Dream-Work

Dream-Work

I hate dreams.

In my late teens, having had one too many of these phantasmagoria, I adopted a mantra that I had read about in, like, Reader's Digest. When you go to bed if you repeat to yourself, "I will not dream, I will not dream, I will not dream, " you won't! Or at least not remember them.

The Reader's Digest trick is not foolproof however. Occasionally a dream slips past my defenses. I've had the standard aging yuppie dreams, about almost drowning, just barely keeping my head above water (overwork), being late or unprepared for an exam (deadline pressures), but I've had a pleasing one for the last year or two about being able to fly.

The other night I had a variant of the flying dream that I'd also had before, of being able to fly but with someone else present who didn't seem to notice that I was flying.

That someone was my new girlfriend and I didn't think it took Sigmund Freud to figure it out: I believed that I possessed Hidden Abilities that others didn't see. I felt Underappreciated. I have delusions of grandeur.

What a nightmare.

I was totally depressed and ashamed. I did a quick survey of my life. Are there other instantiations of my grandiosity? I started this weblog three years ago and named it after the first newspaper published in North America and billed it as "A continuation of" that paper. Ooh.

So I immediately changed Publocc's heading to the more modest "Dedicated to." I have not had the courage yet to change the blog's name to something more realistic, like manque@blogspot.com.

As I've done a few times before, to verify the meaning of at least general flying dreams, I looked in the index of Interpretation of Dreams under "flying."

None of those in the general index was anything like what I supposed my garden variety to be. One had to do with some reaction to having teeth pulled which resulted in the rising and falling of the lungs, I don't know.

In another section Freud was almost dismissive, saying, "I have no experience of my own of other kinds of typical dreams [oh, EXCUSE ME], in which the dreamer finds himself [misogynist] flying through the air to the accompaniment of agreeable feelings..." He related one to the childhood experience of being held parallel to the ground by an adult who then runs a few steps; another one was riding down a banister.

I turned to the next to the last entry. It referred me to page 420 where I read at the bottom of the page "..flying dream...dreamt by...a young man with strong homosexual leanings [uh oh], which were, however, inhibited in real Life [OH SHIT]."

Then on the top of page 421,

"He was attending a performance of 'Fidelio'
and was sitting in the stalls at the Opera
beside L., a man who was congenial to him
and with whom he would have liked to make
friends. Suddenly he flew through the air
right across the stalls, put his hand in his
mouth and pulled out two of his teeth."

NO! Whew.

So I left the General Index and went to "Index of Dreams, part A, Dreamt by Freud Himself," to see what interesting, complex, not "typical" dreams Himself had.

"Keeping a woman waiting." Oooh, real interesting.

But then I saw,

"Dissecting my own pelvis" and in the "F"'s section,"Funeral oration by young doctor." Dreamt after "Dissecting my own pelvis," perhaps.

Intrigued, I now turned to part "B" "Dreamt by Others."

"Arrest in restaurant" dreamt by a young man, seemed straightforward enough.

"Barrister lost cases," I could, alas, relate to also.

"Big dish with big joint." If we update the imagery to the current symbolism, that would be pretty typical, I think.

But some of the others, "Caviar, legs covered with (girl)." I don't want to know.

"Daddy carrying his head on a plate (Boy aged 3 yrs, 5 months)." Whoa! I hope Freud fingerprinted that lad.

"I must tell the doctor that (Man patient)." I dissected my own pelvis?

"Hat as genital (agoraphobic woman patient.")! Followed immediately by "Hat with crooked feather (Man)."!!

"'Who is the baby's father' (Woman patient)." Wilt Chamberlain.

"Revolution of 1848 (Experimental Dream)"
"Roman Emperor assassinated"
"Sitting opposite the Emperor"

Americans don't have dreams like that.

"Three theatre tickets for 1fl. 50kr (Woman patient)." What if it had been 2fl. 50kr? Or 50fl. 1kr?

I don't know, I think I'm going to stick to "I will not dream, I will not dream."

-Benjamin Harris