The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams (17 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams
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Father:
Fathers are considered typically to be authority figures. Again, your relationship with your own father and your attitude about it bear looking at when he, or another father, or yourself as a father, appears in a dream. Is the father in your dream an authority? A judge? A protector? Even if you are a woman, you do have a fathering/authoritative part of yourself that may be surfacing in a dream about a father or about your own father.
Baby or child:
A child is an innocent person in need of nurturing or care. The child in the dream may be your own child, some other child, or the child part of you. Do you have a need you are not addressing? Is there something you should protect the child part of you from? If the child in the dream is your own child, ask yourself whether this is a signal to pay attention to some need or quality you may have been ignoring in your child. Is there some unresolved conflict to deal with? If your child appears ill, hurt, or in danger in your dream, you may be questioning your adequacy as a parent to take care of your child, or yourself.
Lover:
When your lover appears in a dream, the dream not only represents the actual person, but may also symbolize the acceptance, appreciation, and integration of masculine or feminine traits of the lover into yourself. In other words, a dream of a lover may indicate your feeling whole or complete, with all aspects of your personality expressed.
Boss:
Your employer has authority over you, gives you directions, and provides you with your livelihood. In addition to pointing out something about your relationship with your boss, a dream that features your boss can spotlight the issues you have surrounding this kind of authority and control. What does it say about the boss part of you? Are you the authority in your life? Or is someone else ''bossing you around"?
Teacher or therapist:
When an influential person appears in
 
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a dream who gives you guidance or instruction in your waking life, it may symbolize some inner knowledge or information about yourself. Listen or ask for the message this guide has for you, and remember that this person also represents the expert or guru part of yourself that has the information you need.
Casual acquaintances: ''What was he doing there?" How many times have you dreamed about someone you barely know, only to wake up and wonder how in the world your dreaming mind dragged that person out of the back room and into your dream. Casual acquaintances are part of our life experiences, part of ourselves, in that they may symbolize particular events or times in our lives (our third grade teacher, our doctor's receptionist, a fellow car pool driver), or particular messages you need to receive. When trying to make sense of their special appearance in your dream, consider not just who these characters are but what they represent to you in context. Here are a few examples.
Mail carrier:
A mail carrier can be a symbol of communication. If a character of this type appears in your dream, ask yourself how you are communicating with others in your life. Whom do you need to carry a message to? Whom do you wish to hear from? What information do you need to receive?
Builder, architect, interior designer:
Someone who constructs a house is creating, giving form to, adding on. Is there a builder part of you in action now? What are you creating, giving structure to? Or failing to?
Animals:
As dream characters, our family pets or other familiar animals have special meaning beyond the archetypal symbolism of primal instincts in nature. When you dream of a pet, consider the personality traits you see in that animal, and how those traits might represent a part of you. (Wild animals such as snakes and bears have archetypal meanings that we explore later in this chapter.)
 
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Celebrity guest stars: In this age of never-ending multimedia coverage of famous people in the news, entertainment industries, and political arena, our cast of characters can have some surprising special guest stars. Best friends with Cher? Why not. A date with Humphrey Bogart? What the heck. A pickup truck ride with the President? Sounds like fun. Anything is possible in dreams, and after you've enjoyed the ride, you can have more fun examining just what these famous folks mean to you as symbols. He or she may be someone you wish to be, someone you are jealous of, or someone whose "alliance" or message you believe would be of value to you (for example, "With the president of the United States on my side, I'll go far!").
The President:
Clearly, the president of the United States is a symbol of power, authority, and control. A presidential visitation in a dream may also symbolize protection and privilege. Are you taking control or do you feel controlled by someone else? Do you seek protection, or do you desire to be an insider in a situation? Are there general presidential qualities or particular traits in the President in the dream that have relevance to you and your life? You can use these characteristics to develop your own waking personality, enhancing positive qualities and working on less productive traits that you see exhibited in these famous characters.
Royalty:
Royal figures are often an archetypal symbol of king and queen, the rulers of your own body, mind, and soul. How are you ruling over your life, or whom are you allowing to rule over it? If you dream of a specific member of a royal family, such as the Prince of Wales or the late Princess Diana (who was one of the most frequently photographed women in the world), then consider your own feelings about the characters. Again, so much media coverage makes it likely that you've formed some impression that has meaning in your dream.
 
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Movie starlactor:
A movie star or actor may represent the performer part of yourself. What is the actor known for? Womanizing? Political activism? Does the actor seem to have traits you identify with? Has he or she played characters that appeal to you in some way?
Dream helpers: Some characters may look and act unlike anyone you know or have heard of, but become your friends or allies in your dreamworld, and may recur in other dreams. (See "Your Dream World Series" in chapter 6.) We call them dream helpers because they appear in your dreams to assist you, lending their support as you move in new directions, first in your dream, and then in your waking life. You dream these helpers up out of a need for guidance, for approval and acceptance, for care, or for information. Often, an archetypal magic figure such as a witch or magician steps in as a dream helper, representing some crucial part of your personality, such as wisdom, intuition, nurturance, fertility, or spirituality.
In some sense, all dream characters are dream helpers, because they all bring to our attention something from the unconscious that, when examined, gives us more information about ourselves, information we can use in our waking lives. For instance, a young woman recalls a dream in which her kitchen sink was full of dishes and the water was overflowing onto the floor: "Within the dream, I go to talk to my mother. I tell her I had dreamed the sink was overflowing, and ask what she thinks it means. In a soothing lilt that is unlike her real voice, she says, 'Everything is overflowing out of control.' As my dream helper, she was able to reveal a feeling to me that I had been unaware of until that point. I think this helper appeared as my mother because the archetypal Mother is our first and most basic source of information about how the world works, our first real problem solver and guide."
 
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Dream helpers are usually not familiar characters from our waking lives, however. Archetypal or universal figures are more common dream helpers. An angel, for example, suggests inspiration from the spiritual self; it can also serve as a messenger of significant information. A wizard or witch represents possibilities beyond those that are familiar, including the ability to see past what is "known" in order to convey an important message.
Often, some of the most valuable dream helpers appear in our scariest nightmares or in unexpected or disguised forms. But their presence and actions can be quite a relief, pointing the way, saving the day, and giving us new information we can wake up and begin using in our daily lives. For example, a woman who was working very hard in therapy to deal with her repressed anger toward her mother had a disturbing dream about seeing "a big brown ugly spider." At first, she found the spider to be intimidating, but in considering the dream further, she came to see the spider as a dream helper encouraging her to come out of her "secluded, dark place" so she could work on expressing herself and making more friends. She then viewed the spider as the useful, productive part of natureand her naturethat it can be. She also resolved to take some specific steps toward communicating more effectively.
Animals: As with the family pet, any animal can represent primal instincts. But because we know our own cats and dogs far better than we could know a bear or a lion, these wild animals represent different things to us, based mostly on our knowledge from books and documentaries, and even from sources as diverse as our childhood nursery rhymes or Aesop's fables. So look to wild animals to symbolize the more primitive and instinctual parts of yourself. Consider the animal's condition and demeanor: wild and free, caged, docile, fierce. An injured animal gives you an opportunity to consider what part
 
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of you might need healing or attention; a literal thorn in the side might in fact be a visual representation of the cliché that should cause you to wonder what is irritating you. Here are some common animal associations:
Bear:
Strength.
Bird:
Higher spiritual awareness. Freedom or flight of fancy. According to Freud, a phallic symbol related to being good at sex; for Jung, the soul.
Fox:
Cleverness.
Ant:
Industriousness or insignificance, depending on the context.
Lion:
Power, success, triumph. May suggest aggression or fear of aggression in yourself or others.
Snake:
Life force, mesmerizing or hypnotizing, creative and sexual energy. Contradictory aspects based on biblical stories include both venomous evil and healing wisdom. A snake sheds its skin and emerges into a renewed self, and so could symbolize rebirth. For Freud, the snake was a phallic symbol.
UFOs or aliens: When is astral projection merely a dream and when is it, perhaps, something more? Movies such as
2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and
X Files
exploit the notion that alien abduction is a real phenomenon. Indeed, says one psychotherapist who has treated a number of self-proclaimed abductees, alien beings have in large measure replaced angels as the other-worldly beings of our dreamworld. "What seems to be happening at present," writes Maureen B. Roberts, Ph.D., in the journal
Dream Network
, "is that the angles and demons of Christian mythology are being superseded by more morally ambiguous UFO and alien dreams."
When interpreting your own "close encounter" dream, look for the "alien" part of yourself, and consider the characteristics this being exhibits in the dream. Is this a dream helper character,
 
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descending to Earth to give you a message? And finally, how do you feel after the dream? Questions like these can shed light on this intriguing dream phenomenon. How did you feel when you awakened? When these dreams are especially vivid and terrifying, it is that much more important to work with them to heal the trauma they can cause. Writes Roberts: "After dealing with several UFO abduction cases in private therapy, I'm struckin all instancesby the sincerity and humility of the individuals involved, and by the genuinely traumatic nature, for them, of what they've experienced." This comment speaks to the fact that dream emotions can occur as real within the dreamer's heart and soul. As for whether actual alien abduction really takes place"the truth is out there."
Composite characters: With your mind free to roam, characters can actually blend together to form composites, combining the characteristics of two or more people in your life. These unique characters, as with any different or unusual dream symbol, seem to be the dreaming mind's way of emphasizing a point or giving an essential clue about the dream. So look for things the characters have in common or where they conflict, and then ask yourself what the message is for you. For example, one dreamer often had dreams in which his camp counselor appeared with the face of his father and the walk of the counselor. As with many composite characters in dreams, this hybrid person represented a state of transition and change in the dreamer's life.
Unidentified characters: Most of the time, you'll be able to recognize the characters in your dreams. But about 40 percent of the time they will be unidentifiable as people you have seen before in waking life. Freud would suggest these unidentified characters represent people you do know but whose identity you mask so as to deny or repress the feelings you associate with

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