What Am I Shutting Out?

The Dream: Clark and I and two friends, Tom and Joan, are sitting on the floor in a circle. Tom is being very sweet and congenial, but I feel angry and resentful toward him; I'm not ready to forgive his past bad behavior.

Clark doesn't seem bothered at all, in fact he quickly builds a wooden shutter for the guest room window. The morning sun is very bright in there, and he wants to screen it out so that the room is more comfortable. He builds a 4-panelled folding screen, but doesn't paint or finish it. He decides to put it in the guest room closet: when someone visits he'll finish it.

Interpretation: This unforgiven friend, Tom, is a screen for a part of myself that I find unacceptable. In the beginning of the dream the four dream actors are together; the circle they sit in emphasizes their unity and tells me they are all part of the same thing: me, in this case. Even the unacceptable one, the one I resent, is congenial.

My husband, who represents my animus, doesn't see—or admit—that there's a problem. Even as he denies the difficulty he works to shut out the light (awareness), making the excuse that the room is more comfortable this way. This tells me that I really don't want to see this—it's too uncomfortable. The screen has four panels, echoing the four dream actors and Jung's four aspects of the Self. It isn't finished, but closeted (hidden away). This difficulty will be worked on again when the next guest (insightful dream) arrives at my house.

In the Toilet

Sometimes we need to cooperate with parts of ourselves we don't particularly enjoy.
The Dream: A young woman, unmarried and pregnant, is receiving help from a nun. The young woman wonders what sort of obligation this might entail; she doesn't agree with the nun's religion or values. At the same time she is grateful for the aid and feels that she will, in the future, repay the organization that helped her.

The nun and the young woman are in a small, closet-like area with nothing but a toilet. The young woman decides to sit down and, to her surprise, ends up in the toilet. The nun lectures her about making this stupid move. It's somewhat difficult, but the two of them working together manage to get the young woman out of the toilet.

Interpretation: I'm feeling closed in and restricted (in the small closet-like area). I need a kind of help that is difficult for me to accept because I don't agree with its black and white (nun's colors) unnuanced point of view. Nevertheless, without some organization, however confining it may feel, I'm going to be in the toilet (not doing well at all) and my new baby (project) will not survive. The dream tells me I need to respect and support my helpers, those annoyingly demanding parts of myself, if I'm going to produce anything of value.

Guest Dreamer: A Visit to the Old House

The Dream: I had a dream last night and this is the second time I have had it! I went back to the house where I had lived during my marriage; my ex was still living there. He had completely redone the upstairs, Ultra modern expensive new bathrooms. The whole upstairs had been reconfigured along with a dressing room and walk in  California closet system, very contemporary and very hip. The whole time I am thinking/saying why couldn't he have been willing to make these kinds of improvements earlier?

More info: The dreamer told me that the dream was triggered by the house going on the market. She also said that when she viewed the listing she was “appalled at the pictures and the lack of staging." And she added, "I am thinking of getting braces which probably fed into this!”

Carla's thoughts: The dreamer's observation that a change she is mulling over--getting braces--might have played a part in the dream is insightful, since the dream is about making changes that are improvements. If this were my dream, I would see it as my increasing awareness of the possibilities in the new life ahead after the end of my marriage. The activity of the dream takes place in what once was my house (myself), but now is changed. The changes are upstairs (in my head). The part of the house that has been changed is relevant to the dream's meaning. A bathroom is a very private place, so it connotes intimacy. The water that is found there symbolizes emotion, and the toilet its release. A dressing room is where we clothe ourselves in our persona, the part of us that we show the world. If my husband could have been more giving and “with it,” as he is in the role of designer and expediter of the very hip upstairs renovations in my dream, maybe things would have turned out differently for us. In the dream I regret that he couldn't supply these things—intimacy, emotional support, support for my persona—while we were married.

Having faced my regret that the relationship didn't work out, I can begin to enjoy the freedom its loss has given me. Now I can take charge of my life and change the things I feel should be changed. As the creator of the dream, I am actually the one who changed the upstairs and created this very appealing new space. The dream tells me that I can do it, and that the changes are contemporary improvements, in other words, they are happening right now.

An Old Hang Up

The Dream: A woman, the same one as in Sunday’s post, is making a mess out of the hangers in an empty coat closet, where she sits awkwardly hunched.

Interpretation: Both hangers (for airplanes) and closets are places were things are stored. In this dream, as in the last, I am confronting old repressed feelings of isolation and awkwardness.

Note: The notes in blue above on the illustration were gleaned from Tony Crisp’s Dream Dictionary (New York: Dell Publishing, Random House Inc., 2002).

Bodice Ripper Scene 2

Dream Scene 2: The marriage has been celebrated, and it is the wedding night. The Lady and the Viscount are in a cloakroom or closet which is situated behind the bedroom. They share one bedroom. The lady, new to this class and situation, looks to her husband for clues on how to behave. He disrobes; she observes him in his 18th c shirt with no trousers. He takes off his clothing layer by layer, placing it on hangers, and puts the hangers on hooks that protrude from the wall. She is surprised by such tidiness, having thought that this would be a job for the servants. She mimics her new husband: disrobing, placing her garments on hangers, and hanging these up. It is a passionless scene, and, as I observe, I run varying scenarios for the wedding night. Will the husband be concerned about his new wife’s pleasure or merely do the deed? Is the Lady a virgin? If so, will she be able to enjoy the act? If not, will the Viscount be seriously displeased?

Interpretation: The wedding represents the tentative union of two aspects of my psyche, represented by the Lady and the Viscount. The closet is the storehouse for my attitudes and emotions; its location behind the bedroom means the relationship we’re observing is intimate, close to the core of my being. What about the emphasis on clothing? The Viscount takes the first step in revealing himself by taking off his clothes. Not entirely comfortable, but not knowing what else to do, the Lady follows suit. By emphasizing the passionless nature of this encounter the dream tells me again that this union is more like putting a toe in the water than diving in. For Jung--unlike Freud who would probably describe inhaling as a substitute for penetration--even sexual intercourse is not necessarily about sex in a dream. And I think you can see its symbolic relevance here as I conjecture about the physical union, not at all sure how successful the joining of these two will be.

This dream has also been interpreted by the well-known dream worker Jane Teresa Anderson in Episode 44 of The Dream Show