The patient is a young woman who I have written about in a prior essay “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same”. She has a younger brother and sister. She has learned a great deal about her parents who psychologically have never been available to her.

INTRODUCTION

The prelude to the dreams below is as follows. The patient had gone out with some friends to a Korean restaurant. Later she became very ill with a severe gastro-intestinal upset. This followed on through the night to the morning. Being protective of me, she called in for her session not knowing for sure whether it was the bad food or the beginning of a viral infection. In the meantime she contacted several of her friends, none of whom had any difficulty with the food.

She related her dream to me regarding the man and woman who are angry with her and fighting with her and, as she says, whatever the problem is they think it is "all my fault". In addition she tells me about her sister who, it has been discovered, has an epigenetic disorder; a gene that should be turned on has been turned off.

The sister had been having many physical problems which could not really be identified. This seems to be a central discovery in helping her to get on a path to recovery.

In my essay, The Mother's Signature, I wrote that the mother's imprint and unconscious process was fateful for the life of the baby. I wrote that our destiny is determined by this, the course of our lives, the ups and downs and eventually even the manner in which we will die. Professor Haig of Harvard in 2006 published his research, which proclaimed mothers can turn the babies genes off or on. Others in the field confirmed his finding. Being a scientist he was recording a fact calling it "unconscious". I do not, however, expect him to be acquainted with the term the unconscious and its ramifications which is really the province of the psychoanalyst. This finding confirmed my theory, which I set forward in my essay. I have since elaborated this theory in many essays on my website.

The session unfolded and it did not miss the patient's awareness that her GI upset could have an emotional origin. She told me she had told their mother of the source of this turned off gene was the mother herself. The mother was terribly upset despite the patient saying, "You did not know this was happening. It was not conscious".

In view of this information I found it interesting that the dream revealed an early part of her life in which she was constantly portrayed as the "problem". She disturbed the equanimity of the family. However, in time the psychoanalysis sorted out the truth, that she was constantly whistle blowing the parents who obviously did not like this or like her for doing this. In time, as she learned there was a more peaceful solution to the family problem and these accusations stopped.

So it is no wonder that in the dream she is in the middle of the man and the woman (her parents) and being blamed as if the genetic problem of her sister was her fault. It was my feeling that the mother did not or could not accept the information and projected it back into the patient, which is why she became ill. It must have been a very violent projection.

What is left to ponder is that the patient expects another disaster, invoking the Gulf Oil spill, and no one can estimate how great the damage will be.

SESSION May 31, 2010

Patient: I had to call today because I really feel like I couldn’t drive. I had dinner last night with some friends. We all basically ate the same thing because it was served family style. I am not sure whether it was food poisoning from the food I ate or whether there is an emotional cause. I haven’t heard that anyone else got sick.

Dr. B: What are you doing for it?

Patient: I haven’t really done anything yet. I am drinking some soda. I have some medication I can take if it gets worse, but right now I am just waiting to see if it passes.

I had a dream early this morning.

DREAM

In the dream I was in a hotel in New Orleans and I was fighting with a man and a woman and they are angry with me and I just want the fighting to stop. I get the idea that they think that it is all my fault. I am a bad friend and they are angry. I just want the fighting to stop.

Patient: I have been concerned about my sister who has had some strange health complaints over the last few years and has seen many doctors who have treated many symptoms, but the overall feeling that she is not quite right continues. She finally saw an endocrinologist who made a discovery about one of her underlying problems. He found that she has an epigenetic disorder so a gene that should be turned on and helping her to clear toxins from her body is actually off.

Over the weekend I told my mother that the epigenetic disorders seem to actually stem from the mother’s unconscious turning the gene off before birth. I felt like it was difficult to tell my mother that part of the information but at the time she appeared to understand it and was not defensive about it. I did try to stress that what went on in my sister’s body before birth was the result of unconscious actions and not her conscious intent. I am still worried about my sister though. I just want everything to be OK for her.

I have been to New Orleans but currently my mind goes to the oil spill. It seems that the area is now going to be hit with another devastating injury. I don’t recognize the hotel that I am in, although it was somewhat nice. It had a sort of formal, antique feeling to it. There was wallpaper and I was sitting in the corner of a room that might have led to a hallway. I could not really remember what the man and woman looked like. I think that he was tall with brown hair and glasses and I am less sure about the woman. I just knew that they felt that I had done something wrong or something that upset them and they were now fighting with me about it.

Dr. B: Don’t you remember that your parents were often upset with you for many years?

Patient: Right. I know. I was always a problem when I pointed out things in the family I thought weren’t right.

Dr. B: I think you got sick because you told your mother about the epigenetic disorder and then took in your mother’s guilt about harm done to your sister.

SESSION June 1, 2010

Patient: The next day I was able to go into the office. I am feeling much better, although not completely well. I had a dream this morning.

DREAM

I am in an apartment and I had been out with my sister and I had parked my car on the street. I can’t remember where I parked my car. I go to the window to look out and I get distracted by something going on in between the building I am in and the one across from me. The buildings face each other and there is a street in the middle. Someone is putting up some kind of set for a movie. It is big and made of metal and I am watching them put it together and then a bunch of five year olds come marching through the apartment. I wake up before I find my car so I am not sure if I can find it or not.

Patient: I think the buildings are sort of like a New York street setting. It is a four or five story building. I am not sure whether it is my apartment or someone else’s. I know that I had been somewhere with my sister, maybe to lunch, and we had come home. I wasn’t sure whether I drove home and parked the car somewhere or whether I ended up leaving the car at the restaurant. I think the restaurant was close enough that we could have walked home. I looked out of the window and I couldn’t really see if I had parked the car on one of the streets. I was distracted by the set that someone was building. I thought it was a movie set. It was tall and black and made of metal. I am not sure exactly what it was going to be. Then the kids came in. I think they were about five years old. There were quite a few of them and there didn’t seem to be any parents. I felt like I needed to take care of them or at least make sure that they were OK.

Dr. B: I think that this dream shows that you cannot find your personality, symbolized by your car, because you were occupied with being a mother to your sister. She is the group of little children. Additionally, it shows that your sister is not able to really concentrate because there is too much chaos in her mind adding to the reasons that you are concerned about her.

COMMENTARY

I put forward this small essay for two reasons. First it confirms the fact that a mother's unconscious can turn off or on genes in the child she is bearing. In this case a gene was turned off. This theory was proposed in my essay The Mother's Signature and confirmed scientifically by Dr. David Haig at Harvard (see my essay The Silent Struggle) and a corollary group in Japan. Second it revealed the capacity or lack of capacity of a person receiving an unwelcome truth, that is the mother. She acknowledges consciously her terrible feelings about this information. Yet unconsciously she rejects this idea and projects it back to her daughter who became very ill with nausea and vomiting. In a way the daughter is also identified with the mother by physically vomiting out this idea. The dream confirms the patient has always been a "mother" to her sister and reveals the sister's emotional age...she is just a child.

August 2010