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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by vwoolf on January 2, 2005, at 1:33:45
I dreamed this a few nights ago while spending the holidays with a huge family party. Any interpretations?
The whole dream was impermeated with a feeling of dread. In it, my son is still a small child. He is utterly depressed, to the point that he will not move or react to anything. I don’t know what to do to help him and I feel full of despair and rage. We are on a bus. He is sitting across the aisle from me, next to the window, with his head down. There is a youngish woman at the back of the bus who wants to carry him away. She is evil and has powers of illness and death. She touches his hand and spongey blood oozes out. I try to hit her, but where I make contact my body bruises black and blue. The bus now separates into two parts, and she and my son are on the other half which turns into a Roman chariot and sets off on another course.
My husband and I are with my son again and are trying desperately to make him tell us what is wrong, to get him to react, but to no avail. Exasperated we put him into a coffin and bury it. We go to one of the government ministries in Rome to sort out some endless bureaucratic business to do with a license. I suddenly become aware that we have left my son underground and that he will be suffocating. I try to run back to find him, with visions of him going mad and clawing at the coffin because he thinks he is dying alone underground. There are hoardes of people everywhere - it is a public holiday in Rome - and I can’t find the place. I wake up with a feeling of dread and horror.
Posted by Toph on January 2, 2005, at 7:30:10
In reply to A nightmare - any interpretations?, posted by vwoolf on January 2, 2005, at 1:33:45
After the last time I tried this, I can't help but be influenced by what I learned about you. I get a sense that your son represents a young you who, even with the horror (abandonment, abuse, rape), you are conflicted about loving your childhood self (that's why it's your son) and feeling a need to bury her. Are you in some therapy now? Is there some new bloody hand trying to pull these surpressed traumas out? Is your husband uncomfortable with your childhood memories?
-Toph
Posted by Shortelise on January 2, 2005, at 17:16:53
In reply to A nightmare - any interpretations?, posted by vwoolf on January 2, 2005, at 1:33:45
Toph saw the same things in this dream as I did.
Are you catholic?
Who is the woman? Why does she want your son? How does she feel?
Is there something about separation going on in your life?
Are you wanting to bury memories? Sublimate those awful memories? Could you be finding that you need them? Or that the young part of you needs you, need to be "out", or freed? Is this part of you hard to get to?
Me again with the Gestalt approach. Be the evil woman, be her and ask yourself who you are, how you feel, what you want, why you are doing what you're doing. Then be the boy. THen be the bus. And your husband.
I find it very helpful when I write dreams down to make a note of all of the feelings, not just the oeverwhelming feeling, but I look for subtler ones.
Great dream. I LOVE dreams.
Posted by daisym on January 3, 2005, at 1:47:34
In reply to Re: A nightmare - any interpretations?, posted by Shortelise on January 2, 2005, at 17:16:53
I want to add to whatever else said. I think they have a great take on things, but I think the evil woman is yet another part of you. And if you let your child be your child, not a younger you (which is totally possible) perhaps you have fears that you have hurt him in some way, because of your history. This can include being over protective and then realizing that you are harming him this way too.
The bus splitting does seem to signify the journey of therapy and the split between your mature self (who has to stay with the evil memories/death woman (suicide?)) and your younger self/child who escapes from you.
Will you talk about this in therapy? My therapist loves dreams!
Posted by gardenergirl on January 3, 2005, at 7:39:20
In reply to A nightmare - any interpretations?, posted by vwoolf on January 2, 2005, at 1:33:45
Wow, that was an intense dream. I don't have anything to add beyond what the others have said. I just wanted to say wow. And I hope you are doing okay and not caught up in dream residue. Sometimes a dream like that can stay with me for awhile.
Take care,
gg
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.
Posted by vwoolf on January 3, 2005, at 12:56:03
In reply to Re: A nightmare - any interpretations? » vwoolf, posted by gardenergirl on January 3, 2005, at 7:39:20
Yes, the residue stays for days and days. Luckily, or unluckily, though, life seems to swirl so fast around me that even powerful dreams have to make room for the new events and feelings. My husband is being physically abusive again, and I feel lost in the currents of fear, anger and so much else besides. I don't know when this is ever going to settle into calm water again.
Posted by gardenergirl on January 3, 2005, at 19:12:52
In reply to Re: A nightmare - any interpretations? » gardenergirl, posted by vwoolf on January 3, 2005, at 12:56:03
Posted by Shortelise on January 4, 2005, at 12:09:22
In reply to Re: A nightmare - any interpretations?, posted by vwoolf on January 3, 2005, at 9:52:00
I asked if you are catholic for two reasons. Because the evil woman could be a saint, or the Virgin Mary, and because you end up in Rome. The being touched and bleeding seemed religious.
I'm glad the being the various people helps. I find it extremely intense, and it's hard, so very hard, to put them in the first person, to be in their skins. It is so often a part of me that I am only comfortable looking at from afar.
ShortE
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