It's All in My Head

Sometimes it seems as if the unconscious is our private cheering squad, trying to tell us the things we need to know. It helps a lot if we learn to pay attention.
The Dream: A man tells me that his shrink thinks his sexual difficulties are all psychological. He resists the idea, but I say, “Maybe they are.”

Interpretation: I thought this little dream was meaningless until I applied it to my life situation. In this case, sex (libido, the life force) stands in for life. My life at the moment feels very tense due to my anxiety over some medical tests and the 10 people that are coming to dinner later. But actually—nothing is wrong at the moment except my own anxiety. All my worries are in my head, and they are making my enjoyment of life impossible.

Guardians of the Deep

Sometimes material from the unconscious seems threatening and you might decide to try to get away from it, as I did in this dream.

The Dream: As the dream begins my husband Clark and I are sitting in lawn chairs on a cement patio next to the bay. The patio, which has the ambience of a garage, is beneath a house on slats. Suddenly a gray boat that looks like a cross between a fish and a submarine starts to tear about the bay near us, making tight circles.  I think it must be the Coast Guard. Then another vessel arrives: it looks like a large truck pulling a long trailer. Like the first one, it also tears around the bay in circles near us. This nearby activity makes me nervous, and I suggest to Clark that we move back from the edge of the bay before these water craft come crashing into us.

The Interpretation: I’m on a cement patio, dealing with a heavy issue. Since I’m close to—but not in--water, I can guess that this material is on the cusp of consciousness. The patio is where the basement would be in most houses, and even resembles one, looking like a garage. Symbolically, basements are where we store unconscious material, such as old wounds and feelings we aren’t aware of; but also a place where the life force, or libido, dwells. This unconscious material is becoming very animated and threatening to break into my conscious awareness (come on shore).

What about the strange vessels? In Jungian terms, a vessel is a place where transformation takes place. The first vessel is a cross between something very militaristic (a submarine) and a fish, a symbol of the inner treasure held in our unconscious. To me this signaled a conflict between the authoritarian “controller” part of me and the natural, less structured, unconscious part. I’m trying to resolve the conflict with the combination submarine and fish, but the emergence of the trailer truck indicates there’s too much “stuff” being pulled in my wake for this resolution to occur. So I retreat.