Dr. D has appeared in the essays on my website many times (Why Dr. Dombrowski Doesn’t Have A Life, Living in Two Realities), and this time he reports a profound experience, one that has never happened to him at any time of his life.

It is necessary to know that he has spent the last six to nine months researching and getting better jobs, that is ER's that pay more but offer him more time to sleep or read or write. He especially needs more sleep. As everyone in the world now knows, ER doctors do not get too much sleep.

In any case, he had begun to work at this new facility. He was happy that the nurses received him well and liked him and told him so. This is important for he knows that if the nurses do not like you they can, and often will, conspire to get rid of you. In summary a new job in which the nurses like him, the pay is very good and lots of free time as the area was not heavily populated and people did not crowd the waiting room.

The day before the dream he was on the phone, after instructing the nurse to call him if there were any emergency patients. He was talking on the phone just off the ER room so that he could not see the waiting room. He was speaking, as a matter of fact, to me.

After the call he was in consternation because a patient had come in. The nurse felt there was no emergency and did not call him. This alarmed him. Later the patient complained to the administrator. Even though it was not an emergency situation, the administrator was not pleased. Could this chance accident cost him his new good job?

For those readers who have read of Dr. D we know his life has been arduous, filled with mishaps, bad luck, lost of money, unhappiness, bad marriages all of which came to light as the analysis progressed. His imprint was a very bad one for it did not allow him to make any progress in life. Any progress he has made was always in danger of internal sabotage. The years of analysis has made him conversant with his psychopathology. He wondered whether he had done it again. As of this writing nothing has resulted from this accidental error. The following is the dream he relates and analyzes. He has included many questions in his narrative so that I leave it to the reader to imagine the constant questioning or commenting as we went along with the dream content.

DREAM – March 2010

In this dream, I am on a watercraft on a lake in mid summer, the way it is in mid or late July in Western New York or New England. The sun is shining and the water is an incredibly beautiful shade of blue and the landscape surrounding the lake is also very beautiful and inviting, with large (but not ostentatious), well maintained homes on spacious lots with docks for boats full of the material traces of a warm and fun filled family life (inner tubes, ropes hanging from tree branches jutting out over the water, rope swings from other trees, picnic tables, etc.). There is a short, thin man with an air of benevolent authority about him who is in charge of the watercraft I am on, which is somewhere in the middle of this lake, which appears to be approximately round and about 2 miles in diameter. He instructs me and another man, who looks just like me, to get in the water. My apparent twin and I are wearing nothing but swimming trunks and have the body I did when I was a teenager but my present face. At first I hesitate, since I knew he was about to set the watercraft in motion and was disappointed that I would not be on the craft rather than in the water. But it then became clear that he meant for me and my look-alike to each hold on to one of the craft’s metal pontoons as he ran the boat from an elevated metal chair at the front. Controls for speed and direction were in front of the captain. My apparent twin and I jumped in the water and each took hold of a convenient metal handle which was attached to one of the pontoons, he on the right (with the front of the boat as reference) and I on the left. The captain set the boat in motion and the ride was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the sensation of the water going over my body as the device moved through the water at about 15 miles per hour. We stopped at the base of an apparent water tower with four large metal legs anchored to the lake bottom and whose top was shrouded by beautiful fluffy white clouds. The tower’s four metal legs, which were reinforced by several sets of diagonal metal trusses, were arrayed in a square configuration about 25 feet on a side. As I looked up at the tower I noticed that the water was only about 3 feet deep and was crystal clear like no water I had ever seen. I then noticed the bottom of the lake was golden colored sand arrayed in an incredibly beautiful wave pattern and which felt wonderful to the touch of my feet. As I luxuriated in the water with bent knees so that I was covered by water up to my neck, and looked up toward the top of the tower, I was seized by a joy more wonderful than anything I had ever felt before and impossible to describe in words.

INTERPRETATION

The captain of the boat is Dr. Bail and my twin and I are the masculine and feminine sides of myself. The water represents my (and The) unconscious. My initial reluctance to get in the water is a way of talking about my resistance to the analytic process. The pleasure I take in the ride is a representation of the value I have come to see in the analytic work. The tower with its top shrouded in the clouds stands for the Divine (God). The incredible clarity of the water refers to the absolute truth and goodness of the Divine. The new type of joy I experienced looking up toward the top of the tower represents the joy obtainable through the contemplation of the Divine and all of its attributes. It is also a sign of the progress I have made in the analysis. I was able to make most of these interpretive points myself but also had some assistance from Dr. Bail.

COMMENTARY

Considering the events which I have explained and especially the patient's fear, I would say that I have seldom seen so close a reply to those fears, so close an expression of Source comforting a person in dread, fearful that he had once again fumbled the ball and gotten to a wonderful job only to mess it up unconsciously.

I did not go through the numbers he mentioned in the dream. I felt I did not want to intervene too much with the powerful joy that he felt in the dream. The numbers, however, were all in accord with the event and could easily confirm what we spoke about during the session.

There was no need to gild the lily.

There was every need for simplicity and joy.

April 2010

“On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats 1884

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer rules as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

ON WILD SURMISE... or Why Dr. Dombrowski May Have A Life

ON WILD SURMISE...
or
Why Dr. Dombrowski May Have A Life