Posted by vwoolf on January 3, 2005, at 9:52:00
In reply to Re: A nightmare - any interpretations? » vwoolf, posted by gardenergirl on January 3, 2005, at 7:39:20
Thanks Toph, Shortelise and Daisy for your thoughts. I find it very helpful to analyse my dreams - the process brings up so many memories and understandings about what I am going through. The metaphors in dreams seem to be extremely rich in meaning and can be looked at in so many different ways, that it is very helpful to have outside insight and suggestions. I will reply in a single message as your posts seem to build one on the other, and it doesn’t make sense to try and separate them.
Shortelise, I am curious to know why you thought I was Catholic - it doesn’t seem to show in the dream to me. But to answer, no I am not. My early childhood was strictly Protestant, but at the age of twelve (after I believed I had killed my father) I was thrust into a girls-only, Catholic boarding school. I was the only non-Catholic in the school, which was run by a very mystically oriented, cloistered order. I have powerful memories of incense, communion bells, veils, kneeling in darkened chapels before dawn, fainting, whispering nuns, secrecy, bleeding statues of the saints, reliquaries with holy bone fragments, large dormitories and feelings of guilt, isolation, disorientation. I lived as an outsider in this environment for five years. When I was seventeen, after a breakdown and ECT, I went to study in Italy, and remained there for about twenty years, studying towards a doctorate in ancient and medieval Philosophy amongst other things. Although I never became Catholic or had much to do with the church, the atmosphere in Tuscany and Umbria is mystical and Catholicism became an integral part of me. My dreams are often full of medieval cities and saints. But I’m still interested to know why you thought that.
I find your suggestion to be each of the persons and objects in the dream very helpful. The little boy, as you all suggest, could represent the little child part of me who was very pathetic and depressed. I think that it is most definitely me when he goes mad in the coffin. Perhaps the woman is my T who is close to my child part. I find it strange that I see the child as completely separate though. I think, as Daisy says, that he also represents my real son and my feelings of guilt that I may have hurt him. He went through a deep depression a few years ago and then started failing at school, which I have blamed myself for. When I had this dream last week, we were waiting for the reults of his final school exams, in fact. (Fortunately he passed well, and has been accepted at the university of his choice). The evil woman - perhaps she is the evil part of myself taking him away and influencing him negatively.
Is there separation in my life at the moment? Well, my son will soon leave home, my marriage is not going well, I have recently started a new work project which could make a break with my past life, so, yes, lots of possible separations.
And the coffin is definitely my attempt, supported by my H, to bury the past, to keep busy with practical things. But the child is going crazy and will die with no air.
Thanks again all. I will definitely take this to therapy next week when my T gets back from her holiday. I’ll let you know if she has any interesting thoughts about it. She is not too keen on dreams, unfortunately, which is one of the reasons I often bring them to Babble.
poster:vwoolf
thread:436664
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041228/msgs/437173.html