Empathy in an Artifact

The Dream: I’m in a foreign country. A woman is digging in a sandy spot, with water puddling in the hole as she digs. The location is a city square. It isn’t green, with trees and grass, but more like a European town square with packed sandy earth.  At one point I hear that we are in Mesopotamia, and at another that we are in a Mediterranean country.

I watch the woman dig; her action seems inappropriate, considering how she is dressed and her age: she’s middle class and middle aged. I become excited and say, “When I lived in England I wrote a novel, and I got the idea for it doing what you’re doing: I was digging with my children.” 

Clark says, “You can often find artifacts.” He begins to dig in or near the woman’s spot and in short order extracts a circular clay piece with what appears to be a primitive god in the center. I wonder if we can keep this interesting object or whether we are legally required to turn it in. I want it.

Later we are sitting at a table, the three of us. Clark is to my right; the woman to my left. When Clark passes the artifact to me I plan to slip it into my carrier bag. He hands it to me, but rather than the clay sculpture it is a picture of the artifact on shiny photographic paper, with a list of the god’s attributes to the right. There are four, and the 3^rd one is “empathy.”

 “Empathy?” I think. “That’s an odd trait for a primitive god.”

Interpretation: Something is coming up from underneath. The puddling water tells me that unconscious material is coming to the surface. To start, let’s take a look at the geometric symbols in this dream: there’s the city “square,” the round clay artifact and the square table where we later sit. The square and the circle are both symbols of what Jung calls the Self, in other words, the combination my consciousness (what I’m aware of) and my unconscious (what I’m unaware of thinking or feeling). Dream are road maps, telling us where we are on the path to individuation, another Jungian term for the process of incorporating our unconscious material into our conscious awareness. 

The middle aged woman is me, digging into my dreams and bringing unconscious material to the surface. When I am joined by my husband Clark (my other half) and my children (the curious, experimental, engaged parts of myself) an artifact (a long-buried, but new to me, part of myself) quickly appears. This is something I want, even though I have some qualms about my right to have it.

Later, at the table (have the gifts from the unconscious been tabled?), I plot to steal the artifact. But I can’t do it. It turns into a representation of itself, becoming as ephemeral as the dream that engendered it.  But it does have a message for me, “Empathy.”

Something I Can’t Get Around

The Dream: I encounter a large, well-proportioned black man on a path. As we try to pass one another we perform a socially awkward dance: we each move in the direction the blocks the other. We do this several times. The man is tall, attractive, middle-aged, athletic, and looks strong. There is no threat in the encounter, only embarrassment that we can’t get around each other.

Interpretation: The dream is telling me that there is something I just can’t get around. I must encounter (and integrate) something that, while not threatening, is very different from the way I see myself; it’s symbolically opposite me in just about every way: height, race, sex. The dream hints that I may be on the way toward accepting this part of myself since I see this “other” as attractive.

Written on the Body

Once we have attained middle age Jung tells us that our job is to come to terms with our own mortality.

The Dream: Clark and I are at the airport with lots of baggage. We’ve taken some of this into the terminal but most of our carry on is still in our parked van, which has been painted black. We go for a walk. When we return the van is gone—a woman has taken it to search for her dog, which someone has kidnapped. We go in search of her.

I am anxious. There is increased security at the airports and we must check in an hour ahead. I don’t feel any sympathy for the woman searching for her dog, but I hope she finds the animal so we can get the rest of our things and get on with it. I worry we’ll lose our parking spot by the time she returns.
Finally we find her and re-park the van. I notice the lock to my door is on the outside of the window, which seems useless.

Part of our luggage consists of t-shirt fragments printed with genealogical information and punctuated with blocks of color.

Interpretation: The unconscious is struggling with the idea of mortality (the imminent airplane ride will take me off the planet). This makes the dream ego anxious and uncomfortable. The missing animal embodies the primal aspects of life: sex, birth, death. I want to put the vehicle of change (van) back into its parking place. When the woman returns the van its lock has moved to the outside: once we’ve gained the knowledge of life and death it’s impossible to lock out what we know. The t-shirts symbolize our DNA, which maps our reality. Our past and future is encoded there: written on the body (thank you, Jeanette Winterson).  But perhaps it’s not the whole story?