Pavor Nocturnus or Night Terrors Revisted
2006

The More Things Change
2006

MANKIND: FOR WHOM
THE TRUTH TOLLS

by Bernard W. Bail, M.D.

Nothing is revered by the masses as much as science because it purports to tell the truth.  This truth is evidenced by numbers or mathematical formulae, about which no one can really argue.  Fellow scientists can duplicate the mathematical steps and come out with the same answer as it concerns the particular theoretical problem.

This comprises science: a theory and the application of numbers or formulae that the lay public usually finds incomprehensible but which explains the theory and can be duplicated by fellow scientists.  This is simply how hard science works.  Once a theory is confirmed, there is no quarrel with it and there is acceptance of it by all members of the scientific community unless it is displaced with another more complete theory and proof that explains that particular problem better.

There used to be a controversy about the universe in which people like Einstein held the view that the universe is eternal, that it is and always was. Many scientists could believe that.  Later, Hubble came along and with his telescope.  He posited that the universe was expanding, incontrovertibly.  This meant the universe must have come from a smaller state some time in the past.

The French mathematician, LeMaitre, came along at this time and provided the theoretical proof that the universe was once a tiny ball, a speck, and thus originated the big bag theory of creation.  Now it is pretty much accepted. Work in the science of exploration of our universe holds this to be true -- an event that occurred some fourteen and one-half billion years ago (though I have read different accounts which put the big bang at eighteen billion years ago).  For the general public it does not make a difference. I could recount the discovery by Watson and Crick for the exact structure of DNA.  Their published discovery read some seven or eight pages.  Likewise, Einstein's theory of E-MC squared, was some eight pages.  This is the simplicity and elegance of science: the fundamentals, once discovered, are simple.  Certainly DNA is simple enough to be taught to grade school students today. 

We have to consider that these discoveries that can change the world in certain ways are really unintelligible to the mass of mankind.  In the main, these issues do not change our lives.  We still get up and eat our breakfast, have our coffee and do our work and so on.  However, discoveries like DNA have led to genetic defects becoming more readily recognized.  This scientific endeavor was to end in the knowledge and correction of a vast number of genetic defects passed on to children by their mothers and fathers who, in turn, had them passed on by their parents and grandparents and so on for thousands of years.  These new discoveries do not bring disbelief or shock or anxiety for the individual imputes no malignant motive to the passage of such defects. 

What I have been talking about is scientific truth which, once ascertained, is usually accepted by all scientists.  Science and the work of further discovery goes on from there.  For thousands of years scientific truth, rooted in numbers and formulas, was felt to be a rock bottom truth. 

Science and Psychoanalysis

Let us now turn to psychoanalysis, that discipline which claims the mind to be the object of study, especially the unconscious mind.  In recent decades the unconscious has not entirely been the focus -- that is the deepening explorations of a dynamic unconscious as was originally discovered and explicated by Freud (1900).  He postulated that the unconscious can be ascertained through dreams and their interpretations -- therefore the saying that the royal road to the unconscious is by way of the dream.

However, from a hundred years or so ago, certain things happened.  It was ascertained that Freudian formulations of the personality and emotional disturbances did not answer many questions analysts began to have as they, in different parts of the world, practiced this art.  Today there are some four or five theories that hold the center of the psychoanalytic stage.  So far no theory can prove its preeminence, which makes the science of psychoanalysis not look like a science but a belief system.  This would be confirmed by adherents of each system -- adherents who were deeply ensconced in their beliefs in their particular system.  Thus, if people wish to choose, they are free to choose whichever belief system they want, which would be in accord with their particular personality, their education and degree of insight.  But being wedded to a belief system does not make it true.  Critics, if kind, can say just that: it is a belief system.  You can learn it and repeat its tenets.  If critics are nasty they can say with a degree of truth that it's a cult or a variety of cults, for there is no proof of reliability or of the truth in any of the currently existing theories as there is in hard science. 

Sad to say this would be correct.

At the last meeting in Berlin of the International Psychoanalytical Association, the president of the IPA said that the curriculum of most institutes is greatly similar to the one put forward one hundred years ago.  This is not an advertisement for the development of the analytic discipline.  In addition, three training models -- Freudian, Kleinian, and Self-psychology -- were validated by the IPA.  Adherents of one system are intensely combative and protective about their model in relation to the others.  This hardly sounds like science to me or to anyone.

It is a bit of a simplification for the great body of psychoanalysis whose authority resides in the IPA, to declare the validity of a plurality of training models.  I find it ironic that this so simulates the three great religions of the world, each of which considers its dogma as the way to the Godhead.

I think it is obvious that if there is one Source, there can only be one legitimate church.  It is not true that there are many paths to the one Source,  any more than it is true that there are many mathematical models to space flight.  I think the math to space travel is scientific and the countries that put machines and people into space use one mathematic.  There is not a Russian or an American or a Chinese mathematic.  Pluralism denotes dogma not science and it well may be that none of the three validated models accepted by the IPA - to maintain standards I suppose - will in the end be seen as the correct or scientific one.

There must be a staggering amount of privilege and power at the head of all three religions in order for none of them to give way to a universal church.  And perhaps the same might be said of the three validated models of psychoanalytic education.

To recap and to ask a question: is psychoanalysis ever to be a science or to be depicted as a science by the scientific community and the world at large.  If so, the theory of analysis would have to have the ability to be duplicated by others using the same methods which would insure them the same results.  In addition, it would be useful if parallel scientific discoveries made in other fields would confirm the theory that was proposed.  The theory advanced would have to be a bedrock theory analogous to a scientific discovery -- for example, the "big bang".  Thus, there would be a small entity which at one point burst and became the starting point for our internal universe -- much like the Watson and Crick's theory that the basic structure of DNA are the four nucleic acids. 

The theory and the method has to produce a result which needs to be truthful and no other answer can be substituted.  In science or math classes there is only one answer.  And further, a true theory in science has a predictability factor.  You have to be able to predict future phenomenon if such and such is true. The discovery of such a theory would be unlike any theory of today and would be scientific and best of all would be understandable by all the scientists and all the population the world over as well.

That theory would have a simplicity and evidence qualities of the laws of the universe as plain as "if you jump out the window you will certainly fall down" according to the laws of gravity.

I think the expression of my theory, as in the paper "The Mother's Signature”   (2001), is a theory truly fundamental, as basic as one can get at the current time.  Here is the theory for your review:

The Mother’s Signature

by Bernard W. Bail, M.D.

“For each thing manifests its mother, which thus gives the essence and the will to the form.” --from The Signature of All Things by Jacob Boehme1

All sciences strive to find the origin of the problem they’re investigating. We always turn to origins--it is in our nature. There is no doubt in my mind that with man’s very first breath he wondered about the origin of the world about him: the sun, moon, planets, oceans, mountains, trees, and meadows.  The when, how, why.  It is the ‘why’ that most stirs the imagination toward the inner world, evoking daunting possibilities of forces greater than man, than some men care to think.

No sooner was psychoanalysis discovered than the thrust of exploration ran progressively toward origins. In a little while the child came into view as a proper vehicle for investigation and study. Analysts examined and thought about infancy, just as the physical scientists have scraped away at the physical universe, picking and poking it in the incessant endeavor to discover the where, when, how, and why.

By now countless theories about mental functioning and personality development, and about childhood and infancy, have been set forth. Tools from many physical disciplines have been brought into the field of analysis, aiding us as we investigate the infant in all the physical and physiological ways possible. But, as analysts, we have to have faith in the tools of our profession. We must have the conviction of there being an unconscious and a conscious, and there being entities called dreams which can lead us to all the answers we want to know. If we pursue with purity the method of dream analysis discovered by Freud2, we find that the dream is the Rosetta stone of inner mental life--or so my experience has taught me.

My experience has also taught me that all emotional illness is based upon the relationship between mother and infant, from the moment of conception--and even before the infant is conceived, for the mother already has a plan, albeit unconscious, that she will execute upon her future child. This is beyond the conscious fantasies she may harbor, the way all of us harbor dreams of the future. What the unsuspecting woman does not know is that the plan was already executed upon her. She has no other choice than to pass it on to her children. This process has such fixity that one may say it has a genetic quality. One can do nothing about it psychologically. Even so, I have found that analyzing even that which appears to be instinctual will yield to psychoanalytic exploration.

Since all analysts begin learning their profession by dealing with the adult, there is often a reluctance and fear on the student’s part in dealing with children, unless one is doing a child analytic course.  Specialization in this area requires additional years of training, and few analysts are willing to spend the time in this direction.  I do not think specialization is necessary, however, for in view of my work I have come to the conclusion that there is no such entity as adult analysis.

The adult of the patient before us does not need analyzing. He can dress himself, drive a car, shop for food, do work, and so on.  Wherever adult function is impaired, there infantile trauma has been. Pathological mechanisms rush to the wounded site the way leukocytes rush to a wound. Only we do not see the blood, the swelling, or the heat, for this process all takes place in the mind--which is so vast as to be capable of containing and even concealing much trauma and pathology. Of course, if the damage is too great symptoms will emerge that the defense mechanisms no longer can contain. All emotional illness has its origin in infancy, and all illnesses can be traced to the infant’s relationship with first the mother and then the other members of the family.

It follows then that there is no such thing as adult analysis, for adult qualities and functions do not need analysis in the main. One is simply, and constantly, analyzing the infant in the adult--though there is no doubt that analyzing infantile expressions of pathology in the person will always improve adult functioning. To talk about these issues intellectually with the patient is of no use, for only when the infantile core, which is the emotional core, is available can something be done through interpretations.

As a matter of survival, all infants have to insure that their mothers will live. It has become clearer and clearer to me that babies’ minds have to split almost at birth, maybe even before, in order to accommodate a mother who is beset by emotional disturbances—and, of course, who amongst us is not beset by emotional disturbances. To ensure the survival of the mother the infant has to become his mother. Then the infant knows that he will live. All of this is unconscious in the baby’s mind and though the infant feels that a big problem has been solved, which it has not been, the infant will indeed live. The consequences that follow will trail the infant all the rest of its life, for he will have a life-long identification of being his mother. The mind will be split, and the entity s/he was supposed to be will never come into existence.

If there is not too much damage in early infantile life, one can live out one’s life relatively well or less well, depending on the vicissitudes given one. However, when the damage is too great; the infant is forced to give up his own pristine potential self in order to survive. The task of analysis is for us to reach that well defended and often hidden part and begin to set it free. This is not easily done. The patient himself will resist the analysis in a myriad of ways. And the sicker the patient is--that is, the greater the split--the greater the identification with the mother will be. It is sometimes so great that the patient is, for all practical purposes, his mother, and there is no patient.

Some 10 to 15 years ago I was analyzing a young woman who was very constricted, a constriction that covered a very infantile personality--all of which was hidden by an organized, professional stance. Professions hide much, as we all know. This woman delivered a baby in the course of her analysis, and it was a terrifying experience for her. So much so that she returned to the analysis within one week, driven by her anxiety. She walked into my office with a tiny baby in her arms. She sat on the couch, holding the baby awkwardly and away from her body. It looked as if she were holding something dangerous, something she needed to rid herself of immediately. The baby cried loudly, incessantly. I felt like getting up and taking the baby myself, but I did not. The patient began telling me her dream amid the squalling noises of the infant, who was lying now with her back arched. I listened to the material, trying to concentrate on the patient’s words.

When I felt I understood the dream in relation to the patient’s associations, I made an interpretation. The dream and interpretation are as follows:

 “I had to do something and as time went by I became more and more frantic for I could not find out what it was I had to do and I thought if I did not, something terrible would happen to me.  I wake up, my heart beating fast, sweating.”  

I said to this woman, as she held her day’s old infant in her hands, that what she didn’t know how to do was to be a mother and I asked her to look at how she was holding her child, almost at arms length.  On hearing her comments, she folded the baby into the crook of her arm, the baby quieted down and fell asleep.

 To my surprise, as soon as I spoke the baby relaxed and fell into a deep sleep.  Her red face lost its redness and became pink. Then the patient relaxed and leaned against the wall. This happened regularly for the next six months, without fail. Every interpretation quieted the baby and when she relaxed the mother did as well. That was the beginning of my understanding that talking to the mother was talking to the baby. There seemed to be no barrier between the two. It was a matter of two hearts in consonance--with one mind, the mother’s. Later other young women analysands brought their babies, often for lack of a babysitter, and the same thing would occur. Even with older children, interpretations made to the mother always affected and quieted the child.

You see, I was to discover that the baby has been imprinted with the mother, imprinted in the way it is to live and to die. We are all imprinted in these early moments and hours of life. Konrad Lorenz found this to be true of birds and other species, and I say it is true of mankind as well. The principle is the same. It is simply the law of economy at work.  We hide our imprinting by our brains, by our intelligence, but a deep analysis uncovers surely and slowly beyond our technical knowledge and our cleverness the simple fact of our being imprinted. All things in the world, all creatures, have their signature. What is DNA except an imprinting device--so simple, but capable of great diversity? The fact that we are imprinted is not to be scorned or rejected or fought against. It is the nature of being, and we take our place in the universe as one of the creatures with the greatest potentiality for evolution--that is, if we can get past an imprinting that leaves us crippled, passive, frustrated, and bent on self-destruction.

Now it is clear that every person’s problem in life is not the Oedipal struggle. The problem is in how to find the spark of self that one was supposed to be as one came into existence, and the central issue is how to become oneself, and break free of the mother’s imprint. It is over this issue that the patient puts up the greatest struggle. Confronting this fundamental conflict is the most frightening task for the patient and for every human being. 

Cure can only come about when there is a transformation. The patient has to repudiate his mother – now a maternal imprint3 within him -- not by saying “I let you go,” but by an emotional letting go, which may take a very long time. The patient has to give up everything he has known from birth, renouncing the imprints of the mother and the father, losing all landmarks. It is only through a renunciation of the false self that a true transformation ensues. Short of this, if the choice is made by the patient not to sail on this journey, a fundamental change, a true transformation, will not be made. Only when there is evidence in dreams that the patient is fighting for himself, only when that tiny hidden spark slowly reveals itself, can we be sure of there being a transformation and a cure.

When a genius speaks I have always taken it seriously. I listen with devotion and awe, for these people are imbued with a touch of what I must call the “”--in the way we regard the great composers, scientists, artists who have had that incomparable vision. I think Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian, was on the mark when he wrote that civilization is the history of those few geniuses whose discoveries have enlightened mankind, pushing back the powerful envelope of darkness that constantly threatens to enclose us. Momentous discoveries have not only brought illumination to man, they have given us hope; they have brought hope of there being a unity in all phenomena, animate and inanimate, contained in the world and in the universe.

When Freud stated he was the most fortunate of men to be given the secret to the interpretation of dreams, he was absolutely right. He was given this opportunity and his genius seized it for he knew, beyond all, that it held the key to much of mankind. My work would say that dreams hold possibilities that not even Freud wrote of, though we cannot say what he might have thought or suspected. I understand dreams are out of fashion, which is paradoxical, for they represent messages from the unconscious and analysis is the one discipline out of all the scientific disciplines that knows how to broach this leviathan.  Without dreams and their understanding there can be no analysis, and we are flung back a hundred years to the darkness from which Freud rescued us with his greatest work, The Interpretation of Dreams.

The unconscious may contain many things that we so far do not know about. But one thing it does contain without a doubt is the record of one’s life from the origins of that life-indeed, even to the formation of that life, egg and sperm. If one listens properly, these origins can all be recovered. When a patient tells us a dream, he is tugging at our sleeve, begging us to hear him out--to understand his infantile fears and trauma, the imprint that clouds and conceals his pristine self. In that room and on that couch he is saying he wants to be aware of his life, to become open to the secrets of his unconscious. He comes, we know, because he suffers. He comes because he does not want anymore to react to his life. He wants to be in his life. When he opens up the treasure of his unconscious, he will become greater than what he thought he was before, back when he was indrawn, constricted, and wearing all the masks that life has fashioned for us - masks that cost us our truthfulness, our simplicity, our essential selves.

The work of listening to dreams is very difficult, for every dream carries with it a charge of toxins that make us weary. It is not easy to bear the confusion, the disjoint of the communication--that is, it is not easy to bear the transference and the hatred that comes with this job. The participants also must have great endurance, and the truth will prevail only if the patient allows it to, for the patient always has a choice about how he wishes to live his life.  The reward for the patient is immeasurable: freedom in letting go of the toxic material that has been lying in his mind, slowly paralyzing him out of his own life. It is this relief that gives the patient the impetus to go deeper, to trust more, to become as a child again and take the hand of the guide. Here all the strength, the skill and the experience the analyst can muster are important to hew to the truth of the dream, for the truth will be contained within it.  It is all an analyst can do. It is the best an analyst can do.

Copyright. Bernard W. Bail, M.D. 2001

(WB 2005)

Dreams and the Larger Societal Truths

Now I wish to present two dreams of patients that are not strictly about them or their psychopathology but an expression of a larger societal truth that I have heard from other patients as well.  It is a truth that most of mankind can think about and readily agree.  Not only is the particular city mentioned, that is New York, dark and gray, but it would seem the world is that way as well, at least in Africa and Asia.

2007, Dec 28
Dream:

                   
      Living in a communal building in NYC, some of us go to a hospital to visit doctors.  One of us, a young woman, comes along to take care of a sick young man.  In the hospital, the young woman becomes a nurse.  
    A director making a movie in the hospital sees her and casts her as a nurse in his movie.  She plays nurse so well that she becomes a star.
    When an actor playing a sick man is poor in his role, the young woman star insists that she, the director, and film crew return to the real hospital and employ her friend, the sick young man, as the sick man in the movie.
    The director agrees because his new star is sending out “good vibes.”
    They return to the hospital in a presidential motorcade, the star waving to the crowds.
    They film in the sick young man’s hospital room.  He protests, “Leave me alone.  I don’t like these bright lights.  I want to stay in the dark.”
    A woman from our building visiting the hospital too is Hannah, age 89.  In the corridor, my friend Arlene and I pass a doctor’s open door, hear him tell Hannah,  “Now’s the time for heavy-duty Western surgery.  Don’t go left on us.”  Walking down the corridor with us, Hannah doesn’t know we overheard the doctor, and doesn’t tell us she’s in a dangerous place medically.  Evidently she’s decided it’s time to die.  She announces, “I’d rather remain in the dark -- in a hospital room, or in a room in our building.”
    In our building, there’s little space.  The beds touch, head to foot, in a circle.  It feels like a hospital here too, and crowded.  Hannah tells people she wants to die.  Most of the others here want to die too.  I don’t like feeling crowded.  I need more space, and to be outside.
    Hannah – or the young woman – walks out into the narrow shadowed city garden.  At the back of it are deer and tall trees.  “What’re you doing out there?” a hospital authority calls from the door.  “It’s ok,” Hannah – or the young woman -- calls back,  “I’m just playing my part,” or  “I’m dying anyway.”

Associations:

Dr B; Who’s Hannah?

Me:  An old and respected teacher..  Clear-minded friend.  Formerly a psychotherapist.  We had a date the other day to meet at a lecture.  She never showed up, spaced it out.  She did that six months ago too, a sign to me that –

Dr. B: She’s on her way out?

Me: At least that she’s beginning to lose control of her mind.

Dr. B: What does the doctor say in the dream?  About going to the left.

Me: It’s a military expression in French my father used.  “Passing your weapon to the left” means “to die.”  So in the dream I guess it means both going to the left politically, and “to die.”  The day before this dream, my friend Arlene and I visited another friend, the magnificent Candice, for lunch. Candice has been seriously ill for years but it hasn’t stopped her reading her poetry around the world.  She told us the story of how recently at a dinner she livened up a banker by “sending out good vibes.”  Now she has to stay in bed.  When we said goodbye, Candice and I held each other’s faces, and she gave me a long look of pure love.  I know she felt, as I did, that it might be the last time.

Dr B: How old is Candice?

Me: 87.  Also, I talked on the phone with an old friend, an actress named Rachel.  At 98, she forces herself to maintain a strict discipline, to go for her walk every day no matter how cold it is.  She says she’s had it.

Dr. B: She wants to die?

Me: Yes.  But she says it with much life force.  “All my contemporaries are dead,” she tells me, “and I refuse to phone younger friends because they still lead active lives, and I don’t want to impose on them.”  People do phone her and visit – because Rachel is charming, compassionate, and great company – but there are whole days when she doesn’t speak to a soul.  She suffers from loneliness.  

Dr. B:  People should visit her more and phone.

Me:  She says she feels ambivalent now when people do come over.  She loves it but tires easily and doesn’t want to say so for fear they’ll start treating her with kid gloves.

Dr. B:  At her age, she can say anything she likes to anyone.

Me:  What can be done to help her?

Dr. B:  Let’s send her our blessings.  Who’s the young woman in the dream?

Me:  At Arlene’s Christmas party, I talked for a while with Arlene’s young sister-in-law, Sherry – born in Africa, lives in New Jersey with her computer-programmer husband, and works for a do-good organization.  Sherry is idealistic, caring, enthusiastic about her work, but she’s also young and sees the world a little abstractly.

Dr. B: She’s naive?

Me: Yes, you could say that.  I think the dream is about New York at Christmas – how crowded it felt to me there, and dark.  Maybe I’m thinking that because of the solstice.  I had an ok Christmas – parties, gifts, friends -- but I didn’t have what I’d call a good time.

Dr. B: Does anyone?

Me:  Probably not.  Probably we're just trying to cheer ourselves up about the darkening of the light.  I had a terrible time driving to the city down the Taconic Parkway during a rain storm.  Drivers were driving slowly, slowly, with their blinkers on.  No-one could see anything.  Then in the city the weather was deceptively mild.  New York felt at times like a hospital.  People speak of the buildings they live in as home, but those towers crowded with apartments are in a way like hospitals too.  All over Manhattan more and more expensive buildings are being constructed, each with hundreds of glass-walled apartments.  I have a friend, Jerome – I think of him as the sick young man in the dream, though Jerome isn’t sick or young or poor – who was offered a lot of money for his town house, so he sold it, and went on a business trip to Tokyo.  When he came back, the high-priced movers he’d hired had moved him into an apartment he’d rented on the 40th floor of a new glass building.  I’d hate living up there, so far from the ground.  Of course, Jerome couldn’t find his things because he didn’t know where the movers had put them.

Dr. B:  You see Jerome as sick to his soul.

Me:  If he is, he doesn’t know it. You can’t tell him.  He doesn’t want to know.

Dr. B: He wants to remain in the dark.

Me: The young sick man in the dream says the bright light they’re using for filming hurts his eyes.  It was poignant in New York. So many friends sick in one way or another, and they don’t want to know anything about it.  They pretend they’re not falling apart physically, or that their minds aren’t stuck, and they tacitly demand you do the same. They claim everything’s wonderful.  How could it not be?  The props and costumes of their lives are so elegant.  Merry Christmas.

Dr. B: Tell me about the young woman in the dream.  She becomes a nurse, and then...

Me: She becomes an actress who plays a nurse -- a star.

Dr. B: And the motorcade?

Me:  It’s a presidential motorcade.  Celebrity – she’s achieved great celebrity. I associate the motorcade with Hillary Clinton.  A director friend was in Iowa visiting family for Christmas.  The caucuses were going on so she went to several and saw candidates close up.  She was impressed with Hillary Clinton.  She said Clinton seemed together, with thoughtful opinions, and presence.  Of course my friend and I are theater people.  I too noticed Clinton allows herself to breathe between sentences.  She allows her feelings to show.

Dr. B: You think Hillary Clinton has feelings?

Me (laughing):  She acts like she does.

Dr. B: Yes, acts.  She’s a good actress maybe.  But does she have feelings really?

Me: I don't know.

Dr. Bail:  Look what your dream is saying.  The young woman becomes a star not because she’s a nurse --

Me: –  but because she acts like a nurse.  That’s interesting.  Sherry thinks abstractly, naively...

Dr. B: All the candidates are acting.  They speak as if they want to help the poor, the sick, the masses, but you and I know who they get their money from, who supports them, and to whom is their allegiance.

Me: Corporations, established power.

Dr. B:  Of course, and it’s always been like that.  It’s nothing new.  The motives of politicians aren’t new.  But do you think people caucusing in Iowa know it?  Do you think most people in the world know it?   

Me: No.

Interpretation:

Dr. B:  I think your dream is channeling the world, or at least America.

Me:   And sick people want to stay in the dark...

Dr. B:  Of course they do.  It’s all in your dream, an important dream about America.

Me:  I’ve been thinking about how to bring dreams into the world as art.  I think it must be done with rigorous attention -- as you work as an analyst –making things more understandable, logical..  Just skillfully delineate the dream in all its detail, and let the dream be the message.
 

Dream of early morning of 1/21/08

Dream:

I am in some kind of large industrial plant or facility.  It is about 200 feet long by about 60 feet wide and the ceiling is peaked with visible wood planks on a large wood beam frame.  The apex of the ceiling is about 60 feet off the ground.  I see a truck with large turkeys in the back, still alive, shivering and packed in ice.  There is also a large hog, also alive and packed in ice, in the back of the same truck and also shivering.  I think to myself “how cruel, to keep these poor animals suffering like this for so long, and the only release from their suffering will be death”, since I understood that these animals were awaiting slaughter at this facility.  I then saw another truck with ostriches packed tightly in the back, also destined for slaughter.  I wanted to try to save some of these unfortunate animals but then I thought that there was no way I could do it, since the owners or managers of the plant would detect the attempt very quickly and end it, and would almost certainly kill me.

I then found myself on the next higher level of the same plant, an area about as large but which had gigantic earth moving machines with what appeared to be huge metal plows mounted on their front ends, moving rapidly up and down the large central open space.   The drivers of the machines, seated very high off the ground, were either unable to see me or, if they could see me, not caring that they were putting my life in grave jeopardy, since I had to run very quickly and hide in the very small marginal spaces not plowed by these huge machines to avoid being run over.  I realized that I had to get out of that large room if I wanted to survive.  Somehow, I got out through a gap between the large wood beams framing the outer walls and the floor, under the eaves and dropped down about 8 feet to a flat surface.  I then noticed that the surface I was on was moving and then realized I was on a ship, about 200 feet long, moving slowly out of the inner part of a large harbor toward the open ocean.  I felt that this was either New York or Philadelphia harbor and that the ship was moving toward the Atlantic Ocean.  I looked around and saw some crew members who seemed to be seasoned seamen and asked them what ship I was on and where it was going.  They said I would have to talk to the captain.  I found him on the bridge toward the rear of the ship.  He was an older gentleman with a beard, wearing a blue captain’s uniform and blue captain’s cap.  He was sitting, and half reclining on a short flight of steps going from the main deck up to the bridge.  I was surprised at the fact that he started asking me many questions about me and my life.  I felt surprised and flattered that he would be interested in me enough to ask these questions.

Interpretation:

Dr. Bail stated that in the first part of the dream, the turkeys, hog and ostriches being so badly treated stood for my view of many of the world’s inhabitants, being badly treated by those in power.  On a more ‘micro’ level, I think the animals stand for my impressions of many of the individuals I have come across in my professional life (patients, coworkers) and personal life (acquaintances, family members), victimized by their bad maternal imprints.  I think my choice of animals is also significant in that it says something of my view of the way many people deal with the unconscious knowledge of their bad imprints: turkeys (escape into stupidity and resulting ignorance), ostriches (heads in the sand, purposely ‘looking the other way’) and the hog (escape into excess in food, sex, accumulation of goods, and the like).  My wanting to help them and realizing that is not possible is a way of talking about my internal pain, until recently mostly unconscious, when I observe the suffering of others at close range and realize how unable I am to help them. Dr. Bail said it was significant since I had not exhibited this kind of feeling regarding the suffering of others before. The giant machines and their unseen drivers sitting way up high refer both to my internal parents (still trying to kill me) and to the powerful of this world and their lack of concern for the fact that their actions result in the suffering and deaths of millions.  Certainly it is a good sign that in the dream I escape them.  Both  Dr. Bail and I felt that the boat stands for my analysis and that the captain was Dr. Bail.  Significantly, it is the vehicle of my escape from the murderous machines.  The significance of Philadelphia may be, as I suggested, connected with the fact that, thanks to reading Dr. Bail’s biographical book, “Irmgard’s Flute”, I know that he is a native of that city or, as Dr. Bail, suggested, it be related to the significance of Philadelphia in the early history of this country (founding fathers, Declaration of Independence, etc.). The ocean toward which the ship is headed, Dr. Bail pointed out, was the ‘ocean of consciousness’.

Discussion:

Just a word about these two dreams.[i]  Each person might be diagnosed as a narcissistic personality.  Each person has had a considerable amount of analysis; however, I feel that these dreams were so obviously paying attention to the current state of humanity that I decided to present them.

Each person has written their account of the session and it would be apparent to analysts everywhere that a great deal more interchange happened that was not recorded and interpretations of the patients’ internal worlds that were not presented.  However, the essence of the material was captured. 

In the first dream, it is further important to note that the people chosen to exhibit the manifest content of the dreams portrayed a state of depression and fatigue and the wish to maintain a denial of the reality of the city of New York representing the world.  Above all there is the clear intention and wish to die and to be over the pain of living.

The second dream, if anything, presents the people of the world as turkeys and catches the spirit of Kierkegaard’s famous phrase "fear and trembling" and those who do not fear and tremble are seen as ostriches.  The ability for this person to have this dream exemplifies the distance he has gone to entertain his deepest feelings, which have been absent for almost a lifetime. 

Both people have expressed a wishful regret for the lost years of their life and each has equally expressed a strong desire to make the most of the rest of their lives.  Neither is young.  The first is in his 70's and the second is in his 60's.

I am sure that individuals in therapy have expressed similar states of concern consciously to their analysts, as have many who are not in therapy at all.  The point here is to show that the expression of the concern for mankind can be made because it is in the unconscious of the psyche and accessible to their conscious being.  I think these unconscious expressions are part of the greater underlying unconscious connection between ourselves and all of mankind.  It is one thing to express this profound concern about the state of the world but to live with it deeply, mostly unknown, shows the depth of the connection between all of us.

This connection may also be the focus for people who are showing, as a fetal being, the first signs of altruism for all human beings and it may be the time when the soul enters the body. It may also be what the early Judaic prophets were in touch with when they made their pronouncements to the people of the Book. 

It is this commonality -- altruism -- that binds all people together of whatever color, nationality, tongue or religious persuasion.  These are the results of living in the external reality of the world.  It is this capacity for altruism that symbolizes our connection with the Divine and makes all of us the children of God.  It is the exploitation of any one of the above, including politics, that gives us the misconception that we -- meaning any one particular group -- is different from any other group.

The two dreams presented here can be considered archetypal dreams.  In the first dream, Jerome and Hannah represent themselves and a large segment of mankind that does not want to know the truth ("Leave me alone. I don't like these bright lights.  I want to stay in the dark") A turning away from the truth is also reflected in the second dream (ostriches with their heads in the sand).  To be in the dark at a time like this -- to turn away from truth -- would be fatal for all of us because the dream speaks to all of us.

Besides revealing the truth of a situation, the unconscious can reveal whether relationships will be good or bad for one at the very start.  A person's unconscious can tell us whether a business venture would be good or bad, whether a policy would be good or bad.  The unconscious can tell us whether national actions are truly good for the people.  Dreams can tell us whether people are telling lies or the truth.  These predictions would seem to be entirely correct.

In short, there is no human activity to which the unconscious, in the form of dreams, cannot give us pertinent answers.

We have but to learn, to listen and obey our higher hidden selves and we have to lessen our high estimation of the intellect. 

Consider for a moment where the intellect -- and I talk about it in the collective -- has brought us today.  The unconscious is the repository for universal truth and when truly in touch with it, one is truly in touch with Divine truth.

From the beginning man has been occupied with survival.  Once that is certain, continuous self-preservation is the next concern.  This requires awareness of his environment on the earth plain and his appreciation of the stars above, his knowledge of the oceans and rivers and his exploration of the treasures underground. 

Add to this, that man must come to an accurate perception of all that surrounds him -- all that is above and all that is below -- for a misperception can cost him his life.

So man has studied the heavens, gained knowledge of the constellations, built the pyramids in Egypt, Mexico and Ziggurats.  He learned astronomy to be able to predict events.  Those men were the most respected and the most feared.  They were the leaders.  They were the religious figures and guides of their times.  They held the knowledge of the future of their people in their hands.  They were the apostles and forerunners of science.  But not all were devoted to the truth of their findings. We know that some attempted to enlarge their hegemony to rule or to influence the ruler.

Today, greater than ever, we have the imperative need to know as much as we can but, aside from a scientific community, such has become impossible.  The governments of the world have all become corrupt - all lie, all mislead, all spread ambiguity - so that no one can decipher where truth ends and deceit begins. 

So far science has not been corrupted, whether the so-called physical sciences or the biological ones.  Man has been busy exploring every possible venue.  So far these sciences seem intact but these sciences do not readily help man live his life with peace nor free from ignorance, anxiety and emotional and mental illness.

One would think the medical field would be another bastion of security and what the FDA, representing the government, says is so.  But recent events show that even the health agencies have been politicized and corrupted.

Though economics prides itself as an 'almost science', it is clear that it finds itself in quite the same category as psychoanalysis - a pluralistic endeavor in whichever school dominates politically also dominates economically.  If there were a science of economics it would rest on data like science -- believable and not subject to meltdowns and without a great need to have it tampered with.  Instead, it is often someone's opinion.  These times will have to be characterized as times of corruption where and when money buys everything.

Since all of mankind is in this precarious place, it is all the more urgent that the real truth of everything that man is part of -- whether in the center or the periphery of the controversy -- must be known or at least have a way to access the truth for his, and every one's, survival. 

This science of psychoanalysis has to be able to transcend the concerns of human beings individually -- and I do not mean in any way to ignore them but to understand them.  This science has to be able to extend the common principles of individuals to societies and societal communities - the same principles from which further research and development will lead to greater knowledge in order to enable man to live in harmony and peace and not in the anxiety of war, of genocides, poverty, drought, floods, fire....in short, a natural order.

From my understanding of dreams (the unconscious) we are flouting the laws of existence, but it seems we have reached the point of no return with all the problems that the world is facing today, urgent ones, for all of our lives are on the line.

I maintain by virtue of my analytic science that anyone using this method will find the truth of himself as it pertains to any problem he faces.  We can

no longer believe in others' reassuring speeches or in other institutions to guide our lives. We have thousands of years of history where this has been so and it has brought us to these times, to this chaos, to a place where the only answer to every problem is more force and threats of nuclear annihilation.  Obviously the think tanks of the world have not worked.  The UN has not worked.  Nothing of a conscious intellectual endeavor anywhere has truly worked for mankind.

I say that it is time for all of us to turn to our unconscious using the correct method to ascertain the truth that lies within us.  That truth will be of another order than any we have derived from any other source to date.  That truth will not be confused with 'this or that truth'.  It will be certain like the math of hard science is certain and it will satisfy one and it will put the world's perspective in order.  It will put one's inner world in order, for there is a great inner world there beyond conscious imagination.

If Cortez, in Keats’s sonnet, looked upon the wide Pacific "with wild surmise", then to see your own unconscious will be a thousand times more illuminating.  It is finally important to know that today only a few men, our scientists, can come to the truth of things -- physical things, the physical world.  Man has to know that it can come to the highest knowledge of himself, the inner world.  It is there for everyone.

So far man has not really looked deeply into his own unconscious mind.  Our cure is there and so is our salvation.

Addendum:

This poem came to me the morning after I had finished writing the above paper.  It came wholly formed so I decided to append it as being a corollary to the paper.

SOURCE
             Tarry awhile, pilgrim
             On the way to your soul
             While I marry the northern lights
             To the southern cross
             A feat no man in endless memory
             Has every done.

             One Source allows me,
             Earthling,
             To be a rolling stone without moss.
             This life, my savory.

Copyright ©Bernard W. Bail, MD

February 2008