The Paw of Condolence

This dream springs from the same  space in the unconscious that creates religion. Do our loved ones go to “another place” when they die? This dream says yes. Whether or not that's right in any objective sense is unknown and unknowable; nevertheless, it is consoling.
The Dream: I am a young teenager, staying at the seaside with my family. I look out from the screened porch, on the second story of the old-fashioned beach house. I see my younger brother Greg out in the ocean, clinging to a railing. I call to him, “Stay there! I'm coming!” I quickly change into a swimsuit and run downstairs and into the sea.

By the time I reach the railing he's gone. I search frantically, unable to find him, then head back to the beach house for some help. I go upstairs and find my sister in law, who is about my age. As we start to head down the stairs, two pet lions are ascending, obscured by a cat flap. I hear the first one before I see him. He says, “He's gone to another place.” I'm frightened when I hear this, thinking it confirms my fear that my brother is dead. I'm also surprised that the lion has spoken. The lion emerges through the cat door and repeats, “He's gone to another place.” He looks at me empathetically, as if he is sorry for my loss. He holds out a paw, gently, claws retracted, to shake hands.

I look out at the sea, its waves forming a beautiful pattern, white caps going on and on in v-shape formations. It's beautiful but hazardous. I don't think Greg could have survived its power.

My sister in law and I go to the deep beach, filled with tourists sunbathing and swimming. We search and search, to no avail. How will I tell Mother? I wonder, feeling her grief as I think about it. How will I tell my other brother? The words I choose echo the ones he used to tell me about Greg's death when it happened several years ago: “The worst thing you can imagine has happened.”

Interpretation: I had this dream near the anniversary of the deaths of both my brother and my mother. Two feelings are intertwined, grief with the hope inherent in the lion's godlike message. In one of C.S. Lewis' famous books, the lion represented Christ as the symbolic sacrifice that defeats death.  For me, the lion symbolizes the inevitable sad way of things in the natural world. He tells me that Greg has gone to another place. By stepping outside his own natural role as a mute and savage beast, the empathetic lion implies that there's something we don't know. As I experience the fearsome beauty of the sea, I know that this mysterious life force is incomprehensible. Yet there is solace in realizing the possibility of a dimension beyond those I know: this other place the lion speaks of.

There's a Sock on Your Hat!

The Dream: I'm visiting one of my brothers, about to leave. I need to get to Heathrow Airport for my journey home. I go to a travel kiosk that looks like an old-fashioned counter at a train station: the clerks are behind a grill. I ask for directions to Heathrow. When I approach the counter the woman is very friendly and congenial, and says to me, “Did you know there's a sock on your hat?” It's placed the way a decorative flower might have been. We both roar with laughter, and I say:”My brother could have told me!” I feel he's played a brotherly prank on me, and I have to admit it's pretty funny.

Interpretation: Not all dreams deal with heavy issues; most, in fact, reflect day to day concerns. After my recent trip to a foreign country to visit one of my husband's childhood friends, I had two dreams featuring laughter. My relative (in waking life my husband, not my brother) played a prank on me by subjecting me to his very self-involved friend for a few days. (I was “grilled” by the ordeal.) In the dream I laugh it off. This releases tension and points out that I shouldn't take the situation, or myself, too seriously.

The Incapacitated Father

The Dream: I am waiting for my father. A white van drives up. I see my brother and sister-in-law, looking very serious and sad, and I see my father isn't driving but is asleep in the front passenger seat. They lead him into the house, and my sister-in-law tells me that he must go into an Alzheimer's Care facility. I am shocked and very sad, and also concerned for myself: will I get this dreadful disease?

Interpretation: My father died long ago, at a young age with no sign of any sort of mental impairment. Here he represents my animus, the part of me that deals with the world, and perhaps the part that keeps my inner “mother” from taking over. This dream and the last point out that now I am the adult: these imagos from the past, mother and father, can no longer serve today's adult. The inner mother is unconscious; the inner father can't function effectively. Time for me to put myself in charge, or I risk becoming incapable (I'll get the disease.)

Cast Not the First Stone

The Dream: I'm in a living room with a long mural that I had painted, made up of several separate pieces the same dimensions as a series of family history embroideries I had made in waking life. My brother and his friend have painted over the mural to shift the color to a different, warm shade of brown. They are pleased with themselves and feel this is an improvement. I am incensed, perhaps even more so because it is a rather nice shade. I yell at them enthusiastically, but it seems they are impervious to my attacks; as people used to say, “They couldn't care less.” I'm as frustrated by their lack of seeing the insult they've perpetrated as I am by what they did. “You have denigrated my work!” I say.

Getting no satisfaction from them, I declare that I will never again come into this room. The next scene, however, finds me in it. My brother is now without his mocking friend. I try again to get him to see the gravity of his sin, and he says, “Now you know how I felt when you . . . . “ I don't remember what he accused me of, but I do remember I had done what he said, and that I, like him, had been unaware of its impact on the other.

Interpretation: The dream was triggered by a falling out between a couple of distant family members, and my realization that their anger and frustration with each other is rooted in their shared past (the family history embroideries).

The dream has an interesting resolution: I go back into the living room (the place where I live) and realize that I have done exactly the same thing that I was angry at my brother for doing. In other words, I've taken on the role that a family member once played: since I do the same thing that my dream brother has done, I am the critic who denigrates my work. I am doing it to myself.

The dream tells me a few important things: First, it's time to lighten up. Second, it is time to learn how to accept a good criticism (the new color is actually an improvement), and third, my family history holds the key to my overly critical thoughts.

The Bed and The Diary

The Dream: Part 1: I'm a child. I'm in a room with twin beds. My brother is meant to sleep in one; I'm meant to sleep in the other. I get into his bed with him. I think there's something wrong with my doing this, but it isn't clear to me what it is. I know I should cover up the action. Both pillows are on one bed; the other bed is pristine and clearly has not been slept in. Will Mother figure it out? I decide she'll only think I made my bed and my brother didn't.

Part 2: I'm an adult. I'm reading through an old diary that my daughter had left at the house, written on a stenographer's pad. In one part she describes an active and unembarrassed sex life. I'm very surprised that she had such a frank view of sex at such an early age. I feel uncomfortable about this on the one hand, but on the other hand I think that since all has turned out well, perhaps it's okay. In some parts of the diary I notice a different handwriting and wonder if it's that of one of her boyfriends. I feel a certain dread—but also an attraction—toward reading what he wrote.

Interpretation: These dreams further the sorting out of the “mother” theme. The child/mother relationship is central in both. In the first I'm the child; in the next I'm the mother. In both Mother judges my spontaneous relationship to life (sex) and pleasure, and in the dreams these feelings are symbolized by a socially inappropriate relationship. The fact that I am not sure what might be wrong with being in bed with my bother tells me that the dream is pointing to a very early feeling. The dream uncovers (covers play an important role here!) my earliest sexual feelings and the child's dawning awareness of parental disapproval regarding them. The dream tells me that this has colored my feelings about pleasure: some part of me believes it's something to be leery of.

In the second part my child has developed and explored her sexual feelings despite mother's queasiness on the topic. She keeps her diary in a stenographer's notebook, an interesting touch since stenographers write down what others tell them. What proportion of my view of life and sex was created by the society I live in? There is a role reversal in the dream sequence as I go from child to mother: I become the owner of  my own attitudes and mores. A kind of freedom from the influence of the mother of my childhood occurs as the mother in the second part concludes that perhaps it's okay that her child has freely explored sex.

A Friendly Oppressor

The Dream: I'm at a large dinner party. My older brother is sitting at the table, about three-quarters of the way down from me. I'm near, or at, one of the heads. I am crying because my other brother has died. A young woman, a friend, sits on my lap. At first I think this is a joke, but after a while I realize there are no other seats and she means to stay. This begins to feel oppressive.

Interpretation: I don't have the inner resources to take care of a need (there are not enough seats for all at the table). I only have my head (logic). Yet feeling cannot be denied, and I am crying. My brother's death, and the realization that I am three-quarters through my own life, is the oppressive thing that sits on me and won't go away. It's no joke. Yet my oppressor is friendly, why is that? Because she is there to teach me an important lesson, to make me aware that death is a reality I shouldn't run from, but must accept.

Who Did I Leave Behind?

The Dream: I'm about to get into a full car. My brother Greg sits in the spot I traditionally sat in as a child, behind my mother. There's no room for me, so I want Greg to scoot over, but instead he gets out of the car, leaving me to sit next to my friend Polly. Greg now appears to be a child, about 5 or 6, and he's happily playing with a spotlessly clean dog with white fluffy fur. I'm having a hard time seeing him and the dog from where I sit so I shift positions to get a better view.

The car pulls away, leaving the two of them, and I begin to realize this was a vision because I am now aware that Greg has died. I say to Polly, “Did you see Greg?”

“Yes,” she says. I get some comfort from realizing that others have seen him as well.

I want to verify this so I ask her what he looked like. “Like you,” she says. “He is small, with sandy-colored hair.”

“How old is he?” I ask. Has she seen him at a different age?

“About 18,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Greg is very tall, and has dark brown hair and dark skin.” I can't think of how to describe his skin color. It isn't olive, but it isn't fair like mine. “He is pale in the winter, but very dark in the summer. His eyes are very dark brown.”

I'm disappointed that we didn't see the same “Greg;” it takes away from the reality of the “event.”

Interpretation: After we die, what's left of us? I'm having a hard time seeing my brother now that he's gone. The divergent images in the minds of two dream characters imply that our “vision” of the departed is so personal that it might have no relationship to reality whatsoever. I look for comfort from my vision; I want “my” Greg to be real. I soon learn that what I see isn't what Polly sees: he differs in every way.

I've pushed Greg out of the car, in a sense. We, the living, have left him behind. He's no longer going where I'm going. His dog companion in the dream, representing my brother's animal (his earthly, physical self), is white (the original color of death) and idealized. Greg seems happy where he is.

Struggling Against the Current

The Dream: I'm in a small boat by myself on very rough water, but near a seaside resort. I work to get back to to this inviting shore, but am swept along the coast to a different spot. I look for a place to put the boat back in so I can try again. I think that a particular spot will work once I get past the breakers, but Clark points out the breakers are caused by submerged rocks. I see my plan won't work and walk along the shore, pulling my boat, looking for a safe place in put in, although I know even if I'm successful it will be very difficult, with the wind and current against me, to get back to the sunny shore.

Interpretation: The sunny shore represents a time of protected childhood with loving parents, a time when they were alive. The playful resort shore is a reminder of happy family times playing in the surf with my brother and mother nearby. I can 't go back; I'm struggling to get there but it's impossible. I'm also struggling against the tide of my own overwhelming emotions in the face of the reality of this loss, and the ultimate loss of all.

I face these feelings in the dream, and the practical part of me, my Animus in the form of Clark, discourages my attempt to return to the past by pointing out that it won't work. The dream tells me to accept the reality I can't change.

An Uphill Struggle

In this dream I try to come to terms with the cycle of life.
The Dream: I'm with others, my brother Greg (who died recently), my husband Clark, a man from Boston and a man from Spain. We're a team participating in a sporting event that is considered the equivalent of the Spanish bullfights. We have a huge snake in our RV: the animal is so big that its head and tale stick out the ends. The idea of the event is that we run along the outside of the camper, pushing it and its snake up a very steep, icy, snow-covered mountain. When we get to the top we are to dispose of the snake in some way, butchering and eating it, or maybe throwing it into the sea—but butchering and eating it is somehow involved.

Interpretation: My path is slippery (icy), cold and difficult, and our objective (destroying the snake) is one I'm not in complete sympathy with. My brother Greg represents the inescapable reality of my own mortality. But what about the other “players?” Clark represents my other half. We're both in the dream, so all parts of me are engaged in this struggle. The other two men represent my unresolved conflict. The man from Boston is propriety, a person who knows how the game is played, and the man from Spain evokes the dramatic ghoulishness of that country's church art. This tells me that my psyche is trying to integrate the acceptable social reaction to death (stiff upper lip, don't make others uncomfortable, pretend it doesn't happen) with my innate horrified emotional response.

In an attempt to resolve my dilemma my dream presents me with several rebirth symbols. Snakes, of course, are traditional symbols of rebirth. By eating the snake we take in his qualities and he lives on through us. Since water accompanies birth, the alternate action of throwing the snake into the water implies that he will be reborn. The issue is not resolved, but I'm working on it.

The Howl

Psychically we heal by fits and starts. Here I slide back from the equanimity toward death that I was beginning to achieve in my last dream.

The Dream: I get a phone call from my older brother. He is crying and inarticulate, howling. I understand with a sinking feeling that Mother is dead.

Interpretation: My mother had been dead for more than seven years when I had this dream, but my younger brother had died a few months before. In the dream I feel terror at facing the mortality of those I love and, ultimately, of myself. I've lost all sense of the hope Stephen had offered in the previous night's dream.

Oblivion

The Dream: This dream was like thinking, only thinking while asleep. In the dream I thought that when you die, that's it. No afterlife, no spirit living on. It's over. Then I thought that all that is left of my dearly loved brother is the little pile of ashes that we deposited in the Petrified Forest.

Interpretation: My brother's ashes were taken to the Petrified Forest because he had once expressed a wish to be fossilized when he died, and this was the closest thing his son could think of. Upon awakening I felt that this dream probably—I hate to admit it—reflects what I believe happens when we die. This is cold comfort indeed.

Privacy

The Dream: Clark and his brother are little boys, toddlers. They demand that their privacy be respected.

Interpretation: Some small parts of myself feel intruded upon.

Boiling Over and Leaking Out

The Dream: I'm in a rectangular studio apartment with two girls. One is my daughter; the other, an odd girl with short dark hair, is her roommate. This girl has an off-putting face and expression; something about her “doesn't get it.” She puts my glass electric kettle onto a gas burner and turns on the flame. Clark notices and rescues the pot before it's ruined. We look again and see that she's done it again. Again Clark rescues it; this time we manage to get through to her, and she finds a traditional kettle.

A ceiling leak has created a puddle on the floor. The odd girl says, “We've told Uncle Nick, but he hasn’t done a thing about it.”

I'm annoyed at her over the kettle, and this idiotic remark ratchets up my ire. I am particularly annoyed at this odd girl's assuming the level of familiarity implied by her calling my brother “uncle.” “Why would you expect Uncle Nick to do anything about it? He lives 3,000 miles away. Have you told Clark?” Then I wonder why he should fix it. “Or the landlord?” Now I feel I have the right answer, so I say it again. “Have you told the landlord?” I feel sure he wouldn't want his building ruined by a leak. The girls assure me that they have informed the landlord.

Interpretation: This odd girl is my shadow. Her closeness to me is clear: she is the roommate of my inner child (my daughter) and feels a connection—as much as I want to deny it--to my brother. While she represents a part of myself that I thoroughly dislike--the oblivious part that wants to do what she wants to do, ignoring the consequences—getting to know her through this dream is helpful. Her insistence on boiling some water tells me I need to find a safe way to let off some steam. While I don't like the demands she makes on others to fix her problems, in the dream I catch myself doing the same when I expect Clark to fix the ceiling leak.

These girls are immature parts of me. The boiling water and leaking roof refer to emotions. After a number of false starts it seems I've finally found the appropriate place to express them. It takes a while to find the right vessel for the water, the place where it can safely boil, but the odd girl ultimately uses the right kettle. The ceiling leak is more problematical. It is not fixed during the course of the dream but, on the bright side, the landlord (consciousness) has been given the heads up.

My Days are Numbered

I had this dream the night before I received the shocking news that one of my brothers had died unexpectedly.
The Dream: I have received medical news that my days are numbered. I try to deal with it, both internally and externally. For myself, I work to accept the reality with some sort of equanimity. For others, I worry about how much trouble my condition will cause. I feel very much “the other,” as one with a death sentence hanging over my head. I think of my friend Don who had pancreatic cancer and how—at least in public—managed a robust cheerfulness, an ability to keep living.

Then I contemplate what life would be like with no death, and I realize that life would lose its sweetness, its poignancy, in some way.

Interpretation: Was this dream precognitive, or was the timing merely coincidental? If not precognitive, was there some sort of mental telepathy going on? These issues come up with dreams, and I don't think we have the answers.

Looking at the dream in its own terms, the interesting thing about it is that it tries to deal with the concept of mortality and even comes up with something positive about our finite existence. It seems the dream is trying to prepare me for the inevitable.

Guest Dreamer: Goodbye Kiss

Our guest dreamer today is Hunky, whose father recently died.  She has asked me to interpret her dream. An important part of dream interpretation is that the dreamer is the final authority on the meaning of her dream. When I comment about her—or anyone’s—dream I am inevitably talking about what the dream would mean to me had I dreamt it. So I’ll discuss Hunky’s dream as if it were my dream.

The Dream: Dad lies on his bed, dead.  He is small and thin, half the size he used to be.  His skin stretches tightly over his forehead and cheekbones.  His gray hair is still course and thick.  His head tilts slightly backward and his mouth is wide open.

My brother Tom stands next to the bed and looks down at his father.  He goes to a faucet and turns it on.  He fills his mouth with water, swishes, then spits it out.  He fills his mouth again and walks back to Dad.  He leans down and puts his mouth on Dad’s mouth.  Tom is using his tongue to clean his father’s mouth.  He is thoroughly swabbing all surfaces of the inside of Dad’s mouth.  Then Tom sucks the foul water back into his own mouth, turns his back and spits it out.


Carla’s projection: In his lifetime my father was a difficult person. Now that he is gone I am reassessing the man who loomed so large in my psyche, and I see him differently. (He’s now half the size he used to be.) His death is not only literal, but also symbolic as his role in my life diminishes.

My brother Tom is an animus figure in this dream; in other words, he is the strong, active part of me. It is significant that I (in the guise of my brother) am the one that turns on the faucet, which represents the flow of emotions now under my control. As I take the water into my mouth I experience the full range of my feelings—love, hate, grief, release—I swish these all around and then I spit them out, signaling that I’m done with these.

Next I (through Tom) work to purify my father.  By cleaning father's mouth I wish to cleanse him of the words, actions, and non-actions that had caused much pain.  I cleanse him, and--like the Buddhists who breathe in evil and breathe out love and peace--I transform my father by taking his failings into my own mouth and spitting them out.  As I transform my father I transform myself: he becomes the father I want, I become the woman I want to be. I am free.


Hunky, the dreamer, says: Understanding my father’s severe personality disorder makes forgiveness easier.  I believe forgiveness is a part of the message.  Maybe one of these days I'll have a dream that acknowledges the positive ways he influenced me.

The Fortune Tellers

Dreams do their job whether or nor we’re aware of it, and whether or not we remember them. It’s interesting to watch this mysterious and powerful psychic force at work in those dreams we do remember. The next three posts are good examples.

The Dream: I am in a group of four. The others in the group are my younger brother and two children. We are performing some sort of ritual which the local people think will foretell their future. We feel like charlatans; our scientific backgrounds tell us this is hokum, but the people are lined up as far as the eye can see, awaiting our pronouncements. We look at one another knowingly and hopelessly. We can’t get out of it, so we proceed.

There are some odd implements involved in our process. One is a long pipe, red with rust. Another is a nondescript, passive, slightly plump brown-haired girl. She uses the pipe as a catapult, and we foretell events depending on where she lands.

Interpretation: A younger brother and children are both symbols of vulnerability, emphasizing its importance in this dream. The two children also suggest the possibility of growth. Four is a significant number for Jung, who sees it as representing a kind of completeness, as in the four corners that make a square, the four directions (North, East, South, and West) or the four seasons.  So what do I have so far? Some phase of my life is complete (the number four). I am vulnerable, and it’s time for me to grow. I’m being asked to do the impossible: foretell the future, and there is considerable social pressure that I do so, even though I know I can’t. The rusty pipe (pipes connect things; rusty implies old) tells me that this is a conundrum from the past, perhaps the feelings of a child who thinks she can’t fulfill parental expectations. There’s some hope I’ll grow past this feeling of inadequacy by jumping (catapulting) beyond it. But how it turns out will depend on where I land.

Free To Be Me

At times (alas, not always!), there seems to be a sort of progress in dream life. After accepting my inner seven-year-old in the dream from a couple of night’s ago (It’s a Free Country) I move on to liberate myself from an old feeling of being ostracized.

The Dream: I am in the neighborhood I lived in as a teenager, about to take a trip with my two brothers. We get into a small car and are about to pull away from the curb. For some reason I have removed my slacks, but then decide I must go back into the house to get something. I exit the car, holding my trousers first in front, then in back, switching between the two, trying to cover my underwear from public view and hoping, in vain as it turns out, that no one is about. A group of curious neighbors assembles. As I awkwardly try to cover myself, they surround me. I search for the key to the house, which I can’t find.

Pass it on

The Dream: My brother points out an ant on his kitchen counter, saying its behavior is interesting and I should take a look. The ant crawls into a small open-topped cube with dirt on its floor. Once in the box the ant lays a cylindrical egg which hatches—and out pops a tiny frog. The frog hops out of the box, then hops back in and is transformed into a caterpillar—which lays an egg and out pops an ant. The cycle repeats over and over again. I become aware that human life is a chain made up of the same life being repeated over and over again. Child and parent are the same. We are too close to the situation to see it clearly.

Interpretation: The unconscious is offering up a bit of philosophy here. Since having this dream I’ve come to see my life as “an instance of life.” In other words, I see myself as a carrier of the life force. For me, this makes mortality bearable: I carry the torch; I pass it on.

You Don’t Know Me

Look at the people who populate your dreams and see how they fit into your inner landscape.

The Dream: A friend of my older brother is visiting. She has blond curly hair and is slightly heavy-set with a round face. I like her and feel that she has become my friend as well.

My friend Patsy appears, coming up from the basement. She is pleased with herself for pulling off this surprise visit; her face is very expressive. “Patsy!” I exclaim, “What are you doing here?” She teases me about that ungracious welcome. Of course I am thrilled to see her and realize that I have been wondering how she is. She indicates that she simply decided to make the trip at the last minute. “I can go to the dentist here,” she says. I look forward to a few days of visiting and entertainment and am glad to notice that my compulsion to work, and my usual annoyance or resentment at being interrupted, are nowhere in evidence.

My brother’s friend is leaving, and I want to hug her. I say, “It’s been wonderful getting to know you better.” She says, enigmatically, “You don’t know me at all.”

Interpretation:  My older brother represents my authoritarian, competent part. His friend, since it is someone I don’t know in my waking life, represents my intuitive side. Her light colored hair tells me that she is symbolic of awareness or enlightenment. Another friend appears, unexpectedly, coming up from the basement (unconscious). Her remark about the dentist hints that she is associated with pain.

All aspects of my personality--the work-oriented, the intuitive, and the spontaneous—are coming together here. Patsy hints it won’t be all fun and games—there’s that worrisome trip to the dentist: that might indicate I have to work on something associated with my mouth, like what sometimes comes out of it. Nevertheless we’re all set to party, which sounds like one of Jung’s coniunctios.  At the same time I get a warning from the Enlightened One that lets me know I have work to do before I can call her a friend. 

Guest Dreamer: The Cement Men of Mars

The following dream was sent to me by my brother. He was very young when he dreamt it, during the era of the competition between the US and the USSR to conquer space (the 1960s).

The Dream: It started with me watching the first manned Mars landing on TV.  But as it progressed, I became one of the astronauts landing there.  (Note:  I had this dream at the height of the race to the moon.) In my dream Mars was perfectly habitable, and we found a nice little circular grove of trees to camp in for the night.  But in the middle of the night we were suddenly attacked by Martian Cement Men who would step out from behind trees and throw spears at us.  We, of course, were armed with submachine guns (I mean, what else would you take to Mars?) and started blasting away.

As our bullets struck them, the impacts looked exactly the way bullets hitting a cement wall look.  That is, there’d be a puff of smoke and dust and a shallow crater from the impact would be created: thus the name Cement Men.  Of course it also meant that it didn’t kill them, so we had a lengthy battle on our hands.

I remember being touched (in the dream) when I saw one cement man leaving the safety of the trees to grab a fallen comrade and drag him back to safety. These guys were big, built a lot like the comic book version of the Incredible Hulk. I’m still waiting for Spirit and Opportunity to find them!

Interpretation: One truism about dreams is that every character in them is us—or a part of us—no matter how alien the dream creatures sometime seem. A character we have a particularly bad reaction to is called our shadow; it shows us some part of ourselves that we need to come to terms with. This is similar to the ogre under the bridge or the wicked witch of fairy tale: a handy screen on which to project all we hate or fear.

You might notice that this dream reads something like a mythic adventure, and there’s a well documented relationship between dream and myth. Joseph Campbell analyzed the myth’s basic plotline as the hero’s journey: each stage parallels an important life passage. In this case, the passage is from childhood to young manhood.

An important part of dream interpretation that hasn’t yet come up in this blog is that the dreamer is the final authority on the meaning of his dream. When I put forth a comment about his—or anyone else’s—dream I am inevitably talking about what the dream would mean to me had I dreamt it. So I’ll discuss my brother’s dream as if it were my dream.

I am young and full of curiosity about the world. The news is full of an exciting global competition, and I’d like to take part in it. My dream takes me to Mars, where I encounter a planet that closely resembles the world I know.

And yet: there’s some interesting symbolism here. The circle, in Jungian terms, represents the integrated self. Jung felt that the circle expressed the totality of our being, containing all our sometimes disparate elements. Perhaps because I’m young and need to grow—both mentally and physically—I cannot bask in this bliss for too long, but must meet the next challenge. It’s symbolized by the confrontation with my shadow in the form of the Cement Men.

The fact that these cement men are attacking me with very primitive weapons (spears) makes me think that I’m doing battle with a primitive part of myself, a part that I feel I must conquer if I want to become a civilized adult. I’m well armed for this confrontation, maybe a little too well-armed (am I too defensive?) pitting my sub-machine gun against their spears. Nevertheless, these creatures, being made of cement, are not easy to kill. That I can be touched by the compassion of one of the Cement Men for his comrade is a very good sign that I’m on the way toward humanizing—therefore integrating—this tough and violent part of myself.

The dreamer always gets the last word, so here’s Bro’s Interpretation: Earlier that night I'd watched an episode of “The Untouchables” in which a machine gun had sprayed a cement wall. I believe this dream was inspired the space race and that evening’s episode of the Untouchables.