The patient described herein is a woman we have met before in my essays “Applesauce”, “Untold Want”, and “Mysterious Leap From the Mind to the Body”. This is a further development of the patient’s analysis and the progression of her dreams.

PRELUDE

The patient suddenly found one late afternoon that her I-phone did not work. Her I-phone is highly programmed with information like a mini computer. She frantically tried to fix it and was compelled finally to buy a new phone. Even the store manager could not fully program this phone. She was in tears of frustration.

Then her computer broke down. Here she was stranded seemingly without the sufficient help she needed to do her business even with help she got from someone who worked on her computer. This person also could not do the necessary programming and connecting.

Adding to this, she had an appointment with an acupuncturist who the patient also considered a personal friend. The patient explained her situation to the acupuncturist friend, a woman she had been seeing for five years. She said she had to cancel her appointment, which was in the evening. The acupuncturist replied, "I'm glad you called me. You know I will still have to charge you the fee. I have a 24 hour cancellation policy." Upon hearing this, the patient completely lost it and, even as she told me about this the next day, her face was so forlorn, completely distraught. The attractiveness, for she was an attractive woman, was gone. She cried, "Ruth just doesn't love me. How could she do this? I have been a loyal patient. How could she?", all this while crying.

All this I felt to be true, that is the patient is a loyal person to all of her treatment team. One suspects that a great deal of this loyalty has to do with the fact that the one consequence she does not want to face is to be abandoned - in any way - or to be treated in this way, all for fear of losing the love of the particular therapist.

This would put her in the position of being the baby who was emotionally abandoned by her mother. She has literally spent her life with an "all for love" purpose. It is the single strand she feels she cannot afford ever to put into play. With this as an introduction we can go to the following stunning dream.

DREAM ONE

I am at a wedding reception. It isn't my wedding but I was supposed to go to my own wedding but I'm late because I came to this one. I think mine starts at 4 pm and everything is to do done in orange. Is it time for me to leave yet? I think Michael, her ex-husband, is at this wedding as a guest. There is dancing going on. I keep wondering if I belong here.

ASSOCIATIONS

Patient: It is interesting that weddings are happening in both dreams. I will tell you the second dream later. The first dream has two weddings; the one I am attending and my own that starts at 4 pm and will be done in orange. I like the idea of 4 pm because it means balance and the orange is like the color of the robes of the Sufi monks. I suppose I want to marry the state of inner peace and spiritual harmony.

Dr. B: Then why are you lingering at someone else's wedding making yourself late to your own? And moreover why is your ex-husband at this wedding, and not at your wedding and why would you want your ex-husband to be at any wedding of yours?

Patient: I feel stuck in my Mother's way of thinking. It is the old way, the imprint way. I know my Mother didn't love me, at an unconscious level I mean. I am stuck at that wedding married to an imprint my Mother gave me, that of not loving me. I guess Michael is there as a representation of my mother. You know Michael was the love of my life.

Dr. B: Really?

Patient: Yes. That's how I felt.

Dr. B: I think you are struggling about whether you are truly willing to face the fact that you Mother didn't love you. On the one hand you stay at the wrong wedding, the old wedding, the old you, the one where Michael/Mom cannot love you while on the other hand, you know that the real celebration and marriage you seek awaits you. The marriage to yourself where you will love and value yourself, no matter what your Mother's unconscious message was to you.

Patient: I think the whole world is dancing to their imprint; they are all at this same kind of wedding that I am during this dream.

Dr. B: It doesn't matter what the world is dancing to and you remember that dream you had where you were sitting in an examination with thousands of other people. You realized that you had made plans to sit and take an exam in a totally separate location and arrangements were made for a proctor to come especially for you. You remember in that dream you came late and now you must take the exam with the masses. That would be the world dancing with their imprints and you did this instead of honoring your plan to take the examination alone and that is the exam we are having right now, the analysis. That would imply that you lived life that is separate from the imprint and uniquely one in which you can love yourself and love your spirit self. So we get back to the question why can't you leave at 4 pm to attend your own wedding?

Patient: I suppose I don't yet feel ready to be free. I am still choosing to be married to Mom, the imprint and the failure to be loved.

Dr. B: Obviously with all the knowledge you have you are saying you still choose to suffer. It seems you have erotized suffering and you must get some pleasure from this suffering. It comes down to this. When you can work through the fact that your mother did not love you, and you really don't like the suffering, you will come to love yourself. I say it again, because your Mom did not love you, you have come to believe that you could not and should not love yourself. To do so would be a betrayal of your mother's basic unconscious message. You must listen to Mother as a baby or you will not survive. She supplies your needs, supports your life, so you become as what she requires you to become or else you die, or so you think. A baby doesn't know any differently. As a consequence you eternalize "I am not to be loved - I am not loveable - My mother does not love me" and from that place you have been attracting men who will stand in for Mom. These men don't love you. They use you and you spend all of your energy and effort trying to please them and convince them to love you but they can't - just like your mother couldn't.

Patient: Let me tell you the second dream.

DREAM TWO

I go to the bank to cash a check. Is it my Dad's $600 check from the IRS? I see photos of my Mom and Dad from their funerals. Someone has placed the photos of them on the outside of their coffins. The photos are of them at a much younger age, maybe early twenties or so. The bank officer wants me to give him details of their lives. I have sheets of notes about things that they would have done differently and things they wanted their children and others to know. I must hurry as I am going to be late to Dorothy's wedding. It starts at 3:30 pm and it is already 2:45 pm. I had lost track of time talking about my parents and now I must rush.

ASSOCIATIONS

Patient: Why do I go to the bank in this dream to cash my Dad's $600 check? I actually did cash a $600 check yesterday from the IRS made out to my Dad. It came after he died. I had to go to the bank to see if they would cash it. It was actually made out to my Mom and my Dad and neither is alive to do anything. The bank let me cash it.

Dr. B: Obviously this dream is sending you a message from your Mother and Father. So let us begin with the 6 which you know in the tarot is the lover's card. It is the card which argues for true perception. And since your Mother and Father's coffins were in the bank with their pictures, I would say they are reaching across the veil to send you their love and their blessing. Their message is that they love you and hope you will have the correct perception. The real problem is can you accept that love? You understand that your parents come from a different place now. But the important thing is are you able to accept changing a lifetime of rejecting love.

Patient: I need their love now. I have felt so very alone these last few weeks. The crash of my mobile phone a few nights ago triggered an incredible unleashing of powerlessness, vulnerability and being alone with no one to rely on or to help me. Try as I might not to slip into the feelings of being depressed, out of control and lost, I did slip and now I am falling and clutching to come back.

Dr. B: Yes, you did regress to a baby state and from that place it is impossible to feel much else but helpless. That's how babies feel because that is how they are - helpless.

Patient: Why do my parents have notes of their regrets and how they would do things differently?

Dr. B: I said your parents are coming from a different place. In that place they would be informed about everything and they would see their lives in quite a different way and they would see their mistakes clearly and they would want to rectify their mistakes. They don't want you to make the same mistakes they did. They, via this dream, come to you with a message of love and hope. They want you to know that they send you their love. Don't stay married in this imprint.

Patient: Is Dorothy's wedding really my wedding? It's at 3:30 pm, which comes to six and the powers of perception.

Dr. B: Yes, you are being told that the possibility of the new way of being, of thinking and living, awaits you but you must not dally or be late. You must be able to accept a new life. You must be able to accept that you are loveable and can be and should be truly loved. That would be a great breakthrough for you.

It would mean that you love yourself no matter whether or not your mother loved you. When you truly love yourself, you will call in a man capable of truly loving you. What you are and who you are will attract the same to you. At 2:45 pm you need to leave, that is eleven. Eleven is completion, completion of the old and the beginning of the new. This is also a very powerful and important dream. These two dreams signify that fundamental change is possible for you - the examination of and minimization of your very powerful imprint about not being loved and not being loveable is capable of being shifted if you will allow. The path is open. Yours at 4 pm is a good time. As you say it's a number of great balance and command of yourself. You see in the end it is always about love. When you come to the depths of love of yourself, you can love others differently and receive the truest of love as well at the deepest level.

The patient remarked on it being a very difficult weekend and then reported this dream.

DREAM THREE

I was acting in a play and I was doing several parts. I didn't understand it and I felt it was hard to do. In a second dream I was at a big international meeting in the U.K. It was about business, stocks and bonds, and I thought no one would notice if I slipped away to get my broken I-phone fixed. I went to a suburb in London. The shop was in the back of a house. It was raining and Debby Z. lent me a small umbrella, you know the kind that folds up and you can put in your purse. It is small but protects some of you. There the person said he couldn't fix the phone but he would give me a small phone with just the essentials on it and the keyboard was correspondingly small. I was in a quandary about what to do. I simply did not know. Later an English girl wanted to come back with me with the idea that she could get into the meeting.

ASSOCIATIONS

Patient: I felt awful all weekend, I felt effective and sometimes I was not and always there was a feeling of dread, the threat of a hot flash coming and overwhelming me. I thought if it did it would just split me with pain.

Dr. B: What about the U.K.?

Patient: When I was there as an exchange student it rained all the time, gray and rainy. I was so homesick. I missed my mother and I missed my family. You know the girl who lent me her umbrella was a high school student and friend of mine and very nice. She was not a snob and treated everybody well. I really liked her.

Dr. B: What was the nature of the organization holding the meeting?

Patient: I don't know. I was not very interested in it. I was interested in getting my I-phone fixed and I couldn't accept the solution of trading my broken I-phone for the simple little phone. If I took the deal I would be plagued with doubts. I didn't know what to do and this girl wanted to come with me. Anyway I need to know what is it that I feel so bad. You have to tell me?

Dr. B: I think it is both. It is the physiology of where you are and the emotional knowledge that your mother did not love you. After all you are of an age where hormones do decrease. But you see if you are in an infantile state of mind, that state of mind has no use for hormones. The hormones will go away causing a greater depletion. But I wonder if you are aware that you are revisiting the problem that we have been talking about. Here you are trying to get your I-phone fixed. The I-phone stands for being an adult with all the adult functions. The man wants to give you a small phone with only essential functions. That would be the phone of infancy where the essential function is to contact your mother. So you see despite our going over this very carefully and very detailed fashion, you are still back trying to solve this problem. Being in a quandary tells us that you are not sure whether you should stick with being a baby and suffer the imprint or should you go toward being a full adult and in an adult state of mind. It is this conflict that riddles you with doubt.

Patient: That's right. That feels absolutely right to me and I don't want to feel like I did all weekend.

Dr. B: Let me say your being in England as a student, an older part of yourself or the problem as it surfaced at that time, is part of this problem. When you were homesick, you were heartsick and when the foundation of ones life is tested, you are really testing whether or not your mother loves you. If your mother loves you, you can tolerate the distance and the time away. If you do not have that assurance then you become homesick and heartsick and feel you must go home.

I feel there is more here. I think the meeting is the international meeting at which time you felt unloved and, if you recall, accused me of not protecting you, of not loving you enough to protect you. And here, almost two years later, the theme comes up again. In addition Debby is also me. I give you protection for the weather, the stormy emotional state you were in but you are saying it is not enough to protect you entirely.

Patient: And who is the English girl who wants to come with me?

Dr. B: I think this is your sister who you feel must have wanted to be at the meeting. There is more to that. I think this brings up the first part of your dream in which you are playing several parts. Here you are showing what infants do when they are struck down by the realization of being unloved. They immediately go to play another part; for example being the mother or father and, in your life, to be your sister. Anything except being you, anything to escape the pain. I would imagine your sister played with you the way a little girl might do with a baby sister and loved you the way a little girl might love a baby sister.

Patient: Oh, my God, that feels just right.

Dr. B: What I just described is how babies, in order to escape the pain of being who they are, become other people in the family. Mostly they become the mother.

I think what these dreams are showing us is why people whose foundation is tenuous, damaged instinctively fear the word psychoanalysis. It gives them a bad feeling. They fear this discipline and then they hate it and mock it. A fear, not knowing how it works, that they will fall into the abyss as if it were eternal hell in which they would burn endlessly, for that is how pain feels - endless.

COMMENTARY

Humanity continues to seek love from other human beings to satisfy their idea of who they are and yet from infancy, the physical human mother does not hold the love. It must be recalled that every human soul will find God - that is the perfect Source. That perfect Source must inevitably come back to the individual. It is the gift of peaceful harmony and the concern of love of a parent, of another individual, that one cannot identify - themselves. This is the ideal to which we all strive. However, unbeknownst to us, there is that "radio active core" the mother's imprint, which keeps sending out the pulsating message "I do not love you, I do not want you. You are a burden to me. How will I ever manage my life" and so on. These messages are hidden and unknown, even to the mother who contains them. She would be embarrassed by the fact that it was she and another that conceived the child about which there was so much ambivalence. To achieve the former goal one must overcome the hidden trauma of the imprint which can strike one down when one feels unloved by a husband, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a wife when in reality one eats oneself into oblivion, cuts oneself, kills oneself in any number of ways, consciously or unconsciously, even to the reality of jumping out of windows or, when one loses one's money, blowing oneself away. At bottom it is this fundamental hole in the personality, “my Mother did not love me.” This is undeniably at the heart of it. The vital force is not there. This contributes to the dread of analysis and the vituperative attacks against it. It is a defense against the threat of learning, that maybe there is no bottom (not true) and no will to live on your own.

The categories listed above plus a few other diagnostic states could invoke theories and learned men would find divergences and convergences in these theories.

A similar state existed around the origin of the universe before it was discovered that the big bang occurred thirteen point five billion years ago. With this acceptance by all scientists, the various theories went away and they began to work on solving other mysteries of the universe.

To say it briefly, I am reminded of the ancient fable about the three blind men describing the elephant. Each one had a different description; each was convinced he was right. When they came together to discuss their findings they discovered there were convergences and divergences.

Then the one eyed man described the truth of the elephant.

Generations later it was wondered what the fuss was all about.

I am saying that my theory is the foundation of all mental and emotional illness. Once that is realized and accepted, the learned in the field of psychoanalysis will stop talking about the divergences and convergences of analytic theories. There will be a singular theory from which all else issues and we can get on with the work of solving other problems of human life. It seems to me this is the most imperative need of mankind now as it has been for some time.

I want to point out to the reader how difficult it is to give up an imprint that shatters you as it did this woman. The situation described here is what we call the “working through”. There is progress and then regression and then further progress but always the movement is upward. It struck my ear in a special way when she said at the first wedding dream, "Michael was the love of my life." It came across to me as if he were still the love of her life, with all of her denial of the difficulties she had living with him; after the first blush of the romance, the sex, the delirium (her erotization of the essentially damaged foundation of this marriage). In due time each settled in their own imprint with ensuing arguments, loss of temper and loss of the original sexual vigor until finally even that had to be enhanced by drugs (hmm, "the love of my life", right) and after the continuing endless search to find exactly the same person.

When one considers that men and women are looking for mates that will give them this secure safety, this endless love at the deepest level of consciousness, this person who will satisfy every longing he/she ever had, then we are not talking about any human being. We can only be talking of a reminiscence of God, of when we were all with Him and felt this eternal safety and joy and being enfolded within his arms secure and full of peace.

It is not fair to contrast an experience we all have had in another form, in another ancient time of timelessness that no human being can emulate. This is too much to ask.

In the meantime we must strive to understand the nature of our humanness in all its qualities, in all its weaknesses and work to give to others what they deserve and to God what he offers, the final care and solace we long for in the essence of our soul. If we understand that at long last there is love in sight, but love of the Divine, love of the most perfect union.

POSTSCRIPT

The patient on a succeeding day had this short dream.

DREAM ONE

"She was sitting on the lap of her mother both as a child and as the woman she is now. Her mother was combing her long hair and, as this was being done, she had a feeling she had never ever had and never thought she could ever have - that of utter peace. She woke up a few times during the night but had no new dream - only the words came to her 'Remember this dream'. She had the soundest sleep she had ever had."

Several weeks later the patient brings in this dream.

DREAM TWO

I'm getting comments about this contract that I have to complete between 5 and 6 a.m. I have to do this in order to complete the contract. I am wondering what is going to be the big break in my life. This work is so monotonous.

In another small fragment I am a professional musician. I have a small daughter who plays the guitar. I hope one day she will take after me and be a professional too.

ASSOCIATION

I do take comments in everyday life and I do have to complete contracts. It is what I do. I feel I have been doing it now for so long a stretch sometimes it is boring and I can hardly stand it. Sometimes it is easy and I like it, especially when I can make it all fit and everyone is happy. I know you'll ask about the times. I do not work at 5 a.m. I am still asleep so there must be the significance of the numbers. I know them by now. Five means change and six means true perception in the Tarot.

Dr. Bail: And the break?

Patient: I keep thinking what will come into my life that will change it. I am so impatient. I had lunch with J.P., a very well known attorney in town. He is head of his firm, a long-standing one, a well respected one. He said, "Let's have a drink. Make an appointment with my secretary", but his secretary found he had an opening for lunch so she arranged that. It was OK with him. It was a wonderful lunch. He talked of his family, his love of his work. That is what stood out. He loves doing what he does and regards all the people in his firm as his family. So it is all a benevolent, patriarchal affair. It was uplifting to be with him.

Dr. B: How did that happen?

Patient: Well I kept bumping into him at odd places, once in an elevator going to the doctors, another at my salon where it happens his wife goes, that kind of thing.

Dr. B: I see, serendipity.

Patient: I wonder why he called?

Dr. B: He appears to be a man of great maturity who has feelings, who follows his intuition and has noticed the odd by-chance encounters with you. There are people like that. They do not need analysis. One is lucky to meet them but one has to be ready when they come along.

Patient: I know I am not ready. It's that meltdown I have happen when I lose all I have learned and reduce myself to being a child. I do foolish things or I have done in the past. I hope I am through with that. That would be my child, the child part of me isn't it?

Dr. B: Yes, exactly. Your unconscious knows and describes it.

Patient: Why the guitar? I do not play.

Dr. B: It is a string instrument going back to the lyre which ancient musicians and poets might have played. Besides this, getting notes would be the comments from me in the past few weeks, especially since your meltdown during which time you were so disheartened and felt as limited and hopeless as a child without any possibility of ever being loved.

Patient: I agree with all that. It is true. It is exactly how I felt. It is a great weakness of mine. So what is the contract?

Dr. B: The contract is that which you made with the Divine before you incarnated. It is the most important contract one can make. It is odd how the law feels about contracts. Everything is so bound, so absolutely fastened down. You know in brief a contract is a contract and all that in contrast to one's contract with God which I believe nearly everyone has no idea what that is.

A few days later the patient brought the following dream.

DREAM ONE

I had a short dream. I had just recovered from a life threatening illness. I opened my eyes. I felt exhausted. I wondered was it me in bed? My eyes looked around. Was it my room? And it was my room, it was me. I could make out a figure sitting at the foot of my bed. The person was vague.

NOTE: During this session the patient recapitulated what we had talked about previously; that is her Achilles heel of needing so desperately to be loved that she would give up anything or do anything for that. She ruminated.

Patient: I thought of something about my ex-husband. It is a thought I never had before.

Dr. B: What was that?

Patient: It's true. He offered so much that would cater to any girl's heart, an exciting and glamorous life, and he was so attentive. But then this thought came to me when I also remembered times when the blush wore off and the arguments began. I knew beneath it all, all his being an "up" person, he was depressed and I felt comfortable with that. I knew how to live with that.

Dr. B: I think that is an important insight and probably the main attraction to your marrying him. You were comfortable in that position having practiced being there so much with your mother.

In addition, you have mentioned one cat in the past, like your feeling of having a constricted emotional life, and you remember as the analysis went on you had a dream of your having twelve cats. So we came to conclude that your emotional range had increased. I believe it important that you, at this early time, felt it wise to constrict yourself to one feeling for fear of being hurt. The hurt would be limited.

Patient: You know, I never thought of that and maybe you are right. It makes me think that the me who was so sick was my emotional self and that it was my intellectual self sitting at the edge of the bed.

Dr. B: I agree. Your intellectual self has never been sick. It has functioned beautifully for all these years. Now the question is to get these two together in parity. Both have to have an equal say in your life.

(A few days later)

Patient: I had this unusual dream. It was about you and me.

DREAM TWO

In the dream you and I had gone away for a weekend and we were dancing in this ballroom and it was a wonderful experience, only you and me. What was noticeable is that you were taller than I was (in reality I am shorter). I was looking up at you. One of those photographers who takes pictures at events was there but I waved him away.

Dr. B: Why?

Patient: I thought people would misunderstand since you and I were alone in this room.

I have to tell you that I had lunch with P.T. (mentioning a man whose family was well known in town). When I sat down I knew at once he was gay. Why didn't I know that the first time we had lunch? I listened and after a while. as he described his life situation and the complexities in it regarding his wife from whom he is separated and her insurance problem, I realized there was no problem. I asked him what was his mother like. He said, "She was crazy". I asked him, "And your wife". He said, "She's crazy". I said to him, "You are turning your life into a pretzel because you don't want to change anything". He said, "I have a lover, a man."

Dr. B: Well, that makes sense since women are crazy where else can he turn for solace and love and all the rest. But you understand that making an interpretation unsolicited is a dangerous thing. Because you see it doesn't mean he is ready to see it.

Patient: Yes, I saw it. I felt it at once. And I want to tell you I solved a problem at work where I was able to speak sensibly and quietly to some people with whom I was in negotiation. They responded in kind and gave into my request, so something has changed.

Dr. B: So what about this dancing alone?

Patient: I think it is the analysis. We are alone here. Maybe it is the progress of our work though I wonder at times do you and can you understand my feelings?

Dr. B: I think I do. It's the business of analysts to understand feelings and to understand whether you have them or do not have them or are they appropriate or inappropriate.

Patient: I think something terrible is going to happen to P.T. and R. (an old boyfriend who had brought her down emotionally. He was always referred to as signifying her Achilles heel, love at any price even her life. So in the end he represented her mother for whom she would have sacrificed the same, her life for love. It never came.)

Dr. B: So why not let the photographer shoot the picture?

Patient: I think because I am not really sure I have licked the problem. I think that is it. Maybe I have. I don't think I will do anything that dumb again, as I have done in the past, and the question is can I pick somebody who is not fundamentally ill? Can I stand that?

Dr. B: I think our emotional lives are dancing and mine may be a little larger than yours or our two souls and maybe mine is a little older than yours. In any case there is one other thing about these feelings of yours. One feeling at first and only that because there is a terrible fear that you may be hurt. So the message to yourself would be constrict yourself, make yourself as small as possible so when the hurt comes it can be confined. Except when the hurt comes and sinks the one feeling, you crumble.

Patient: I never thought of that. I can see the logic of it but I can have more. It seems that my ability to do what I have done points in that direction and I think I do have to be careful. Still looking at the work, your interpretations are brutal, true but brutal. At least I feel it that way.

Dr. B: One gets so much sugar in life, especially if you are a woman, that hearing the truth feels brutal. I wonder if someday people will say, "I heard the truth, I felt it in my guts, and it was delicious."

A week later the patient had this dream.

DREAM ONE

I was sorting things out and putting them in a box. There were many boxes and I had to put them in correctly. I was not getting it right.

ASSOCIATION

I do feel frustrated. My life seems all work and I feel I am suffering and I don't know what to do about it.

She continues the rest of the dream.

DREAM TWO

I was with J.G. at the ......hotel. We were in bed but we didn't plan to have sex. I say, "All right, we will just rub our bodies together. That feels good."

I see a mosquito buzzing around and I say to him, "Kill that mosquito. I am afraid it will bite me." And he does with his hand. He is not afraid.

Dr. Bail: Going back to the first part of the dream, how big is this construction?

Patient: Oh, it is very big and there seems to be a white wall behind it. It is maybe six feet wide and maybe six or seven feet long. I feel I am putting in things of different shapes but real objects and it is not coming out right.

Dr. Bail: It sounds like you are describing a mailroom.

Patient: Right, I didn't think of that. I am not happy and I feel off and that makes me feel unhappy. I know in my mind why I am here and what I have to do but I think all the time of the future. Then I get afraid. I will grow old this way and as an old lady, I will die with my thinking of the future and I won't have lived in the present where I should be.

Did I tell you I went to see a show with S? After a while it was fine. I was even silent for a while on the way. I didn't talk and it was OK not to have to think about what to say to keep the conversation going. S said, "It's all about attitude, life is. If you put your mind to it you can be happy and if you don't you will be unhappy." I thought, "Yes, why can't I do that?"

Dr. Bail: Do you believe that?

Patient: Yes, I thought it was easy and S seems always to be happy and in control.

Dr. Bail: You mean you spent years here and believe in what you used to be called eighty years ago the "Power of Positive Thinking"?

Patient: Oh, God, I knew I was off.

Dr. B: And what of your unconscious? Do you believe you have one and if not, what have you been doing here all this time?

Patient: You're right. I am confused. I knew I was off. I am trying to get my balance to my higher self. I thought about it.

Dr. B: I don't believe you can get to your higher self by sitting down and thinking or by opening closets or a dresser with drawers.

Patient: I had this other fragment of a dream that I want to talk about, that is about J.G. I didn't mention it before. He called during the week and wanted me to help him. I said I would try and I did ask around but there was no way I could. I even asked another client who had no interest in J.G.'s deal. He always calls when there is a problem, when he wants help. He didn't even say, "How are you? What's new in your life?" He is a user. I just realized that and I have known him for twenty years. He's a user.

Dr. B: He is the mosquito and you feel it would be in his best interest if he didn't suck your blood, or for that matter anyone's blood.

Patient: I didn't go so far as to call you-know-who.

Dr. B: That one is more than a bloodsucker. He eats you up piece by piece. It is all a matter of degree. What we have here with J.G. is a reminiscence of who ultimately represents your mother and we know that A was the person who you would die for if he said he loved you. He very much represented your mother. What's important here is if even a mosquito bites you and sucks your blood it arouses the original trauma, the fetal big bang. After that no one feels integral. There is always a feeling that something is wrong.

Patient: As you talk I suddenly felt the change inside me as if something straightened out in me, got everything in the right boxes. But you know about S. We have talked and I have told him about my work and he listened and asked questions. He was wonderful and I had a very good time.

The trouble is I am having trouble having a good time as if I don't deserve to be happy or engaged with a friend.

Dr. B: I agree that is hard for you and we talked about your friend before. It seems he was particularly lucky in life. It seems he was not greatly damaged so he does have the feeling that his conscious mind controls his life although it does not. There is a whole unconscious world in him about which he knows nothing and that is all right for him.

Patient: I had one more dream. I know we're almost out of time.

Dr. B: Yes, but let's hear it and we can deal with it the next time if you want.

DREAM THREE

I was in a competition and I was wondering whether I would win.

Patient: That's all I have.

Dr. B: Ok, until next time.

****************************************************************

The patient arrived next time and said she had two dreams.

DREAM ONE

She was going to an event, a dance, something like that. She told her escort, "Put this gun in your waistband. You won't use it but people will be afraid. I have emptied it of bullets."

ASSOCIATION

I think the man is you.

The patient continues with a second dream.

DREAM TWO

I was in a Temple and the Rabbi asked me to come to services next week. I said I could not do it. "Then the week after," he said. I said, "I can't. I am going to a life story seminar which I need to hear in regard to my work."

The patient continued.

Patient: Well, I don't have a gun but it was a large gun with a flat handle. You see them in the movies. I know you don't like fighting or violence but that's what I did.

Silence

Patient: It's funny. I had a massage and the person, Jerry, who I like very much told me she went back to an old lover who gave her a lot of grief years ago. She's a lesbian and is living with a woman with whom she is very happy. Yet she felt obliged to go back and now it is all a mess.

And in the same vein, my assistant is thinking of going back to an old boyfriend after they had a terrible fight and she endured a lot of pain. Now after a long time she is thinking of seeing this man again.

I see this happen everywhere in my life. Before I thought it was only me that did things like that. I know what that is about so I told Mary it was her imprint about which, it being unconscious, she knows nothing except it is like the call of something long ago and looks like love until the illusion shatters and she is done in. You know there is a seminar being offered which does have to do with my work. It's as if God arranged for it to happen because I need the information for some clients of mine. They complimented me that no one they know explains things simply and better than me. I was pleased. This guy, whom I have known for years, never said that before.

Dr. B: And what of the event that you asked me to go to with your gun. I agreed the man was me. But why?

Patient: Oh, I recall when I was first seeing my nemesis, he invited me to a dance, a final of seminars he attended in life lessons. You know now that all those people were taught how to deal effectively with life. I refused to go at first and then at the last minute I changed my mind. "Cool," I thought, "Breaking free like that." I went and met him. Well, we know all about the rest of the story. You know it was Mary all over again and worse.

Dr. B: That kind of course, you know, doesn't allow there to be an unconscious. It doesn't exist in that venue. So there is the belief you can plot your life and control everything with superior intellectual reasoning. In the end it does really work because the unconscious is greater, deeper and stronger than the puny conscious mind. The unconscious can sneeze and blow all that intellectuality out of the water. One more thing going back, and your dream goes back a considerable time, to the feeling you had at the dance at that time. The feeling that you had me along with you to protect you but it was an illusion because then the pistol was truly unloaded.

Patient: I can't argue that and I am sure Mary wouldn't either. I am suddenly thinking of the movie I saw, gotten from Netflix, "The Misfits", with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. It seemed slow and dry. It did not hold my interest. There seemed to be no chemistry between them. I didn't finish the movie. It stopped and started. Too much used.

Dr. B: Do you know the circumstances of the movie? Do you know who Marilyn Monroe was married to?

Patient: No.

Dr. B: Not necessary but it might be useful to know something of Clark Gable's life and Marilyn Monroe's life at the time. I think it was his last movie and the marriage between Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, who wrote the script, was just about over too.

The movie has to do with the passing of a culture, something that didn't work anymore, "the West". "The Misfits" a title for our time as well. There are many things today that no longer fit. There are people by the hundreds that feel they do not fit (like you the other day) and relationships that do not fit.

Patient: No, I don't know anything about that time nor too much about those people. Do you remember the scene with her playing the game, hitting the little rubber ball with a racquet, 200 times and people were betting. As she was doing this, a man came up behind her and puts his hand on her ass. Clark Gable gets him off her.

Dr. B: I think this scene shows something about her immaturity playing a small child's game but she's a mature, physically sexual woman and that is not a good fit. So, what about the Rabbi?

Patient: Oh, I think that's easy. The Temple and its sermons don't help me. I wonder if they help anyone. I would rather go to the life story seminar. I think that is the analysis. Here is where I really hear and get the lessons of my early life and how absolutely important they are for my life, the decisions and especially the bad ones, I made later one. True.

Dr. B: I think about the dance in your dream and that which you give me an unloaded gun to show is like me showing the power of the unconscious. But why should people be afraid of that, the best friend a person can have? Imagine being able to access a storehouse of information that is in your corner and tells you the right thing to do. Why should there be a fight?

Patient: Because a person wants a piece of chocolate when they know they shouldn't eat it, a piece of cake when they know they shouldn't eat it. A person wants that boyfriend although you know you shouldn't and you've gotten a black eye because you do and then you do it again like I have and like so many people do.

Dr. B: So where is the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious? The unconscious doesn't fight. It tells the truth. What you are talking about is the egoism or narcissism of the personality that wants what it wants and thinks they can do whatever and get away with anything. That is what narcissism wants, and there are other technical names for it but it is not really important here. So finally there is a pitting of egoism against the unconscious and by in large people are afraid wrongly of their unconscious. It seems that people are completely confused about their direction, about what is true North and what is South.

COMMENTARY

With the Hubble telescope relaying information that the universe was expanding and quickly so, a fact proven by the French mathematician, LeMaitre, man made a giant leap about his knowledge of the universe. There was finally no doubt among all the scientists that there was a big bang 13.7 billion years ago and, from a particle the size of an atom, we have the universe as we know it today.

We all love and cling to our beliefs, right or wrong. Because a belief is wrong does not necessarily lead one to giving it up.

Einstein found it hard to give up his belief that the universe always existed and always would. That belief denied a beginning, but there was a beginning and Einstein reluctantly accepted that fact – the truth of it.

There used to be the quaint notion that there was only our galaxy and all the elements found in it. Scientists are cautious and imagination is reined in by deep unconscious fears.

Today, with our expanding knowledge, scientists have had to revise their opinions about nearly everything. Today we know there is more than one galaxy. There are hundreds and there is evermore to know, like about the mystery of dark matter and dark energy. These came into existence almost immediately after the big bang. Today it is a strongly held belief that dark matter comprises most of the universe and that it is the matrix of the universe. Scientists know little about it nor have they any method so far of ascertaining more.

It is my conviction that scientific evolution follows on the evolution of man's consciousness. In that respect we are lagging behind badly because the means to evolve our consciousness is through the dark matter, which I call the unconscious. That can only be accessed deeply and thoroughly by dreams and their correct interpretation.

I have every reason to believe that when mankind stops being afraid of it's unconscious and comes to realize what a great friend it is in personal life, as well as in the collective consciousness of six billion people, when that time comes there will be another invention, another telescope that will be able to penetrate the mysteries of dark matter whose vibrations are too high to ascertain and whole new knowledge will be made known to us about the cosmos. But all of that rests on the mass consciousness evolving.

There is an analogy I make that with every human being born to woman and man there is the occurrence of the big bang as I have outlined in my original essay, "The Mother's Signature". A shocking trauma occurs from which there are reverberations in the psychic that go on and on until the death of the individual.

Just as the ripples of the big bang in cosmology set off all kinds of phenomena, pretty well detailed in science books and journals by the experts in the field, the ripple effect of the individual trauma has little been studied in the systematic way with that event being the basis of the personality, the causal event that sets into action a variety of effects and reactions to those effects that later in life people use in conscious ways, and mostly in unconscious ways, to protect themselves from ever again being so traumatized. These are the so-called defense mechanisms all human beings use. They have been extensively written about in the various disorders of the personality. However they have not been seen in relation to the original fetal trauma of a human being.

I have written in some detail a series of dreams of this brave woman examining the psychologically events that occurred in the light of her conscious life, her job, her relationships. This is one person where one can see how complex a series of further complexities ensue, again much like the ripples, the consequences of the big bang, and the trauma in all sequencing events. Imagine six billion people on earth.

I think it is important to note the occurrence of the trauma with these specifics following the person's life emotionally and physically. What is important is that her recovery was quick, several weeks, whereas before the process would have taken several months. This indicates a healthier foundation, a healthier ego, that can process information more quickly and use it - all of this coming finally to her seeing the repetition in herself and in people around her that keep flying like the moths to the flame, to their deaths emotionally.

In these dreams I can say I have put forward the nucleus of all the novels, the plays, the operas, the poems written that cause us to feel with the author, playwrights, and composers the range of all feelings that human beings can possibly have.

I have read somewhere that in essence there are only seven plots and any work of art can be put into one of these seven. I do not doubt that, only I would say that any one story, any unique story, may utilize any of the seven story lines but with the tributaries and capillaries that make it unique for that person. It is this uniqueness that compels our interest.

Other stories, like sci-fi and horror stories, can be traced to the early fetal and infantile experience - inchoate, unknown and later, if one has the inclination and talent, puts this story into being. The fact that so many people like horror stories attest to the great amount of trauma there is in these early times of life. We are all interested in our trauma, but not first hand it seems, but once removed.

As I have said on the onset of this section, her fear of the one good friend we have delays her use of it. But one has to understand that the unconscious appears frightful because it has been shut out, betrayed, diminished, demonized, and slandered constantly by mankind. People of education and influence have given it a bad press. They all write out of their ignorance and fear. It is time to remove the lid of the sarcophagus, where it has been held prisoner for eons (see "Risk The Ocean"). All of mankind needs to do that now.

CONCLUSION

When one has been so traumatized there is a great sadness, a great difficulty in life. Whether alone or with a husband or wife or with children, there is another thing that has to be done which is the hardest for any human being to do when hurt to the quick, that is to forgive. Yet it is essential if one is to have any life worth having and the freedom to love and the ability to receive love when it is offered. The template for this almost unbridgeable feeling is that of the Christ story. Christ in the midst of his agony said, "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do." The mothers and the others who do harm also do not know what they do.

ON FORGIVENESS

The essence of forgiveness brings people into a strong pattern of pain. In order to truly have the quality of forgiveness, the freedom, the ability to love once again, one must call on the power of acceptance. One must accept realities of the interaction that even the imprint of the Mother is part of the greater plan; if one will come to acceptance, they will heal and that will be the ultimate forgiveness. They will accept that of the parenting of themselves within the Divine right order. They will accept the unconscious pain that they are experiencing in Divine right order. In this acceptance they will heal and clear the pain.

February 2009