This is a further development of the theme from the paper "Risk the Ocean" in that the one dream in the paper presents the courage of the patient to remove the cover of her unconscious so that she may see what is in it.

In this paper I will be talking about Frank, a 53 year-old man who is a writer and a director of commercials who came into analysis because he was unhappy with his life. For those interested, this is the patient identified in the in the essays "Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis (Dream Two)," "Roundabout," and "Masters, Slaves and Imprints."

The dreams that Frank present here show the result of looking at the unconscious after several years and seeing what a treasure of information it reveals. One can see the progression of an analysis with its opening of the truth to the patient, so that together the need to open, to be open, the need to destroy what is no longer useful is necessary in order to rebuild the personality.

Incidentally, is it just a coincidence that our country, and the world, is undergoing a similar process? Other dreams of the patient predicted this process.

With this I present the patient's dreams, his summary of associations and my interpretations.

PREFACE TO THE COURSE OF TREATMENT IN ANY ANALYSIS

I want to outline briefly what I have observed is the course of the treatment in analysis averagely. The patient may or may not know a little about psychoanalysis but what he/she knows is not as important as the progress. There may be theories he/she holds, whatever they might be.

The patient knows he/she has pain, psychic pain. This is not a theory. Beginning dreams reveal a great deal of information for the analyst but he can only interpret and deal with the patient to the level of what he/she can understand and deal with. The main theme of the individual's personality is revealed. In broad strokes, time and many dreams begin to narrow the information down and as the patient is able to tolerate more, then more information can be given. These interpretations paradoxically make the patient's egoism weaker but make the patient fundamentally stronger. They give his/her personality a good foundation.

Usually foundations of patients are built upon lies. They are built on the fetal trauma from the mother which the person has to lie about in order to survive. The lies - we call them by respectable names, the defenses - fend off the truth that the patient has to know. Anything but the truth at the core of a person weakens him/her. As time goes on it is these lies, these denials, these defensive maneuvers that the patient employs become the province of the work of the analyst.

Later as the process goes on deeper and deeper, the patient can join in the process. Hitherto it is mostly the analyst working to clean up the mind, the unconscious mind, of the patient. For a long time it is the analyst doing most of the work. This could be likened to a mother taking off the diaper, washing the infant and putting on a new diaper. The analyst is the receptacle for all the unconscious mental debris of the patient's life.

It is very gratifying to see that the patient has given away enough detritus so that a sound foundation, based on the truth of his experience, consequently enables him to participate in the work.

When this occurs dreams that one pursues, certain themes that may at the beginning seem obscure become less so. Then dreams are found to be just below the surface and can almost be deciphered by the patient. These dreams just require a question or perhaps a connection but the work is pretty open.

However it begins again with obscurity for the patient, an irritability and difficulty until the patient realizes what he/she is dealing with. What is surprising is that it is the mother's imprint in its many, many incarnations, with its protean manifestations everywhere in the patient's life.

DREAM ONE - 12/7/08

I have come to write and direct a movie or rather rewrite a script that in waking life I am hoping to be hired to work on. There are a number of other people there. The producer is there. I have a pad of paper. So does this other person, a TV writer (who I know in real life and is a real kissass) who is sitting near the producer. The producer is giving copious and detailed notes to the writer, who (it turns out later) is writing every word down scrupulously. I start saying, "Wait a minute, hold it, I'm the one doing the writing here." But I'm ignored. Finally I have to shout quite insistently. “Hey, you should be listening to me!” The dynamic changes. I am spoken to, but the producer starts up again and his notes are too detailed and only his ideas. For a moment I think, well he and the other producer know this script inside out. Then I think, no - I am here as fresh eyes and fresh blood. I will need to rewrite what comes from inside, but this producer won't listen.

I begin to wander around this huge mansion. I find myself beside a counter and I start thinking that in this situation I need the real power of a director - like a Milos Forman - whose picture is on the cover of the DGA magazine this quarter. I think to myself that I need a real connection with actors, but will I get anxious and unsure in this area, will I waiver when it will really take muscle to get this film made?

I leave this area where the counter is and continue wandering through this house, a mansion really. It's huge and it's in really bad shape, the prevailing color is a grayish-blue. I have been told there has been an extensive fire. (Is it Michael's house, a director of episodic TV, who left his wife and treated her terribly during the divorce when she got cancer?) I see no fire damage, though, but someone says, smell the walls, which do in fact smell of smoke. The place is terribly grungy. The closer I look the more I see that it's crooked and close to collapse. There are endless, mostly ruined rooms, falling apart, and almost no furniture. Everything is lilting. I go into a kitchen, which is on the top floor. It's in real ruins. The floorboards are coming up. It's dangerous. Tammy, Michael's daughter, emerges and says quite lightly, "We do have cold water, though. The hot water heater was destroyed by the fire." She seems, as does Michael who I see sitting heavily in a chair by a table, to have adjusted to no hot water and to a mansion in ruins. She shows me that they are gathering water in the rusted bathtub. The roof has holes in it where bright sunlight shines in. More and more I sense that this place is about to collapse.

ASSOCATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I talk with Dr Bail a lot about how ruined the house seems to me. I tell him I think this dream is about the state of Hollywood, that its about to collapse because of the financial melt down and the various strikes, etc. He says that it is actually about the state of the world, that the producer is Obama who is a great talker. He continued that as the President there will be people around Obama in the White House, like the toady writer, taking down his every word. In the dream when I say I should be listened to, I am a stand-in for Dr. Bail. And it is correct - I should be listened to. I (Dr. Bail) have a new way of looking at all these issues, the way of the unconscious and Obama is actually just a variation on the old way. He is hiring the same people who got us into this mess, the Clinton people, even some of the Bush people. He has begun to back away from a timetable on the war in Iraq. He is in fact an intellectual who has no real ability to deal with the immensity of the mess, because he doesn't accept the existence of the unconscious.

Dr. Bail: In deed, he doesn't know of the wisdom of the unconscious nor do the others around him.

DREAM ONE (continues)

Michael and his daughter are the people of the world who are willing to put up with and live in this mess, willing to take less and less. They have ignored the conscious, as Michael ignored his wife's plight of cancer. There was a clear sense that this mansion was about to collapse. I mentioned that perhaps the fire was the financial meltdown. It's happened but we don't really see its full impact yet. There was some questions in my mind about whether the whole thing had to completely collapse.

"Does this country have to completely collapse?" I asked. Dr Bail said, "Yes, it did."

The next night I had a very large and powerful dream.

DREAM TWO - 12/8/08

I am making out on a bed with my daughter. It doesn't feel like a terrible taboo. Another even younger girl, a willowy blond comes onto the bed. I start kissing her too. It only feels a little strange. I wonder to myself how do I go from kissing one pair of lips to another. Am I then naked, close to having sex? My daughter has left and has now come back. Is she naked too? I think I have only kissed her so far and am now hesitating about actually having sex with her. I am definitely attracted to and involved with her. I am aware in the dream that I am attracted to a number of younger women, even as I am older. I am especially drawn to the very young willowy blond, much younger than my daughter, who I was kissing earlier.

The dream shifts. I am now with my three children (two sons and a daughter) at a kind of picnic and with some other people when we learn from some old ladies that my first wife (who in waking life I am still estranged from and in the dream is in a hospital) had just (in the dream) gone into a coma and had stopped speaking. The people around me, including my children seemed unconcerned but I am terribly upset. There is a bit of guilt about having caused this by our marriage breaking up, but that issue seems to fade and I just feel a deep sense of love and concern. I say that I'm going to go to the hospital to be with her, to talk with her even if she can't speak. There seems to be little interest from the others.

Then the dream shifts again. I am now moving through the rooms of the house where the bed with my daughter had been. It was very similar to the house of the dream from the night before - grungy rooms, in ruins - but there are now tree branches growing through these rooms. I am now half climbing through these branches, half walking in the house. I am guiding two dogs (that were my two favorite dogs in waking life), Henry and Scout. I have been told that there are coyotes around so I am worried about the two dog's safety, following them closely. Suddenly what I think is a coyote appears. It has light brownish fur but is in fact an eagle with two coyote feet. I fend him off. It flaps around, but ends up on his back in a puddle. We proceed. A second creature appears that I think is a coyote, but it is half dog, half coyote (I encountered a creature like this once in waking life, a brilliant animal.) I am able to fend him off as well.

The branches have thickened. We come to the center of the house where the tree has become a trunk and is huge. It's at least twenty feet in diameter with the center hollowed out. Someone yells, “There is a bobcat!” I see that Henry (a cocker spaniel) is tangled in the branches and is doomed. I know how vicious bobcats can be, but then Scout, a Labrador retriever, charges after the bobcat to protect Henry. As Scout charges he turns into a young Gregory Peck, carrying a rifle, just as I hear a roar. I look down into the tree whose hollow disappears into an infinite blackness. A leopard or jaguar or tiger is charging up. Gregory Peck now aims his rifle to fire, but slips on the branches and tumbles away into blackness, gone forever. The leopard-tiger now comes at me. I struggle backwards, aware that the small stick I hold is useless. I scramble for my life. The leopard charges, roaring. The dream shifts slightly. I find myself in a small tree, with graceful black limbs. I wonder, a bit dazed, whether a leopard-tiger can climb a tree. I have no time to think. I grab tree vines and begin to swing from tree to tree. There is a grove of these trees, planted in a very orderly fashion, a bit like Versailles. The trees have no leaves, but they are beautiful trees. I worry about the leopard-tiger but I don't see him again.

I come upon a parade of sorts with college kids. These are party kids, especially a young woman I meet. It is clear they like to drink. This woman, who flirts with me a bit, is gathering up her favorite objects from a collection of superficial things – beer bottles seem to be in the majority.

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I leave the dream overwhelmed with feelings: a sense of foreboding and an ache for the willowy girl; a sense of love for my daughter and deep love and grief for my poor stricken wife; a terror and awe for the roaring leopard-tiger. We spent the next two sessions on this dream. I have included thoughts from both sessions. The willowy girl is my feminine unconscious. This feels powerfully correct. I do in fact have great love for my daughter and my second wife (even as she and I remain at loggerheads.) Dr. Bail talked about the lack of response from the others re my ex-wife's setback. He talked about the lack of real feelings in the world - that people cannot feel when real things happen to them, and therefore can't learn.

There is an encounter with three animals in the dream, which Dr. Bail talked about as involving him – that he was the first two. Why did the eagle fall into the puddle, I asked. He said that's the way I painted him. He said that I tried to make him ineffectual and so I got past his protection. The second creature was half dog and half coyote - half in the wild and half civilized. This describes how Dr. Bail is half in the world of the unconscious and half in the world of the conscious. But I get past this second incarnation as well and so the leopard appears, which is what happens when the unconscious isn't properly addressed. It becomes a tiger and destroys. I get away, thanks to the work that has been done. I have learned enough, but most people have learned nothing, for instance my second wife who

represents all the people who don't face and swim in the unconscious and grow. I asked, if it would have been better perhaps to have been devoured by the leopard (the unconscious). Dr. Bail's answer was no. The point is to flourish and grow, not to be destroyed. The point further is to understand the unconscious. Another issue was the branches through the house. Again I asked, isn't it possible that this is saying not everything has to be destroyed? Sure the house has to collapse, but the tree will replace it, the tree of life. He reiterated that everything would have to collapse.

I realized as we spoke about the two dogs that Henry was the same name I had given to a character I had written about in my third novel who was modeled after my father – which was accurate, my father was a “cocker spaniel to the slaughter”, dead at 49 from alcoholism.

But Scout emerged as perhaps the most troubling element of all. My dog turning into Gregory Peck was an obvious reference to my naming my dog Scout from the movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Scout's father was, of course, Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, a character I had always viewed as a great hero, but the more Dr. Bail and I discussed him the more troubled I became. First Atticus Finch was an idealization, but more worrisome, he was pure intellect. A good man, yes, he gave a brilliant speech in that courtroom in defense of the innocent black man, but in the end – I realized – he not only lost the case, but the black man was killed by a mob.

Atticus in both the movie, and in my dream, was utterly ineffectual, even as he looked so good - Obama again. This is the sad message - Obama will fail against the powers of the unaddressed unconscious. Dr Bail was very clear, this civilization with all its science, knowledge and beauty, like the Romans, Egyptians and Mayans before it, can easily collapse into ruin as they did.

One last note, I had recently seen the movie "Apocalypto", about the collapse of the Mayan civilization. A black jaguar plays a major role both symbolically and in the plot to show that the Mayan civilization was doomed. The movie ends with the Christian boats arriving. I asked Dr. Bail about this. He said that until we understand and give over to the power of the unconscious, whatever we do will be doomed. We can bow, pray, kneel, scrape and worship any way we want. It will do no good until the unconscious is brought to bear.

COMMENTARY

I want to gather up the themes expressed in these rich dreams, rich in symbolism, rich in fear and rich in its prognostication.

The dreamer expresses what he feels and sees, as the idealization of the intellect, the producer who needs to talk and who will listen to no one. Here this is exactly what we understand about Obama, at least we hope it is not. The house turns out to be that of a director who has not treated his wife, that is the feminine unconscious, well. The children are victims too watching the dissolution of their lives and can see the poverty into which they have fallen. To save water is a necessity. The fact that it is cold bears the meaning. Now we have to look at things in the cold light of reality.

Many things are going on. A tree is rising up in the house. Nature is reclaiming its own. Civilization easily gives way. There are the animals, that is the eagle with feet of a coyote. This animal represents the analyst about whom the patient has ambivalent feelings. He feels the analyst has the vision of the eagle, clear, piercing, true as he sweeps down to his prey. But the eagle is grounded. The feet of a grounded animal, and likewise the coyote-dog. He sees the unconscious as half wild and dangerous and half civilized. And then the bobcat. That is to us incredibly cruel which finally becomes the jaguar, certainly a ferocious animal that runs through the culture and symbolism of the Americas. This creature represents the utter beauty, strength and fearsome qualities of the unconscious. It is the unconscious which has been ignored, betrayed again and again and it will have the terrible justice that follows the ignoring of the mental laws of reality.

The patient can keep me at bay in the first two animals, even the bobcat, but finally the jaguar-leopard will have his final say, the final accounting.

The patient retraces man's history, his evolution, in that he finds his daughter to be of sexual interest but finally knows he will not consummate that feeling. For man to come to this self denial mankind would have taken a great step forward in the civilizing of himself. Ultimately it is another woman and further on he feels it is the beauty of the feminine unconscious that can give him so much more. This is indeed a leap of consciousness, a true evolution of consciousness, to look to the great treasure man contains within. This is the Christ's message over and over. It is also his message that an era of suffering is to pass to a newer philosophy. Humanity has to prepare to move from an age of suffering so as to not be locked into that philosophy but has to move to the knowing of the Source within is contained in the unconscious. The patient, in letting himself be open to his unconscious, can access the mass unconscious and mankind's progress through hundreds and thousands of years of development as a man with human and spiritual qualities. A slow look at the world today and the conditions that most people live in are so well known that I will not list them. It reveals that despite our scientific achievement, mentally and emotionally we are still living in a primitive mode.

It is this retardation of man that is the case in this scientifically advanced culture. Retardation is akin to moral stasis and stasis here breeds corruption. Moral corruption deals the fatal blow. Here it is a matter of when too much of this immorality exists it will tilt the balance and begin the destruction. So begins metaphorically fire and flood to cleanse as it has in many past civilizations.

The ancient prophets, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, were not only prophesizing the fall of Jerusalem or Sodom and Gomorrah. They were prophets for all time, for all the Sodom and Gommorrahs that come into existence, flourish for a time and, after a limited time even if it lasts a thousand years, fall into decay.

There is only timelessness for God. What is a hundred years or ten thousand years? Let us recall the Egyptians who had an empire that lasted at least two thousand years. No empire since then has equaled this time span. We should take off our hats and have a moment of silence. We need to curb our arrogance and be humble.

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

The following day the patient began by talking about his last dream that had to do with his mother and the masochistic life she had imposed on him. In one scene he opened the door and saw an old girlfriend with other women. She was slovenly and looked at him and coldly said, "Good by you". He reminisced that these were the women he used to be attracted to; tough speaking, hard bitten, insolent, and strange to say he could still find a little attraction to that kind of woman. Another fragment showed him wearing short pants with his jacket. That was so plain spoken it hardly needed comment.

He told me another fragment in which his mother insisted on his eating milk chocolate, which he didn't like. It wasn't good for him. Finally he chose two pieces of dark chocolate. Again he easily came to the interpretation that the two dark chocolate pieces were organic and represented this analysis. He then dreamed his mother was dead but later she was not. He talked about her death and how he tried to ease her fear and guilt. She was certain she was going to hell. A moment before she died in his arms, she had a beautiful and peaceful look on her face. The fact that she was dead in the dream then had to do with the fact that the imprint of his mother lived on in his life and was actively shaping his life, unbeknownst to him. Moreover, her comment "Enjoy" revealed what we are supposed to do with ourselves in this material existence but cannot.

Finally in the last fragment he found himself in the car driven by a stranger. "Stop", he yelled, "Stop." But the person did not. Finally he screamed and the person did stop. He got out of the car and saw his car not too far in the distance behind. He was blocking other cars. Here, after the drift of all these dreams, his sadness about his life and his regrets came to the fore. I said, "The person in the driver's seat was your mother who you felt would not let you be free of her - to go to your life, your car, where you needed to be. But the good thing about it is that you did get to your car."

The next day he told me these dreams.

DREAM THREE

It was 1945, his time of the year, January. The soldiers were seasoned fighters hunkering down in this half destroyed house. They were to fight again. This was a pause. They were very tired and not really interested in fighting anymore. Their officer said, "Let's go, men", attempting to hearten them, cheer them up. The officer then jumped over the rail to his death and the men likewise followed to theirs. He likened the state in the dream to people who are tired and bruised with not much ability to take anything more. They were cold and disillusioned. He mentioned that Europe is cold because of the Russian blockade of fuel to the Ukraine from which place Europe gets its fuel. He likened it to the long suffering of everyone. He said, "Then people just want to give up. There is no hope. The leaders of the world seem strangely hollow, strangely insubstantial and their words have no heft, no weight."

These were his associations. He talked of his girlfriend, a woman of great intellectual ability whose intellect floundered when confronted by the unconscious. It was remarkable. It was frightening.

Dr. B: The soldiers represent the intellect that has been fighting a war for thousands of years, trying to solve the problems of mankind. They are the governments and the powers behind the governments, the artists and the religious leaders. All of them.

He was quiet. "God", he said, "That feels so true. It is hard to read the newspaper or even hear the news."

DREAM FOUR

In another dream he is at the butcher who shows him a piece of meat he had sold to a man and woman before they jumped to their deaths. The meat was shaped like a Christmas tree. He reflected on Christmas, on his religious instruction, on the suffering. "Christmas is Christ", he said, "Dying for our sins. Christmas is suffering. It is good to suffer. All the partying is a shallow cover to the pain of people. I guess that is why so many people are so sad especially after they open their presents. It doesn't really do it."

DR. BAIL'S RESPONSE

Dr. B: Suffering is not Christ's message. Christ did not die for our sins. No one can die for your sins and let you be cleansed of what you have done incorrectly or ignobly in your life. Christ's message was the union of Man and God. It was the quality of love between Man and God and every person could access God through his higher self, a self that has to be cleansed of all the misperceptions and lies you have lived your life by.

To focus on the salvation of suffering is just plain wrong, the wrong interpretation of his teaching. However, many people believe that, it is a false belief. Further, the truth is that the higher self cannot be reached by use of one's intellect, though men have been trying for thousands of years. This way has failed. Mankind has to turn to the dark matter in the mind, the unconscious, and read the message there. The dark matter is the unconscious in the matrix of man's life. We, all of us, have to come to this realization and to know that the dream is the doorway to the answer.

The patient was silent and then said, "I had one more dream."

DREAM FIVE

It was that of a woman dressed the way the painters show the Madonna in the many pictures I saw in Italy. She was ascending a hill with a child. There was a red purse on the ground. The woman said, "You have to give me all the money you have, always."

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I saw so many pictures like this dream in churches throughout Italy, over and over. After awhile it began to make me sick. It is obvious what it means. My mother telling me I have to give my life to her entirely, always.

Dr. B: Yes, that is the way the imprint is felt. Its dispersion is throughout one's life even if we think of successful lives. Even when they are examined, the mark of the mother is deep. The mark is forever until death. But then you said, "Stop, I am getting out of the car." That is the very, very good news you can give yourself.

POSTSCRIPT 2-20-09

These dreams and interpretations were worked on before the financial meltdown that we have witnessed in the past few weeks. I could say that it seems as if the Tiger in the patient's dream is now unleashed from his restraints. Efforts to stem the result of a debit culture, not only in the United States but in the world, will not succeed.

It may be too late, no matter how many billions we pour into a hole that keeps getting deeper and wider daily. The inevitable law of balance is in effect and all that is out of balance will be destroyed. It is the inexorable principle of the universe that nothing can be terribly out of balance for long, either in the physical world or in a person's mind. Being brought to balance necessitates the destruction and the cleansing.

I close with this Rumi poem, "Tear Down the House":

"And the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then
digging under the foundation. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done
without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own. The jeweled treasure will be
uncovered but it never can be yours then. The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition
The pick and the shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen. You'll bite your hand and say
"I didn't do as I knew I should have." This
is a rented house. You don't own the deed.
You have a lease and you've set up a little shop
where you barely make a living sewing patches
on torn clothing.
What does the patch sewing mean you ask? Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body
is always getting torn. You patch it
with food and other restless ego satisfactions. Rip up
one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You'll see two glints in the dirt."

(Note: Not quoting poem in its entirety.)

February 2009