The Rape

The Dream: A woman is friends with a man. We are living in a shared space. I leave them to go into another room. Soon I hear the woman screaming for me, horribly distressed. I find her in the bathroom. The toilet seat is up and she has immersed her bottom in the water, which is tinged with blood. It's clear to me that she has been raped by her “loving” friend. Shall I call 911?” I say. She doesn't answer. “I'll call 911,” I say, leaving her to look for a phone. This nightmare awakens me.

Interpretation: At the time of this dream I belonged to a book club sponsored by a Christian church. The meeting devolved into a discussion of the participants' personal beliefs. As I listened to others talk about “faith” and “belief” and “Christianity” I realized how alien I find these ideas. While the dream was triggered by media stories about rape, and certainly reflects the vulnerability that women face, the underlying issue for me is the rape of the intellect that I feel as a participant in a Christian group. I feel I'm not allowed to express my honest thoughts. This leaves me feeling my intellect (logical mind) has been raped; who I am (my self) denied.

Taking the Wrong Vehicle to Escape

The Unconscious experiences the vulnerability of women in this dream.
The Dream: Three couples are sharing a vacation rental. One of the husbands is charming and well-regarded, a very popular guy who is the mayor of his town. His attractive Asian / Indian wife bustles about attending the needs of the family. I'm cleaning up in the kitchen. It soon becomes apparent to me that the man is a pedophile who molests young boys, and that his wife is complicit in covering this up.

I'm on my way to the shopping center in a white rental car, and the man gets in with me. He's all charm, as usual. We park in a large garage and walk toward the supermarket, crossing a large parking lot. He makes a pass, and when I resist he gets ugly. He shows me a small closet near the market with its own door and tells me he intends to rent it and use it to seduce young boys. He grabs me—he's very strong—and I know he's planning to rape me. I tell him, in all sincerity, that my husband will kill him, but he couldn't care less about my threats. I holler for people to call the police. One woman says,“What are you making such a fuss about?—just go along with it!”

My shouting distracts him, and I manage to escape. When I run back to the garage I have a new problem: I am unable to find the car.  I don't even remember what it looks like. I am very frightened that the man will find me. It occurs to me that if I press one of the buttons on the key chain it will cause the car to beep. Sure enough, it works; I find a car, a long black station wagon. The seat seems to be in the right position, so even though I'm not sure this is the right car I take off. I become more and more concerned that it isn't my car: I notice the rear view mirror is not correctly aligned.

As I drive on one of the ramps I notice, barely, a woman in a wheel chair in front of my car. Despite my best effort to stop I can't, and I hit her. I jump out of the car, apologizing profusely. Luckily she was not injured.

I wonder if the police will stop me for stealing the car. Would they believe my story?—probably not. When I was in the altercation with the man I realized that most likely no one would believe it, and he would get away with all his crimes.

I go to a place in the garage where there's an office; a superintendent of something or other sits at a desk. A young woman with dark hair, foreign looking with a tear-stained face, has just reported her car stolen. She is the owner of the car I've taken. Realizing this I apologize, again profusely, and feel I can clear this up for her. I'm relieved to be able to do the right thing.

Interpretation: Some horrific current events triggered this dream. In the news was a woman executed by the Taliban—her husband delivering the fatal blow. Her crime? She had been abducted and raped. A football player on my local team had been accused of sexual assault, and NPR featured a program on rape. “How would I deal with such a situation?” my unconscious asked.

In the dream I am acutely aware that I have no physical defense, and my attempted verbal defense is useless as well. I experience the awful feeling of being over-powered. Luckily, I mange to flee.

The dream made me aware of the age-old difficulty that women have had in being believed when they report sexual predation. I realize that it is more than likely that no one would listen to me, sympathize, or even believe me. With that dream experience I think I came close to what victims of sexual assault feel. The man's reputation was such that he would not be questioned or suspected. There have been many accounts in the news lately of trusted figures who got away with atrocities for years: a beloved BBC host, Catholic priests, golf coaches, others like Sandusky, and so on. In the dream the man's position helps him to cover up his crimes; his own wife is an enabler. Society's point of view is reflected in the woman in the parking lost who tells me to get over it.

I do escape, but in doing so I come very close to harming other women. My car, once white, is now black and hearse like. I drive into one woman in a wheelchair and steal another's car. The metaphor is that although in waking life I've managed to “escape” these horrors, by turning a blind eye I hurt other, vulnerable women. I apologize for this in the dream, and hope to make things right. In reality, I wonder, what can do?

Interview with Jean Campbell

A new feature on The Daily Dreamer debuts today: periodically we'll interview a dream worker. Our maiden voyage begins with Jean Campbell, CEO and Director of The iMage Project, who has developed a method that uses dreams to facilitate healing. Click here to learn more about Jean and her work.

DD: What got you interested in using dreams as a vehicle for healing?

JC: I developed DreamWork/BodyWork after years of work with dreams and eight years of training and certification in Bioenergetic psychotherapy modalities. Along the way I saw innumerable examples of dreams providing the information necessary to healing. Dreams are one way our so-called "unconscious" provides information to us about our physical and emotional health.

DD: Can you briefly explain how dreams can help with physical issues, and what sorts of issues are best addressed this way?

JC: If we take a DreamWork/BodyWork perspective toward dreams, the connection between dreams and health is easily demonstrated by this exercise, which anyone can do: Stand the way you usually stand. Feel how you exist in the space of your body. Are there areas of your body that feel stressed or uncomfortable? Note these.

Now, pick a character from your dreams. The character can be you, another person, a totem animal. Your choice. Then stand and move the way that character stands and moves in the dream. How do you feel in your dream body? What are the differences from your stance in waking life? We under-stand, in our deepest hearts, what we need and want for health.

DD: Can you give an example of how this process affected someone's health (or life)?

JC: When we change the way we move in the world, we are changing at all levels of reality. It is essential to be aware of the body--which carries a language of its own. Once, working with the dream of a woman who had been brutally wounded and raped, I listened to her dream of fighting off her attacker. The woman was lying down as she told the dream. I noticed the movement of her legs. Bent at the knee, her legs slid her stockinged feet along the mat at a regular rhythm. "What are your legs doing?" I asked, interrupting her dream story. All movement stopped.

"I want to run away," she whispered, "I want to run away." She sobbed in shame. She knew she needed to fight off the effects of this trauma, felt she should be able to do that if she were strong. All true. But until we can integrate all of our feelings, accept even our deepest shame, healing is not possible. Health is ease with oneself, as compared with dis-ease.

DD: Thank you, Jean, for telling us about this interesting aspect of dream work. This kind of work demonstrates that the tendency to think that the mind and the body are somehow separate just isn't so.

No Light at the End of the Tunnel

The Dream: Dettie and I are at the underground entrance to a NYC subway. She has a token and goes through the turnstile and down the escalator to the platform. I realize I have no money. I set down my large purse, at the same time noticing a lost-and-found-box containing cash and other items that people have left on the train, open to all with no oversight. I think, after a little ethical quavering, that it's probably okay if I “borrow” some of the money to buy a token. I feel a little guilty, but climb up to the box—it's a bit of a stretch—and help myself to a small amount of cash. In some part of my mind I am surprised that the money hasn't all disappeared.

I take the money to the ticket booths; the one to the left is closed, and the agent in the middle booth ignores me. I'm getting anxious about finding Dettie with all this delay. Then I notice an available agent to the right: I had 't been aware of him. He is a very affable black man and while I don't have enough money for a return, he sells me a one-way token.

As I approach the turnstile I realize my bag is missing. I feel very uneasy about this, thinking about my credit cards and how I should have made a list of them. I try to remember which membership cards were in my purse. This will be a mess to sort out; I hope Clark can help me.

I descend the escalator and my surroundings become darker and darker. When I reach the platform I look for Dettie, but she's nowhere to be seen. I had been counting on her to loan me money for the return trip. The platform is deserted, very dark, and no trains appear to be running. After a while I decide to try a different level, thinking I must be on the wrong track. I turn to go, and things become even darker until it's pitch black. I become frightened and decide to go back up.

I climb a long flight of stairs. At the top is a closed door with a window. The door is locked. I bang and bang on it, yelling “Help!” until I'm afraid my voice will go. A man appears—I see his face silhouetted against the door's window. He has a mustache and looks creepy, like something out of a surrealist's work. I think that if he opens the door it will be to rape me, not to help. I awaken in terror.

Interpretation: Jung warns us that encountering the unconscious is a fearsome project, and this dream verifies it. My friend's name is the key to this dream: “Dettie” evokes both death and debt. As I begin my descent into the underworld of the unconscious I grapple with feeling inadequate: I have no money (worth), but I might be able to retrieve some if I'm willing to take a chance and reach higher. It's interesting that I have an ethical difficulty in giving myself what I need: I don't feel entitled to take it. But even when I do my problems are not over. I have enough money to embark on my journey, but not enough to return. I lose my purse with its membership and credit cards (I'm totally alone; I'll get no credit in the future). I call on my animus to save the situation, but the male figure who appears is another threat, not a savior. I go lower and lower, facing my darkest fears: my vulnerability, my worthlessness and my mortality. My vision is so narrow (tunnel like) that I can't see a way out.

My Ant is Lanced

Molestation in the news triggers a childhood "memory."

The Dream: A very tough-looking guy is in charge of a peculiar ant-like creature. The ant has a perfectly round head and a body made of transparent, glowing red-brown sections. The head is yellow ochre. It’s as if I am seeing an exposed skeleton, but on a living creature. The “ant” is very large, probably about 5 feet long. The man has several sets of paraphernalia resembling studded dog collars--but actually hand-cuffs--that he uses to control the ant. 

The man is balding with dark brown hair; his red face has a stubby growth of beard. He’s solid and a little overweight. He has belied his tough looks by being helpful to me, yet when I come in contact with some others we accuse him of rape. I know this is false, but having made a commitment to this accusation I cling to it. The man starts to remove his studded hand-cuffs from his wrists where he stores them, and I think he’s going to attack us. Instead he hangs the cuffs on a peg.

Later, apparently having resolved the “rape” issue I need the man to kill the insect. I have come to like the creature and can’t kill it myself. I also don’t want it to suffer; I want it killed quickly and mercifully. In addition I want to preserve its body, so I want it killed in a way that won’t damage its skeleton (body).

The man shakes his head gravely in assent as I explain this mission. I think he is attached to his charge, the ant, in a way, and doesn’t want someone inept bungling this deed. He says, “Most people don’t understand how to do this.”  He goes back a distance and charges the creature with a long pointed lance, making a terrible and fierce face as he does. I am alarmed by this look and surprised at the violence of the method. I think this will be messier than I had wished or anticipated.

He charges the ant, fracturing its large round head in two. The open half spheres are filled with a white thick substance that spills over the edges.

Interpretation: This dream was triggered by news of a local molestation case. The young victim was abused by her swim coach; she had been primed for the abuse by being forced to swim laps wearing a dog-collar while she was held on a leash. The dream examines the confusion of a child’s first view of sex. Did I see my aunt (ant) and uncle, a good natured but tough guy, in the act when I was too young to understand what I was seeing?  I eliminate (kill) the aunt, whose skeleton body represents the bare bones of a knowledge I’m not ready to accept. Does this childish disgust and fear lurk behind my adult feelings about sex? Something to think about.

The High Cost of Femininity

The danger of being a woman was on my mind: the evening before the dream I had read about the incessant rape by invading Tartars of indigenous Polish women, followed by their subjugation at the hands of Teutonic knights. Coincidentally, I had seen a history program on television that featured the rape committed by the Danes when they invaded England in the late middle ages.

The Dream: I have been taken somewhere to be given in marriage. There are several other women in the same situation; they might be my daughters, although we are all the same age. We spend some time buying beautiful, feminine clothing. The clerk is a very attractive person, with dark hair, and at one point we meet in a passionate embrace. The clothing is very expensive—I am surprised at how much it costs. I buy one blouse.

Interpretation: While I enjoy the beautiful things about being a woman, as symbolized by the lovely clothes, I become aware that they come at a price. I’m very attracted to whoever is selling me this concept (the salesperson); I embrace what he has to offer but I’m left thinking about its high cost, and I limit how much I buy (into it).