John D. Goldhammer, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 25161,
Seattle, WA 98165-2061 USA
jgoldhammer@mindspring.com
206-306-0322
No prisons are more
confining than the ones
of which we are unaware.
-
Shakespeare, The Tempest
In my psychotherapy practice, I have learned from many clients that serious depression is nearly always a valuable red flag alerting us to something we are doing to ourselves that is limiting or self-destructive. Experience has also taught me that when we repress or deny our creative spirit, we are signing up for a dark journey, a wasteland experience. For this reason, we need to be alert for those remarkable dream dramas that focus on the actual cause of our suffering resulting from buried talent and creativity—the reaction to chaining up a wild creature, suppressing an authentic life that cannot live and breathe—all potent causes of depression and anger, even rage.
Consider Steven, a glum, angry, articulate, forty-two-year-old, gifted writer and poet. He had spent most of his adult life struggling with chronic depression. Occasionally a creative idea would manage to escape the sledgehammer of his negative self-criticisms but he never let his real genius completely out of the bottle. At a particular low point, he had a disturbing dream that he called a “bad nightmare”:
I am at some sort of school or conference. Many people, including myself, are seated around a large table discussing a recent series of brutal serial murders. One of the other attendees is a young Bob Dylan. After the conference is over we go to our own rooms in a kind of dormitory. I am in a large private room at the end of the hall. Though the room is large, my bed and possessions are all crammed into the corner of the room.
I suddenly realize that I am the serial murderer, though I can’t recall ever having committed any of the crimes. I also realize that Dylan suspects I am the killer. The bookshelf next to my bed is full of books on serial killers and, figuring this will give me away, I put some of the books in a hidden area next to the bookshelf. They won’t all fit there so I cover the shelf with a large piece of cloth. Dylan enters the room and begins talking with me, asking questions designed to trap me into admitting my guilt. I evade him. He begins looking at my belongings and I am terrified he will discover the hidden books and I will be exposed as the killer. This cat-and-mouse game goes on interminably.
When I asked Steven what Bob Dylan represented to him he explained: “He’s an icon, the artist, a song writer who writes obscure lyrics. He’s extreme, enigmatic, hard to figure out.” We talked about Bob Dylan being a unique, 1960's musician who combined elements from blues, country-western, and folk music to create his own brand of protest music. The civil rights movement adopted one of his best known songs, “Blowin' in the Wind,” as their anthem. The dream figure of Bob Dylan is certainly a candidate for a creative, distinctive part of Steven. In fact, Steven connected with Dylan’s protest lyrics, recalling a lot of the writing he had done that was designed to stir things up. “I’m drawn to extremes,” he commented.
But the real puzzler is the “serial murderer” who turns out to be Steven. However we need to note that it is the dreaming ego that realizes it is the serial killer. Dylan also “suspects” that the dreamer is the killer and questions the dreamer, trying to get him to admit his guilt. This identification of the dreaming ego as the serial killer suggests that some aspect of Steven’s waking ego is now aware of blood on its hands. But who are its victims?
When Steven explored what it would be like to be a victim and also imagined being the killer, the dream suddenly resonated. He felt each victim represented an innocent life snuffed out along with all its creative potential; For Steven, the victims felt like his creative ideas, each with a potential life cut short. Steven’s inner serial killer was like an evil composite, a dark, faceless machine that hacks each new inspiration to pieces with its razor-sharp self-criticisms, fear, and self-doubt.
Living in a small corner of a large room, he is terrified of being exposed as the killer, meaning a potent inner critic—an aspect of his “ego”—does not want to give up the safety of the status quo. If this critic allowed Steven’s creative life to flourish it would potentially change everything. Steven’s “ordinary world” would be transformed. Remarkably, his dream has quite likely shown him the chief cause of his depression: dead and buried creative ideas along with an unlived life.
Steven’s dream shocked him into working with his self-criticism and negativity. He resolved to restart his creative life and began writing again in earnest. He gradually began to feel better. When I last heard from him he sounded excited and passionate. He had written a complete screenplay and was in the process of looking for an agent. Naturally, it was a wonderfully creative murder mystery.
Exploring the dream:
· Bob Dylan represents an important part of his Authentic Self who was involved and concerned about the serial killer; a creative part of Steven who asks, “...questions designed to trap [him] into admitting [his] guilt.” Steven’s dream illustrates the frequent dream dynamic of the Authentic Self pursuing some aspect of the dreamer’s ego, nearly always some thing that is preventing us from being who we really are.
· In a dream like Steven’s, where someone is killed or dies, it’s important to explore the victim and the killer using questions like the following:
o As the victim or the killer, how would you explain who and what you are to a person who had just arrived from Mars and had no concept of what a victim or a killer was?
o As the killer, what is your life like?
o If we imagine being a victim, what is life like? The answer might go something like this: “I have a life to live and that life has been aborted. I have come to birth from an act of passion and love and I am innocent; I don’t deserve to be murdered. It’s utterly tragic and unnecessary.”
o Then link your observations, experience, and feelings to your waking life and circumstances.
Aristotle once said “the soul thinks in images.” I like to imagine dreaming as the soul thinking, reflecting, and creating. Our dreams hold keys to freeing unimaginable creative potential and unexplored possibilities—qualities our world desperately needs more of.
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