The history and information about Dr. D, whose dream will be presented here, can be found in the essays "Why Dr. Dombrowski Doesn’t have a Life,” (2005) "The Prodigal Son, Mankind and The Eternal Return,” (2008) which appear on my web site: holisticpsychoanalysis.com. Further information can be found in Chapter 7, Case 2., (Dr. D.) of the book, The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams (2007), pgs. 71-78.

Dr. D’s Session

Patient: I want to tell you this dream I had last week. I have been waiting.

Dr. B: OK

Dream:

I was on a boat about 30 to 40 feet at the prow and I was trying to get hold of the rope that was in front of the boat and a little to the left. I tried to catch hold of it. I was careful for I did not want to fall overboard. I made several attempts and failed.

Then a man behind me, maybe the captain, with a long pole with a hook on it extended the pole and pulled the rope in to me. I could see it was a substantial rope, thick with six strands interwoven, the kind you put around the “cleat". I think the man behind me was you.

Associations:

Dr. B: What do you think was so important about the dream that you held onto it from last week?

Patient: First I want to say that I paid my final payment to the attorney of the plaintiffs in my lawsuit $56,000. It was a great relief. You know I was afraid that my group (ER doctor group) would not earn enough for me to receive the money I needed. I was in great anxiety because if I could not make this final payment on time, I would be fined and compelled to pay $156,000. That would ruin the next 3 years of my life.

(He continued.)

Yesterday the check came and it was enough. I went immediately to make a cashier's check and brought it to the attorney. I could not trust anyone to do it.

Dr. B: So this is a day you might want to celebrate and mark down for remembrance.

Patient: I feel so wonderful. I am just about free. Just a few months of alimony and then I have no more monetary obligations. That will be the last of my bad judgment repercussion and unwillingness to change for a long time.

Dr. B: Yes, we both know the long history as well as that of the lawsuit. It seems you have really come around. Let me ask you where did this rope start? After all ropes can't just hang from the sky.

Patient: I don't know. I looked up but I couldn't see but the rope was real. I felt it in my hands and I counted six strands, two of which were inert but four had a tingle of electricity coming from them but not enough to cause any burns. I could not understand that at all.

Anyway I feel great. Now I want to begin to really live and do all the things I wanted.

Dr. B: Like?

Patient: I want to travel. I want time to write my book. That's important to me. I want to develop my photography. You know I already have a gallery that has sold my pictures and I would like to date some beautiful women.

Dr. B: I don't see any objections to any of these ambitions. Certainly you are free to do any and all of them. As for the women, as long as you are not drawn in by what you were before.

Patient: Well, I have the analysis and my dreams. I am sure they will tell me and this time I will listen. But what do the six strands mean?

Interpretation:

Dr. B: I think the six represents the idea of balanced perception -- no misinterpretation of reality especially with women. Two represents being in touch with your unconscious so it is good you are holding on to the rope. As for the four that are tingling, that represents the task of your worldly development to a point at which you are master over the world you inhabit. So you can have and exercise balanced perception and action.

Finally it is important to acknowledge that God threw you a lifeline, saw to it that you got enough money to discharge your debt. I think it is a reward for the great love you have for your brother and sister to bring them to awareness and to not be contaminated by the pain of your mother and father who did not know what to do with that pain and visited it upon their children.

COMMENTARY

I think this dream and events are transparent. The clarity of presentation, the simplicity is remarkable. In addition I believe that love such as this man has shown to the two siblings that he particularly loved can be the driving force not only in him but behind mankind's striving to come to a better, more equitable solution for everyone, to a world that is not filled with endless wars, endless preparations for war, the endless cruelty practiced today as if thousands of years have not passed.

We have skyscrapers and jet aircraft. The ancients had the pyramids, the unparalleled art of the Greeks and Romans, and the wonders of Babylon and Syria. The Chinese in the East were likewise much advanced in knowledge. But one thing has always been the same -- humanity for one another -- true love for each other, East and West. We fail to remember that we are all sisters and brothers.

Finally what are we being asked to do - abstracting the message of this dream? I believe it is asking us to remember. In our lives, from the beginning, we are asked to remember many things like who are our mothers and fathers and what your name is, where you live and when you have to go to potty. Later it becomes more complex as our lives become more complex and each of us can sit for a moment and think what do we have to remember.

The dream is asking something different from each of us and that is to remember our unconscious and our dreams in that unconscious.

By the time we are adults, we take for granted our bodies and bodily functions. We hardly think of the wonders of how our bodies and all contained work effortlessly without thinking. Even less do we think of the structure of the mind and the fact that every human being has an unconscious and every dream in that space carries a message. It is my conviction that the original function of the dream was to keep in mind its connection to Source. Like everything in human hands that function got degraded and forgotten except for some exceptional men like Joseph in the bible, soothsayers, shamans who held positions of power in their societies.

If I am correct then the collective consciousness of the world has messages that will reconnect us with Source. We are being asked to remember the unconscious, the dream and our true connectedness. The patient’s dream shows us that the individual must hold the rope in his hand and when he does, his unconscious is intertwined with his conscious and recognizes that the whole is from Source.

Addendum

Upon hearing the dream, I did not wonder why it was so very clear to me. However, in order to fulfill the criteria of true analytic procedure, my ruminations are not so relevant as those of the patient. Accordingly I asked the patient what would have brought about a dream of this sort.

He answered at once. He was working in the ER of a small town in Maine and in his spare time he was writing his book. Suddenly it came to him, he could in a little while actually get a house here in Maine. He loves the weather, especially the four seasons. Having been raised in the Northeast where such seasons exist and this thought followed another. They liked him at this hospital and respected him and wanted him. Soon he thought it had been over a year since he had had a temper tantrum. Those episodes never profited him. Indeed it took time to repair the damage. This was followed by the fact that his debts would only last a few months more after which his cash flow would be positive and that was followed by his finding himself a person of interest on a dating site. He had already gone on a few dates. Best of all, the only brother living that he loved had gone back into therapy, which the patient felt was life-saving for this brother. Suddenly he cried, "All because of this therapy, your new ideas, your work.”

I said, "And yours,” for I know of the cruel times you had on the way to now.

July 2008