CAN YOU PREDICT A PERSON'S CONCERNS FROM DREAMS ALONE?
THE DREAM SERIES OF A COLLEGE WOMAN
G. William Domhoff
How much can you tell about a person's concerns and relationships from
studying a series of 28 consecutive dreams, some of them quite short? Can
anything be known without a case history, free associations, or amplifications?
Here's a chance to find out for yourself by seeing how well your answers
to 30 mundane, everyday questions compare to the answers provided by the
dreamer.
First, read through the questions. Then read through the dreams with
the questions in mind. Then go back and answer the questions. Then check
her answers at the very end of the paper. Once the questions are answered,
you can read the Autobiographical Sketch she wrote at my request two years
after she and one of her professors mailed me the dream series. Does the
sketch fit with the mental portrait you drew of the person on the basis
of the dreams and her answers to the questions?
You can use any method you'd like to in analyzing the dreams, but for
those who'd like some guidance, we suggest that (1) you think of the 28
dreams as a coherent whole, with each dream one piece of the puzzle; (2)
read through the dreams slowly and for each one (a) underline words or
phrases that strike you, (b) jot notes in the margins about how the dreamer
interacts with parents, siblings, friends, etc., and (c) note any potential
'themes' you see emerging; (3) then look back at your underlines and jottings
to see if any interaction patterns or themes did arise.
We also find it useful to look for 'spotlight' dreams, meaning dreams
that seem to be especially obvious in their meaning, and therefore helpful
for illuminating underlying themes in other dreams. (There are at least
two such dreams in this series, and one even has a light in it.)
All references to specific times and places have been eliminated, mundane
pseudonyms have been used for her three housemates, and she is just 'college
woman.' That's because knowing even one thing about a person makes it possible
that we are using this information, not the dreams themselves, to make
inferences about the person.
How Did The Dreamer Answer The Following Questions?
The 30 questions that follow are ones that were asked of the dreamer
by several different students who did blind analyses of her dream series.
The questions were not meant to be profound or deeply probing. After all,
this was a research exercise with a person who was volunteering her dreams
to help out in a class, not to be psychoanalyzed. The point of the questions
was to learn if dreams reveal personal issues, especially about her relationships
with people in her life, that are likely to be known to her. Such questions
are the starting point for a more adequate theory of dreams, not the ending
point.
1. Do you have a close relationship with your family? yes no
2. Do you enjoy your present living situation? yes no
3. Do you work in a hospital? yes no
4. Are you usually punctual? yes no
5. Does it bother you if late or others are late? yes no
6. Have you been staying in hotels lately? yes no
Next set: 1 disagree 2 disagree somewhat 3 agree somewhat 4 agree
7. Being treated as an adult is important to me. 1 2 3 4
8. I feel like the future is approaching too fast. 1 2 3 4
9. My parents recognize me as an adult. 1 2 3 4
10. I am very aware of time. 1 2 3 4
11. I don't like to be out of control. 1 2 3 4
12. I have been ill recently. 1 2 3 4
13. Someone close to me has been ill recently. 1 2 3 4
14. I don't like to fight (verbally). 1 2 3 4
15. I enjoy the companionship of my roommate Nancy. 1 2 3 4
16. My roommate Nancy is very pushy towards me. 1 2 3 4
17. I feel ignored by my family. 1 2 3 4
18. I feel pressured by family and peers to do things
I don't want to do. 1 2 3 4
19. My relationship with my boyfriend is stable. 1 2 3 4
20. My boyfriend is very supportive of me. 1 2 3 4
21. I think about the future often. 1 2 3 4
22. Voicing my own opinion is important to me. 1 2 3 4
23. I am comfortable around my male friends. 1 2 3 4
24. I often feel guilty about my sexual thoughts. 1 2 3 4
25. I am a risk taker. 1 2 3 4
26. Security is important to me. 1 2 3 4
27. I have definite plans for the future. 1 2 3 4
28. My relationship with my boyfriend is going to
interfere with my future plans. 1 2 3 4
29. Being independent is important to me. 1 2 3 4
30. I am not close to my brother. 1 2 3 4
Now that you have read through the questions, study the dreams.
College Woman's Dreams
001 01-07-95 I was getting married to my boyfriend at my parents' home,
but it was not my parents' home. I was the age I am now, and everyone (my
mother, my aunts and uncles and a bunch of cousins) was very happy and
bustling around with last-minute preparations. Everyone was happy except
me. I did not want to get married, because I felt I was too young and I
didn't want to get married at my parents' house. My wedding dress was a
tight red dress that looked like it was out of the 1920ís. I came
into the living room where the ceremony was to be held, and everyone was
too busy to notice me standing there. The only person that noticed me was
my boyfriend. He and I talked. I told him of my apprehension. He listened
and told me he also felt it was a bit too early to get married. We decided
to postpone the wedding, but we didn't tell anyone. Instead, we left.
002 01-07-95 I was in my aunt's car. I was in the front seat, along
with my brother. We were squished because we were sitting in one bucket
seat. I was towards the middle and my brother towards the door. My aunt
was driving the car, and my cousins (female age 10 and male age 8) were
in the back seat. A pencil was dropped between the two seats and I was
trying to fish it out. When I reached under the center divider, I felt
something. I pulled it out, and it was a condom wrapper. My aunt said to
my brother. 'That's gross. Why didn't you take that out of the car after
you and your girlfriend used the car?' My brother became very embarrassed.
I thought it was funny and began to dig under the center divider some more.
I pulled out more and more condom wrappers, probably 8 in all. He became
even more embarrassed. Then I woke up.
003 01-08-95 I was sleeping in a hotel and had to get up early the next
morning. My alarm clock didn't go off, and by the time I woke up (9 am),
I was already 2 hours late to where I was supposed to go. Suddenly my mother
was in the room. She said, 'Aren't you late?' I looked at the clock and
became very anxious. I began running around. Then I decided to just give
up. If I hadn't gotten a phone call asking where I was, then I thought
maybe I wasn't missed.
I woke up and fell back asleep and dreamt I had set the alarm clock
an hour later than I had intended, and had 15 minutes to get ready to leave.
(Same setting as previous dream, but no mother was present.) I felt I had
to take a 15 minute shower, so I got into the shower and just stood there.
When I got out of the shower, I did not have enough time to get to work.
I was very upset with myself for taking such a long time in the shower.
I was very anxious about being late. Then I woke up.
004 01-09-95 I was in a familiar hotel room, and I was trying to get
ready for work, but all of these high school students were breaking into
my room and wouldn't let me get ready. Then, a friend of mine appeared.
She was eating breakfast in my hotel room, and she told me the group was
an orchestra group she was touring with. She told me to keep getting ready
for work and to ignore them. I wanted to take a shower but was uncomfortable
with these high school kids coming into my room. One young man (blonde
hair, no shirt on, stranger) kept coming into my room and would not leave.
By the time I was ready for work, I was 15 minutes late.
005 01-11-95 My psychology teacher split himself in half in class and
half of him became a case study and the other half became him. He was hiding,
and this woman was teaching the class. Everyone in the class knew something
was wrong, but no one could figure it out. This woman was a stranger to
me, but she had brown hair pulled back into a pony tail. She may have been
a minor character in a TV program I watched a few days earlier. I began
to piece it together that this woman was really a case study. At that point,
I saw my teacher hiding by some chairs and he began to encourage me to
tell the class that this lady was a case study.
006 01-11-95 My housemates (Nancy, Betty and Judy) and I were in a blow-up
rowboat, and I was rowing us down a river. Suddenly, we came to this pier,
and we got out of the boat and climbed up the pier. One housemate was pretending
to push another housemate off the pier. Finally, she pushed her off. The
housemate began screaming and fell into the water. When she fell in, she
hit a board. She began treading water, and she said it had hurt to land
on the board, but then she began swimming around. My two other housemates
jumped into the water and began swimming around with her. Then, some fish
began chasing them. One housemate called them 'manfish.' I was uncomfortable
with my housemates jumping into the water because I didnít know
how deep it was and if they would get hurt jumping from such a high elevation.
The manfish began sucking on the women's toes, and they decided the manfish
were safe. I went to the other end of the pier, and saw really large manfish
floating on top of the water. I wondered if they were mating because some
of the fish were jumping on top of the other fish. Then, some fish from
the water jumped onto the pier and began chasing me. I got a stick and
poked at the manfish. They began sucking on the stick. Next, a yacht went
by with a mother, father, young boy, and girl on it (all strangers). The
man told me that my friends shouldn't be swimming in the water because
the manfish were dangerous. My housemates told him they were fine and the
manfish only sucked on their toes. He told them the manfish may try to
eat them. They got out of the water and got back onto the pier.
007 01-17-95 I was at my boyfriend's mother's house, and she had these
Egyptian cotton towels. I was standing over these towels in the closet
and she walked over to me and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was
admiring the towels. I felt like I had been found out and a little embarrassed
because admiring towels is a weird thing to do.
008 01-17-95 I was at a party at a movie theater with my boyfriend.
He went to go get some drinks at the snack bar. When he left, a bunch of
people (strangers) began doing cocaine. They were passing it around, and
everyone was required to use some. It got to me and I did not want to take
any, so instead I told everyone I would take some heroin. After that, my
boyfriend came back, and I didn't want him to know. The movie started and
everyone began saying how real and vivid the movie was. I was upset because
of the cocaine and the heroin. I was fighting to stay in control of myself
and was doing a good job, but I felt very uneasy.
009 01-19-95 I was in bed and woke up after a dream and wrote it down.
I felt very tired but was glad that I was beginning to wake up after my
dreams to write them down.
010 01-19-95 I was in the hospital, in a VA I think, and I was sick
and in a wheelchair. I was talking to another person who was in the bed
next to me. Pretty soon the nurse came over to me and told me that it was
time for my shot. I didn't know what she was talking about, and she reminded
me that I get this shot every day. I said okay, and she put a tourniquet
on my arm and got ready to give me the shot straight into my blood stream.
The doctor (male) came over to watch the nurse (female) give me the shot.
The nurse found the vein she wanted to use, put the needle in (I watched
her), aspirated and drew back a little blood. Instead of injecting me with
the serum, she pulled the needle back out. For some reason, I thought she
was going to go into another vein. She started to, but then she stopped
and went away. The doctor left with the nurse. I began talking to my friend
again.
011 01-19-95 We (my 3 housemates and myself) had two fireplaces in our
house. Up to this point, we had been using the fireplace in the living
room, but not the other one in the pantry (instead of the pantry, there
was now another fireplace there). My boyfriend came over and discovered
that the fireplace in the pantry had gas, and it would be a lot easier
to use this fireplace than the other one. When he turned on the gas, I
looked down into the fireplace, and it was like a very deep pit. It looked
very frightening to me. It was so deep, I could not see where it ended.
Inside of the fireplace, it was all orange and hot-looking.
012 01-19-95 I was roughhousing with my boyfriend on his bed, and all
of a sudden he stopped and took this small earring out of my ear and set
it on his desk. Then we started wrestling again.
013 01-21-95 I was working for an immigrant woman who did not speak
English very well. I was in an office that resembled a house. I was cleaning
Kirby vacuum cleaners and making sure they were working properly. She walked
over to me and told me I was doing it wrong (i.e., cleaning the vacuums
wrong). She got disgusted with me and took me to the back part of the office,
which was a garage. She had mints (peppermint patties) that she was giving
her customers, but she had let them sit out in the sun and they looked
bad. They were falling apart. She had a special machine that she used to
put the mints back together. She showed it to me, and I began restoring
the mints. The only problem was the process was turning the chocolate clear,
and the mints looked even worse. When she came back, she said the machine
was not going to work. She wanted me to go home for the day. There was
a lamp that was turned around and put up in the ceiling. It was a yellow
lamp with a long, slim light bulb instead of a regular one. This lamp had
no lampshade. She wanted to give me the lamp. In the process of getting
the lamp down, I discovered there was a short in it. I told her the lamp
was no good, but she insisted on me taking it. I took the lamp with me
and went home.
014 01-22-95 My landlady came to town and had dinner at my house. (My
landlady is in her 40ís or early 50ís.) I did not know she
was having dinner with us. I came home, and everyone (my three housemates
and the landlady) were all eating at the table. She told me that she thought
I was a warm, compassionate person who had done a lot of growing. She said
she could tell that by looking at me. I said thank you and felt really
good about myself.
015 01-29-95 I rode my bike up to campus for a class I had. One of my
housemates, Nancy, also rode her bike. I locked mine to something inside
the building, and she locked her bike to itself. She asked me about where
I had locked up mine, and I got the feeling that she wanted to lock it
up in my place from now on. I showed her my spot and then told her it was
mine. She looked a little irritated, then she said, 'Fine,' and left. I
felt good that I had stood my ground.
016 01-24-95 I was at a hotel for work, and when I went to the lobby,
the Marine Corps Ball was taking place. I felt extremely out of place because
everyone was dressed up. I felt embarrassed. I got what I needed downstairs
and began to head upstairs. As I was leaving the lobby, I saw my housemate,
Nancy. She was dressed up and gave me a dirty look. I decided to take the
stairs back to my room instead of the elevator. On my way up the stairs,
I saw a dog (half black lab, half something smaller). I knew the owner
of the dog. He was a popular and attractive young man. Every female I knew
had a crush on him. The dog wanted me to play with him, so I did. I took
him back up to his hotel room and put on an audio tape of either the Chipmunks
or the soundtrack to Pete's Dragon (I can't remember which). The dog and
I played and played. I felt safe and better since being in the lobby. Soon
everyone was in the hotel room I was in. I tried to turn off the music
before everyone heard it. My housemate Nancy was the first one to enter
the room. She gave me a dirty look and said, 'Oh, it's you. What are you
doing here?' I got up to leave and the owner of the dog (the attractive
guy) began talking to me. He asked me how I was and invited me to stay.
He told me it had been a long time since we talked, and he was glad the
dog and I were still friends. The more he talked to me, the more dirty
looks I got from my housemate. I sat down in the living room by the TV
and by the fireplace. I began playing with the dog again. My housemate
began talking to me (she changed to sickening sweet). The conversation
turned to some of the women on campus. I said, 'Yeah, I know a lot of bitches
on campus.' She asked me who and I described her to her, but didn't give
her a name. She asked who else I thought was a bitch, but everyone I thought
of was one of her friends, so I told her I didn't want to talk about it
anymore. She kept asking me and I kept refusing to talk about it. I felt
good about myself because I hadn't given in to her, and I stood up for
myself.
017 01-25-95 I owned a convertible car and wanted to drive it around
because it was a nice, sunny day. The car was red. I felt free and happy.
018 01-27-95 I had just turned 18 and was living at home. In the town
I lived in, the people in the town had to decide if I was worthy of being
an adult or not. My housemate (Betty) was with me. We were going to the
place (I think downtown) where the decision was going to be made. On our
way, three teenage women skipped past us. All three were wearing flower
dresses. When they skipped past us, they said I was not normal and would
not be allowed to become an adult. They started to sing a song that ended
in, 'there's no more chances.' I began to sing and skip with them. I didn't
care what they thought of me because I knew who I was. When I got to the
meeting place, I addressed the crowd. I told them that it didn't matter
if they accepted me or not because I was going to grow and be an adult
anyway. I also told them that there is life beyond this town, and that
is more important. I felt good, free and triumphant.
019 01-27-9x My psychology teacher (male) turned into two case studies.
He had the outside appearance of a case study, that is scared and timid,
and the inside make-up of a case that is antisocial. No matter what I told
him to do, he would do the exact opposite. I felt frustrated and I wanted
to help, but didn't know what to do. I called for my housemate Nancy to
help me. She told me to take the person to a certain department store.
I knew that was terrible advice, so I went out to get help from someone
else. I went to a football stadium and found my brother and my father in
the stands. I asked them to help me, and both ignored me. I felt desperate.
020 01-29-95 I went to a grocery store in my hometown with my boyfriend.
I hadn't taken a shower or anything that day. I felt a little conspicuous.
My boyfriend and I went over to the sweets display and started pulling
out all the cookies and cakes and setting them onto the floor. My boyfriend
got up and left. A few minutes later I went to look for him and he was
working as a checker. I went over to him and told him I wanted to go home.
He said he was working right now and couldn't talk to me. I went back over
by the sweets and my aunt came into the store with my young female cousin.
My cousin said she had to go to the bathroom, and my aunt told her next
time she should eat all of her lunch and then this wouldn't happen. I thought
that was a strange response. Then my aunt pointed my cousin towards the
bathroom. I went over to the sweets and began picking them up. I wanted
to take them home, but I had no money to buy them. I thought about taking
them, but I decided not to. I decided to put them back. Instead of putting
them where I had gotten them from, they had to go to the bakery. Somehow
I got the glass to open on my side, and I began putting the sweets back.
The lady that worked in the bakery helped me. We put back cookies, maple
bars, and chocolate cake. Some of the sweets had gotten a little hot and
looked a little melted. She commented on my aunt and cousin and how weird
my aunt's comment was and how the interaction may be a sign of some sort
of abuse or dysfunction.
021 01-29-95 I was in the hospital to have my appendix removed. For
some reason, my surgery kept getting delayed. Finally, it was pushed to
another day. I decided to take a shower, and I was drying my hair when
I woke up.
022 01-29-95 I was at my boyfriend's house and there was a small hole
in the corner of a wall. All of a sudden flies started coming out of it.
After a bunch of flies came out of it, ants came out of it. After that,
bumble bees came out of it.
023 01-30-95 I was eating spaghetti.
024 01-31-95 I broke a small silver hoop earring in half. It was all
black in the spot where I had broken it. My boyfriend saw it and expressed
his sympathy. I was a little upset that I had broken my earring.
025 02-01-95 I was in the kitchen with two of my housemates. Nancy was
on the phone. My other housemate Betty and I were looking at a calendar.
On it my boyfriend had written graduation day and Betty asked me if he
was really graduating. I said yes. I had a feeling that Nancy was being
deceptive about something.
026 02-01-95 Two of my housemates (Betty and Judy) were going to go
to City X with me. They both backed out at the last minute and I went alone.
027 02-01-95 I went to a resort island by myself and stayed at the hotel
the entire time and played in one of those playrooms that is a pool full
of balls.
028 02-03-95 One of my friends from high school wanted me to visit him.
We were both back in our hometown. I was going to bike half of the distance
to his house, and his dad was going to drive me the rest of the way. It
was dark when I left to visit him. I was frightened that my bike light
would not be bright enough to keep me from getting hit. I made it to the
point where his dad was going to pick me up. I went with him and when I
saw my friend, I realized he was sick, but not too sick. We talked and
he told me he liked me romantically. I told him that was too bad because
it was too late for that, and I was on a mission and did not have time
to deal with this. I was anxious because I was afraid I was going to be
late on my mission and then I would fail it.
Now that you have read through the dreams, go back and see how many
of the 30 questions you can answer the same way she did.
When you have compared the two sets of answers, hers and yours, draw
a mental portrait of the dreamer in your mind and read through her autobiographical
sketch.
Autobiographical Sketch
I did most of my growing up in a medium-sized (currently 170,000 people)
conservative, church-backed town. My parents are still married, and I have
one brother two years younger than I. My family is middle class and White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
When I was young, I was very shy. I think this is because from K-6th
grade, I attended five different schools. Just when I would make friends,
the school boundaries would change or my mother did not like the school
I was attending. In addition to feeling like I was always the new kid at
school, my father drank a lot, which led to my parents fighting a lot,
which was sometimes physically violent. I was not allowed to have friends
over because my father grew pot in the back yard. I think that this combination
of factors created a sense of abandonment for me, and it became difficult
for me to open up to people because I was afraid they were going to leave,
I was going to leave, or they were going to be monsters.
My brother and I were never very close. I was a much better student
than he was, and he was constantly reminded of this by my parents. I think
he started to resent me, and consequently did not want to be anything like
me. We fought a lot growing up. I think it was because we were both angry
and confused about what was going on with my parents. We did not know how
to talk about it since no one in the family talked about my fatherís
drinking, and no one was allowed to show feelings.
To escape from the reality of my home life, I threw myself into school
and extracurricular activities. I was rarely at home, and when I was home,
my father and I fought constantly. He was always telling me how stupid
I was and how I would never amount to anything. He also had a habit of
promising me things and taking them back if I disappointed him in any way.
Since I never drank, smoked, used drugs, broke curfew, or snuck out (as
a way to avoid confrontation), the only thing we argued about was household
chores and me not have ''for him. He had promised me that he would pay
for college if I did well and got into a good school. I did everything
he said, and when it came time to make the first university payment, he
told me, 'No. I've changed my mind. You have not been nice enough. I am
not paying for your schooling.' Then he walked away. This was quite a shock
for me.
Two weeks later, I joined the military reserves, and three weeks alter
I left home. I did this as a way to get out of the house and to show my
father that I did not need him. I was 17 and very bitter, but glad to be
out of the house. I finished boot camp and went to my specialized training.
I fell in love, and I thought I had put my past behind me. After my schooling,
I was back at my parentsí house and going to the junior college,
and my new true love was in another state. He arranged to be transferred
to near my hometown, and a few months later, I saw him. It seemed like
everything was different. I think this was because I was living at my parents'
house. He told me I was not the same person he had fallen in love with,
and I needed to get out of that house so that I could be myself again.
I didn't understand what he was saying, but I moved out anyway. He wanted
me to move in with him, but I did not feel ready for that. From that point
on, we began to grow apart.
Once I was out of the house for a while, I began to feel like something
was not right. I started going to church to see if that would help me to
feel better. I did this for about a year and did feel a little better about
myself. Then I was called to active duty in another state. I started dating
someone who was emotionally unavailable to me, but I did not understand
that at the time. After a few weeks of working at my military job, I had
some problems with a few of my co-workers. Shortly after this, I was transferred
to work in the Alcohol Rehabilitation Department (ARD).
I was extremely angry that I was moved to ARD without my consent and
that I was going to be around a bunch of drunks. I secretly hated them
all because I saw a part of my father in all of them. I had problems with
a few of the residents, and the rest of the staff decided that I needed
to go through the treatment program. They said that although I did not
drink, I had all of the behaviors of an alcoholic. They called me an adult
child of an alcoholic (ACA), and put me through three weeks of treatment.
Part way through the treatment, the counselors told me I had all the signs
and symptoms of being a sexual abuse survivor. This was news to me. I started
going to groups for sexual abuse survivors and had some dreams that were
very scary and felt very real. I started making a lot of changes in my
life, and the person that I was dating started to cheat on me. When I found
out, it almost destroyed me. I stopped seeing him, although he swore to
me that he loved only me. I finished the treatment program and continued
to go to meetings for adult children of alcoholics.
When I was released from active duty, I knew I could not live at my
parentsí, so I moved out a week after I got home. I started going
to ACA meetings, working, going to school, and went back to church. I went
to church for a few months, and things started feeling really weird. I
felt like the ministers and the archbishop were trying to tell me what
to do, and I did not like it. I decided organized religion was not for
me, and I stopped going to church. I decided to stick with my own spirituality
and practice meditation. My father and I were still arguing. I was no longer
playing by the family rules because I was talking about the problem and
I was discovering my feelings. He could not deal with this, and could not
hear what I had to say. My mother thought I had become ìrude.î
In fact, I was honest.
I was almost done with my general education work at the junior college,
so I reapplied to a university. I knew I desperately wanted to go, but
I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. I remembered the ACA promise
that if I followed the steps and did my work, fear of economic insecurity
would leave me. So I concentrated on working the steps and tried to turn
all of my financial concerns over to my higher power. I was accepted, and
I received a big scholarship. When September came, I packed my bags and
headed to the campus.
This felt like a new beginning to me. I was going to be many hours
away from my parents, and I was starting over. I was living with a friend
of mine and two of her friends. At first, we all got along great. Then
I started seeing the boyfriend mentioned in my dream series, and my three
housemates and I began to have problems. My boyfriend was also in a 12-step
program, and I had a lot of new friends that were also in the program.
About one month before the second semester, both my grandmother (the only
family member I could be honest with that validated my feelings and did
not try to fix me) and my great grandmother died. My boyfriend helped me
through this time, and we grew closer. The closer we got, the more problems
I had with my housemates.
When I wrote my dream series, I was in a relationship that was less
than six months old and going great. I was doing well in school, having
lots of problems with my housemates, not having a relationship with my
parents by choice, and still attending ACA meetings. THE END
Final Comments
Well, as you no doubt noticed, the main surprise is that the many past
pressures and tensions experienced by the dreamer are not fully revealed
by the dream series. Instead, her dreams tend to reflect her current situation
and concerns. The dreams express her positive relationship with her boyfriend
and her tension with one of her housemates. They also express her concern
with independence and punctuality.
True enough, there is a hint of the negative feelings toward her parents
and brother on the few occasions they appear in the dreams. However, the
depth of those negative feelings , as revealed in her Autobiographical
Sketch, is not readily discerned. It may be that this dreamer has been
able to overcome her past experiences in the sense that they are not now
ìcurrent concerns.î The positive direction she sees her life
taking at the time she wrote down the dreams may be expressed in two 'spotlight
dreams,' dreams 018 and 028, which seem to be metaphoric in nature. In
both dreams she is back in her hometown, and in both of them she is leaving
the past behind.
In the first one, she declares 'there is life beyond this town' in
the face of the fact that the people in the town are going to judge whether
or not she can become an adult. In the second one, she does not have time
for a high school friend who belatedly declares a romantic interest in
her. She says thatís ìtoo badî and that it's 'too late'
because 'I was on a mission and did not have time to deal with this.' Literally
and metaphorically, this dreamer has found that there is life beyond her
hometown (and family), and that she has a mission.
So what is her mission? We know from her autobiographical sketch that
she won a scholarship and was doing well at the university. Indeed, she
was an outstanding student with excellent focus and equally fine interpersonal
skills. Her mission is a professional career that involves graduate school.
She may have to revisit past issues some day, especially if she faces some
new problem that connects with her past emotional hurts, but for now she
is moving on.
What theoretical implications might be drawn from this series? Given
that the series is short and the questions very modest, any theoretical
conclusions have to be equally modest in nature. For me, though, this series
is very similar to other dreams series we have studied in showing how dreams
express a person's (1) 'conceptions' of self and others, and (2) main 'current
concerns.' Furthermore, the conceptions expressed are by and large 'continuous'
with the person's waking conceptions.
From this theoretical starting point, it is possible to use a dream
series to determine the degree to which a dreamer is conscious of her or
his main concerns, and the degree to which figurative forms of thought
like metaphor are used to express conceptions and concerns. But that is
a story for another time and place. It takes a longer and deeper dream
series, along with more probing questions, to demonstrate all that can
be learned through a blind analysis of a dream series using a cognitive
theory of dreams.
[Answers to the questions: 'No' to 1 and 2; 'Yes' to 3-6; '1' to 9,15,
24, 25, and 28; '3' to 8 and 26; '4' to 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17,
l8, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, 30]
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