot. I try to rouse her to get her into a better position, but she remains more than asleep, almost unconscious. I am concerned that I am unable to move her.

Interpretation: Mother is lodged, inappropriately, at the root (foot of the bed) of my unconscious. While I want to reposition her—I am unable to. The dream tells me that I've got things exactly backward, upside down. And that I've relinquished too much of myself (my proper place).

Something's Got A Hold of Me

The Dream: I was startled awake by this nightmare. Clark and I are in bed, asleep. Our dog, Toffee, comes bounding in and jumps on the bed between us. He clamps his teeth onto my finger and won't let go. I scream again and again for Clark's help; he doesn't respond. Finally, screaming over and over, “Clark, you aren't paying attention to me!” I awaken, feeling very shaken.

Interpretation: On the surface this dream seems to be saying that I feel neglected by my husband, and that could certainly be one of its meanings. But the level of terror I experienced in the dream hints at another meaning. I've been grabbed by the instinctive (my animal, the dog) and it won't relent. The rational (Clark, my animus) ignores the problem.

The dog in the dream, Toffee, died some years ago, and the terror the dream conjures seems consistent with a primal fear such as that of dying. What might have triggered this nightmare? Last night I was reading George Eliot's “Daniel Deronda.” In the book the character Gwendolyn responds with terror to a painting of a dead face and someone fleeing.