What to Wear?

The work we do in our dreams helps to establish our sense of self. In Janet's dream, clothes symbolize an identity in flux.
The Dream:  I am at a pre-wedding event for a Bride. I ask her what we should wear on the day. She says it will be casual; then she says there will be a range. I try to figure out what that means. “Sort of like dinner dress?” I suggest. “Like going to dinner in New York? Or Paris?” As I add the reference t o Paris I wonder if I sound cool or pretentious. I had surprised myself by saying it.

I become separated from the group and wander into what I think is the right party. I soon become aware that I don't recognize anyone, and I start to feel uncomfortable. This was not the wedding I was supposed to attend. Racks of used clothes appear, filling the room. What are we supposed to do with them?

I look in various rooms for the wedding I meant to attend. I look at the plaques on the doors, searching for the Bride's name. Then I realize I don't know her name. Maybe it's Carol. I have no idea what her last name is.

Carla's thoughts: A pattern company once had the slogan: “Make the clothes that make the woman.” Clothes here are a symbol of creating identity. Because the symbol is based on something that is external (clothing) we can see that the part of identity the dream deals with is the one that interacts with the outside world, or the persona. The dreamer wants to know how to interact with the milieu she's in, what is appropriate for her situation.

As the dream progresses she finds she is lost. In the dream world a wedding symbolizes a union, or a transformative reconciliation of opposites. Janet is having some difficulties with this on-going growth process. First she finds herself at the wrong wedding, where racks of old clothes (identities) appear. She looks for the proper wedding, (the union of the self she has been and the self she is becoming), but at this point she hasn't found it.

The bride's name (identity) is a mystery to her.

As Janet works on her dream, she should ask herself if she knows any Carols, and if so, how she feels about them. This might be a clue to the resolution of her conundrum. She will want to be on the look-out for future identity dreams; this one tells her that her quest is not over.

A Broken Engagement

The Dream: I am engaged to the fiancé of a gay friend. He and I are dancing together in preparation for our wedding. He is very small, but very self-confident, and to me this comes across as his being full of himself. He does one surprising dance move, a head to toe shimmy. I'm impressed, but—try as I might—I can't get him to catch on to the grapevine.

I become aware that I have no feeling for him. This makes me a little sad. At one point I hold him as if he were a child, across my lap. I don't know why we're engaged. I say to him, “Don't you think we should get to know one another better?” He is hurt, I can see that in his eyes, but as far as I'm concerned we've only met 3 times. He says, “You know it's right when it's right.”

It doesn't feel right to me, and I want to break it off. At first I don't think I can because people have been invited, all sorts of arrangements have been made. How many people go through with a marriage, I wonder, only because they don't know how to get out of it? Then I remember that it's the planning for my daughter's marriage that has been finalized, not mine. I call it off.

Interpretation: What is the engagement I've broken? Clearly it's to something I find inappropriate, to another's fiancé, and a gay man at that. This dream character represents a small part of myself that excels in spontaneity (the shimmy) and refuses to be trained (I can't teach him the grapevine). The dream points out that I've broken off my engagement to the emotional, intuitive side of myself, that part that knows without analysis when something is right. It's the egotistical small child side, the 3 year old who is full of himself.

I come to realize through the dream that I don't feel I know this part: despite the fact that we're engaged I don't think we know each other. He embarrasses me, and I want to be free of him. The dream points out my discomfort, giving me the first step in possibly reintegrating this alien aspect.

Guest Dreamer: Raw Inside

The dreamer told me that her divorced daughter's ex-husband has recently remarried. The family became aware of this because the wedding was held at their local church. Lana's friend Jane had been abused as a child. Keeping those waking life facts in mind, I'll react to Lana's dream as if it were my own.

Lana's Dream: In this fragment of a dream, friends are bringing food to a gathering. I've assigned each person to bring the same thing: a filled loaf of bread. Jane and I meet, and we open hers. We're upset to realize that the filling, looking like eggs, is uncooked, raw; it might also contain some fish. Something needs to be fixed. I feel this is my responsibility.

Carla's thoughts: My friend Jane, having been abused as a child, is the symbol of my own injured child: my daughter, who feels wounded by her ex-husband's remarriage. Whether or not having the wedding in our local church was designed to be hurtful, seeing it there opened up something that still feels raw, and I thought there was something fishy about it. The uncooked eggs represent the potential of my daughter's marriage that went unfulfilled, and we are upset that things didn't go as anticipated. As the mother, I feel it's my responsibility to fix things for my injured child.

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