A Dream''s
Worth
A picture is worth a thousand words. You''ve heard it so many times that
it sounds trite. But a picture really IS worth a thousand words. And if
a dream is a very special kind of picture, how much is IT worth? Maybe
more? What about very
simple pictures and very simple dreams? No doubt
they''re worth a little bit less than complex, elaborate ones.
Or are they?
In my psychotherapy course one day, I presented my undergraduate
students with these questions. "Here''s a very simple dream from a
psychotherapy client I worked with years ago. I won''t tell you anything
about the client. I''ll just tell you his dream, and then lets see what
we can discover about him by exploring it...... O.K? Here''s the dream:"
"I was wearing a
white shirt and a
purple tie."
The students just stare at me, expecting more to come. "No," I
explain, "that''s it. That''s the dream. Now let''s start to explore it."
I then lead them through a group process of free associating to
the dream (much like I describe on the Working and Playing with Dreams
Page). "Just let your imagination go. Take every element of the dream
and just let your mind wander on it. Whatever comes to mind. Don''t
censor anything, that''s important. There is no right or wrong. It can
be a fun, playful exercise - although the results sometimes may be
serious and powerful. Freud thought that free association bypasses the
defenses of rational, logical thinking and unlocks deeper links within
the unconscious. It opens one up to fantasy, symbolism, and emotion -
the very place from which dreams spring."
Here is a list of some of the associations the students come up
with. For the purpose of this article I''ve organized them somewhat,
whereas during the actual exercise the ideas surface in a much more
freewheeling stream of consciousness:
PURPLE .... royalty, bruises, choking, holding one''s breath, grief,
a
combination of blue and pink, goes well with black, The Color of
Purple
TIE .... formal attire, going to work, phallic symbol, tied up, being tied to something, chokes the neck, confining
PURPLE TIE .... unconventional, stands out, rebellious, showing off
WHITE .... clean, pure, unstained, "good," light
SHIRT .... the top part, covered up, tucked in, stuffed shirt, where are the pants?
WHITE SHIRT.... conventional, boring, going to work, going to church, corporate America
WHITE SHIRT AND PURPLE TIE.... unusual combination, contradictory combination, very unconventional, tie really stands out
DEPLETION?.... there''s nobody else in the dream, it''s so static, there''s nothing happening, where are the feelings?
After we finish this free associating, I then describe the client to the class.
At the time Dan had the dream, he was 23 years old. I would
describe him as a quiet, held-back person who was very confined (the
tie) in how he talked, behaved, and felt towards others. Put bluntly,
people found him rather boring to be with (white shirt). His emotional
and interpersonal life were choked (the tie). He had almost no friends
and felt little connection to his family (the tie again). Other than
going to his tedious job (white shirt) as a low level technician for a
computer company, essentially nothing was happening in his static,
uneventful life (depletion).
Dan was also very limited in understanding anything but the most
surface, top-level (shirt) characteristics of his personality. Although
outwardly conventional in how he dressed and acted at his job (white
shirt), secretly he felt rebellious against authority (purple tie on
white shirt) and generally superior (purple) to most people. He liked
to think of himself as a political activist who firmly believed in the
rights of abused (purple) people and felt more tied to them than anyone
else. Comparing outside to inside, he was a bit of a contradictionBut none of these issues is what consciously drove him to therapy.
What he most desperately needed to discuss and resolve was the fact
that he was homosexual (purple tie). Yet he didn''t know whether he
wanted to come out of the closet or not (the tie). Part of him wanted
to let everyone know, to even show off and parade the fact that he was
gay (purple tie on white shirt), to escape the feeling that his
identity was being restrained and choked (more tie). His rebellious,
unconventional side liked that idea. He sometimes did indeed bravely
experiment with revealing his gay identity by wearing a purple
triangle, which to him symbolized being homosexual (a combination of
pink and blue).
But another side of him (purple tie versus white shirt) was afraid
to come out. He sometimes felt dirty, tainted, sick, for being gay.
That part of him wanted to be somehow cleansed and redeemed (white
shirt). Part of the problem was that sex in general was a very
unpleasant issue for him. When he was young he had had surgery on his
genitals. He still felt insecure and "bruised" (purple) down there. He
was so conflicted about sex that I sometimes wondered if he had been
sexually abused as a child (purple tie?, suffocating tie?).
A dream, even a simple one, is worth at least a thousand words.
Freud thought that there was no limit to how much you could analyze a
dream. You can always go further and further into the symbols, the
links of associations, the memories that generate a dream. At some deep
unconscious level, any dream fans out into the infinite horizon of
emotion and thought that constitute the individual psyche... that even
transcends the individual psyche and constitutes us all.
More summaries about the A Dream''s Worth, Lesson on Psychology of Dreams