It is axiomatic in psychoanalysis that the solution of the person's particular character structure may serve as a template for an entire category of people who fundamentally suffer the same, more or less, psychopathology.

Freud did this in his exposition of the case of "Anna O", known to analysts all over the world, as are the other famous cases of the "Wolfman" and the "Ratman". These are historic case studies, which all aspirants to the title of psychoanalyst need to know in the course of their training.

I mention this because the person I have been presenting in this last group of essays is a patient whom I have been documenting from the beginning of her analysis. Her dreams and my interpretations are set forth in my book, “The Mother’s Signature”, and in numerous essays on my website. Now, eight and one half years later, we are in the molecular stage of her psychic structure.

The tempestuous stages no longer occur. Other people, men or women, do not play a prominent part in her life and the characters who are the people she knows or has known appear in her dreams. The action is mostly what I call within the psyche, that is with the forces that lie within the mind, and with events that occurred a long time ago which may not have been overtly cataclysmic at the time but which nonetheless had a devastating impact upon her mental functioning, her attitudes, her values, her choices and in what we call her personality.

In this final state of being, her personality was formed quietly and repetitively because these were the values expressed by her parents daily in their lives and in the family.

It is at this level that the work of psychoanalysis must be done for it is from here that all else grows. It takes years of analysis to get here…hard work by both patient and analyst stripping away the bigger issues and outer world problems and woes. Eventually one must come down to this level where the personality was actually formed. If this level is not dealt with then the same psychopathology will reappear and reassert itself into the person's life much resulting in the patient’s consternation and hopelessness. It remains to be seen whether we as analysts will have to go to the atomic structure of the individual psyche.

The patient happens to be an exceptionally frank woman who desires to know at all costs the tiniest sources of her dysfunction, even though her functioning in reality is excellent.

However, as the first dream below indicates, to her dismay she did have a malfunction emotionally when an old boyfriend called. Again this emphasizes that intellectual knowledge is not sufficient to overcome a great emotional tear in the psyche especially when it starts in the fetal stage of life.

It is to be noted that the patient's response to this man was a regression quickly to an infantile state of emotional functioning. The man will steal from her and, I will remind the reader, this man had a dream of the patient as a cow, dead and lying half in and half out of a river, from which he would take chunks of meat to fill his hunger.

What is important to know here is that vulnerabilities like this in a part of the patient are like addictions, "I must go to be with this man. I cannot stay away no matter what the costs." There is the compelling picture of slipping on the red shoes and being irresistibility drawn to one's self-destruction. So it is with addictions of all kinds; alcohol, drugs, food - all have as their source a fetal traumatic event with each such particular event unique to each individual life.

When I speak of a patient I am also addressing addiction of all kinds and I am saying this is the level to which one must descend to eradicate this psychic infection. Not to do this leaves a pocket of infection that may wall off but, in time, it is more likely than not to defuse the mental body again.

The patient continues her investigation psychically and we are shown the processes in the mind that go on unconsciously…the sorting, the shape shifting, the order that the unconscious attempts to impose upon the material, trying to put all information in a tidy easily accessible file. And the patient's free association to the periodic table is a wonderful paradigm of how the unconscious wishes to arrange things so as to be able to be master of what it knows and to form the magic of psychic alchemy in her external and internal functioning.

And finally there is the dream of her feeling she had come to certain ideas as CEO of the company and, when these were pursued by analysis, what came to light was that they were not the patient's ideas but were the ideas of the prior CEO, a man who broke down and represented her Mother. This came as a shock to her as she felt the truth of this dream.

I am reminded here of another patient, a woman, who asked herself the question, "Who am I?" and the answer, in the form of a dream, was a diffusion of molecules throughout her body, indeed a profusion of her father which left her gasping. Though she had long known that her father had been the "Mother" of her life, the dream hammered home how entirely she was possessed by him. She cried as she realized the immensity of the takeover. However, she dealt with it rather quickly since she was considerably along in her analysis. Much, much work had already been done.

We see, then, the patient in a position to direct a movie. Of course it is the movie of her life and even here, at the very last, the imprint of the Mother is like a ghost that refuses to go away. It is later still, in talking about this, that we discover she has not really bidden the Mother goodbye.

I am reminded of another patient, Charles Cohen, whom I have written about in my book and in many essays. He recently had a dream of a friend of his, "T", and they are talking in his home and she says, looking at a picture, "You know only you and I can really appreciate this old antique." In the middle of this conversation the carpenter, who has been working on the house, yells out "lunch", by which he means "I'm hungry", and breaks up this dear moment between the patient and "T". In the further analysis, the analyst was the carpenter breaking into the rededication of the patient's imprint, the woman, "T", was the Mother who is long dead. And interestingly "T" is a woman with whom he does not get along nor like.

I repeat the basic premise; imprints are pathological and there must be arduous work done to be able to let them go. I mention in passing that all monster movies, alien movies and vampire movies come from this place in a person's life. We are fascinated because watching them revives the shock and the fear of the delivery of the unconscious blow of the imprint, but the experience is being repeated in a controlled situation. People may be ravaged, consumed, depleted all at one remove. So the trauma is repeated again and again but in the safety of the dark of the movie theater.

It is this trauma that must be opened up to the masses of mankind. Mankind must know that this trauma exists inside of each and every person, although to greater or lesser degrees. The great denial of the existence of this stage of all mankind means that mankind will not evolve into any real sense of peace and understanding. There cannot be denial of the understandings that my work has demonstrated over and over…that fetuses have memory and feelings. This denial keeps all of us in fear and in chains. This is the ultimate slavery from which we must extract ourselves.

DREAM FEB. 12, 2010

I am having a fight with one of my clients because I have asked her for some advice about a project for another client and now I find out she plans to use the idea herself. She is going to steal it. I am furious. I want to report her to the General Counsel of her company because what she is doing just isn’t right. She seems oblivious – she just doesn’t care and wants to and will do whatever she wants.

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I tell Dr. Bail that I think this dream is about Jake, a former boyfriend and lover with whom I contemplated having a long-term serious relationship. I met him at the end of 2005, and we were “on again/off again” four or five times through the end of 2007. It always ended in a disaster emotionally for me. I would want him to be something he was not – especially honest, trustworthy and faithful. Try as he might to profess his love for me and convince me that he was the man I wanted, my dreams said repeatedly that he was a ‘ringer” for my Mother. Just as she had unconsciously been emotionally dead and unavailable to me, he was the same. But I wanted it to be different (don’t we all want to believe the fantasy?), so I ignored the messages of the dreams and plowed ahead by carrying on seeing him. The sex was amazing – it was hot, passionate and extremely intimate and satisfying. At first, I was convinced that this chemistry was a sign of our powerful connection. Now I understand that this type of fiery, wild, “can’t live without it” sex is an erotization of the pain of my imprint. Jake is my Mother. My Mother’s deliverance of unconscious unwanted material was a terrible blow to my psyche. I felt pain. I was only an infant. I had no way to stop the pain. I had no intellectual capacity to understand what was happening to me. So I “decided” to turn the pain into pleasure. That was my defense. I could endure the pain this way. Jake was delivering his own brand of unwanted, unconscious toxic material into me….aaah….the recognition of the familiar pain – just like the imprint from my Mother. So, how to “accept” the pain? Same as with Mom – turn it to pleasure. And voila….the sex becomes ecstatically pleasurable.

Jake called last night. Out of the blue and after more than fifteen months of silence, he called me. I didn’t take the call. I was a bit panicked and felt a bit shaken. What did he want? Was he in L.A.? Would I be seeing him? Would we go to bed together? I am an adult woman with over nine years of analysis under my belt. I have examined the Jake situation in minute detail and from all angles and ad nauseum. I know what he is about and what he does to my unconscious. He is trouble (with a capital “T”). So why didn’t I just know instantly that the correct thing to do was to call him and say, “I don’t want to talk to you or see you. Don’t call me again. Goodbye.” I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it. I had rehearsed this situation in my head and discussed it in my analysis but still I couldn’t do it. Why?

This morning’s dream was a perfect reintroduction to Jake and who he really is. He is my inappropriate client in the dream. Just as she was going to steal my other client’s idea without remorse and with reckless abandon, Jake always comes into my life (unconsciously) to steal my energy, my growth, my intuition and my sense of peace. He is oblivious to his negative impact on me and he always goes away happy and content after our encounters while I am left to clean up the internal emotional debris, confusion and upset he leaves behind within me. Countless times the cycle has repeated. He is the call of the wild – I harken back to my imprint and its pain. It’s familiar. It must be right. I have allowed it to consume me again and again for the momentary “fun” of the companionship and the great sex. Until now. Now I know I won’t see Jake, but I feel confused about how to implement the plan to avoid him.

Dr. Bail confirmed that these associations were true and correct. He asked me whether I would call Jake back and, if so, what I would say. I had no answer. I didn’t honestly know if I could trust myself to do the right thing.

This session was on a Friday. Jake had called on Thursday night. Could I just ignore additional calls and maintain our long silence that way throughout the weekend? Would it work?

Jake called again on Friday afternoon. I let the call go to voicemail. Then he called at 10 p.m. that night. I took the call. It was like old times, except I knew who I was and who he was and that nothing good could come of this.

After cajoling and bantering, he convinced me to meet him the next day (Saturday) for brunch. I hung up the phone and knew it was a mistake and that I had to cancel. But why didn’t I just say “no” during the call and be done with him and the situation? Why was I afraid of him?

The next day I woke with dread in my heart. How to say “no” to him? (Translation: How to say “no” to Mom? Mom is the one who feeds you as an infant and upon whom you rely for your very survival.) I struggled and thought about my options. Finally I hit upon a strategy – I would tell Jake that I am trying to focus on my health and my career and that seeing him would be too much of a distraction because our powerful chemistry would overwhelm me and cause me to fall into bed with him. Therefore, I would tell him it was best not to see one another at all.

The first part was true – I am focused on my health (mental, physical, spiritual and emotional) and my career (I’m working many hours and often seven days a week). The part about him sweeping me into the sack wasn’t true. I was pretty darn sure that would not happen but I was concerned about spending time in his company and becoming the receptacle over lunch of his unconscious garbage. So, I called him and I lied to him and I placated. He was flattered. He laughed and cooed to me. He tried to convince me that it would just be lunch between two friends. I told him we would end up in bed for dessert. He said he could and would control himself and the situation. I had a vision of Red Riding Hood and the wolf dressed as her grandma – “the better to eat you with.” Finally, I just said I didn’t want to discuss it further, that I knew my limitations and that I needed him to honor my wishes and agree not to call me or try to see me. He grudgingly said OK and I quickly hung up.

Success, right? No. I was bitterly disappointed in myself. I am a gold star girl. I didn’t get the gold star. I have been learning from my dreams that it is time to step out and show the world who I really am now. I must not hide my knowledge and understanding gleaned and gathered from my years of hard steady work in the analysis – the pain, the trauma, the frustration and finally the unearthing of the Truth followed by my intellectual understanding of the Truth, then emotional understanding, then (finally) integration into the psyche and reemergence with new aspects of me foundationally in place. I am not who I was. Yet here with Jake I pretended to still be the woman who fell into bed with him and “loved” the crazy sex, despite the price I was paying for it. I’m not that woman anymore but I didn’t show him that. Finally I knew that I had regressed to infantile behavior. Children placate Mommy to keep her happy. I was placating Jake in the same way. I had struck out on all three counts – no gold star, no showing of who I really am and regression to childlike behavior based on an imprint that says, “Keep Mommy happy at all costs.”

I had a miserable weekend. I suffered. I had headaches. I didn’t sleep well. I needed to understand why I hadn’t done better. I clearly understood what was happening to me but I couldn’t step up to do what I needed to do to best protect myself. Why?

DREAM FEB 15, 2010

I am sorting and sorting and sorting. I must take all of my dreams and ideas about one topic and get them into a list. Then I must do the same with all the dreams on a different topic. Then the two sets of sorted dreams must be presented half to one person who most appropriately needs the topics of those dreams and the rest can go to the second person who needs the dreams on those topics. Then the lists and the dreams must be internalized in the exact right order and intensity by each person…it’s a very specific and careful process. Everything from a great period of time has been split up in minute detail, ordered and organized and delivered back to the two people. Now it’s time to reintegrate the strings, themes and ideas.

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I tell Dr. Bail about my miserable weekend and my failures with Jake. He noted that I was feeling disappointed with myself. Yes, that was the feeling. I wanted to have made better choices. At least I didn’t see Jake but I also didn’t tell him the truth about how I felt. Suddenly, I remembered something else he had said during our call. He tried to convince me that he had not called me in an effort to secure a date for sex with me. He said he had come down to L.A. to spend time at some big organized parties and festivities with friends and that calling me was “an afterthought”.

I tell Dr. Bail that this struck through me like a knife at the time. I’m truly unloveable. I’m just an afterthought. Yet, I had buried the feelings of pain over the weekend and only now in my session did I remember the comment and the feeling of being sliced up by it. It reminded me of being cut up into little pieces by a person with a huge knife in my dream a few weeks ago. That was an imprint dream. The force of the blow of my Mother’s unconscious material cut into my psyche and hacked it to bits. Jake’s words caused the same feeling of a blow within me – another sign that he had become my Mother and that my imprint was being restimulated.

I asked Dr. Bail, “Why aren’t I doing better with this? What’s wrong with me?” He answered that it is better to ask the question, “How did you come to this place and what must you understand about this situation to make change within yourself now?”

Profound questions. I didn’t know the answers. Dr. Bail said the dream indicates that I am still sorting. The dream is a very accurate portrayal of Dr. Bail’s analytic process. Each dream is analyzed in great detail. Associations lead to interpretations. Interpretations build on prior interpretations. Patterns emerge. Structures of the psyche are revealed. Those structures which were placed into the psyche unconsciously by Mother, Father, siblings, teachers, society, etc. are examined to determine whether they are helpful and workable to the patient or whether they must be dismantled. The work of dismantling is further guided by more dreams, more associations and more interpretations. Infallibly the dreams point out what small pieces of the structure must be removed first while the order and sequence of the remaining removal steps are shown in successive dreams. As this deconstruction is occurring, the dreams, will also herald a new set of principles, values, attitudes, thoughts, beliefs and feelings (most importantly feelings) which are to be embedded into the psyche to act as the new internal structure.

The dream beautifully shows the sifting, sorting, evaluating, listing, disposing and reassembling – all part of a specific and careful process of dream interpretation and Dr. Bail’s analytic process. My dream says that everything is split into two equal parts and organized appropriately. Dr. Bail says this is the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine parts of myself. This is good. There is recognition in my psyche of the duality and the polarity. But the end of the dream indicates that the reintegration has not yet occurred but is still in process.

Dr. Bail explained that this is why I had a shaky unclear weekend about Jake. I understand and recognize what he is and how he impacts my psyche. He is my Mother and he re-stimulates the pain and confusion associated with my imprint. I have sifted and sorted the work of the analysis and integrated the knowledge of these ideas as well as immersed myself in the feelings. But the integration is not complete – the unconscious tells me through the mechanism of the dream that some reintegration (both masculine and feminine understandings) must still occur.

Dr. Bail says I need to sit with this information. It must seep through the unconscious until it reaches into and subsumes the cracks and crevices filling holes and valleys and channels and becoming fully absorbed organically within me. Patience. The answers will come (most assuredly) in future dreams.

As he tells me this, I suddenly see in my mind the picture of the periodic table of elements. I tell this to Dr. Bail. I am not a chemist or a scientist, but I have seen a reference in the last few weeks to the periodic table in a PBS documentary about dreams and the “science” of dreams.

Dr. Bail says that the analysis which he does with his patients really is a science that is done painstakingly through each interpretation and that the result is internal order and structure in the psyche. The periodic table is the grouping of physical elements into a chart and that chart of elements allows a scientist to make informed and consistent decisions about the state of the physical world once the periodic chart elements are used as the basis for all assumptions. In Dr. Bail’s form of analysis, his interpretations are the structure for internal order and understanding. Dr. Bail takes all of the information in a dream, sifts it using his own understanding of the world and the unconscious combined with the patient’s associations and then puts it all together on an unconscious level and on a conscious level to redistribute the information into an organized intelligible pattern. Seemingly inscrutable, confusing and nonsensical dreams are broken down, analyzed, reorganized and explained to expose their sense, pattern and meaning. Those new elements in their new form are then fed back to the patient on a DNA string through the interpretations given in the session. The new building blocks of the unconscious are delivered to the patient this way. This is why I dreamed that the new material is reintegrated and that the strings, themes and ideas are given back. The analysis creates the DNA strings of emotion, feeling and understanding which can then be absorbed into the unconscious. Analysis is the science of feelings and the breakdown of those feelings to their molecular level (down to the imprint/subatomic level) so that they may be reordered into a new DNA string of feeling that will be unique and useful to the individual and his/her improved emotional health and balance.

I am impatient to feel better, but I can wait. I am big enough internally to withstand the confusion and allow the information to continue to sort into me and through me. I have been here before. There is always positive change and growth on the other side of this discomfort and confusion. I will wait. I will keep feeling. I will keep dreaming.

DREAM FEB 16, 2010

I am sorting a mountain of paper. I’m trying to bring order to chaos. It’s difficult. I am the newly installed president of this company and I am trying to get it moving in the right direction with new ideas and new deals. But it turns out that someone else generated these new ideas and deals, not me. I’m taking credit because I thought they were mine. I am disappointed to discover that they are not. I have been talking to someone about the confusion of this person who ran the office previously. It turns out that it was Dick Adams (a colleague of mine in real life). I had no idea. It’s all very disturbing. Can I get it cleared up? Do I?

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

I see Dr. Bail four times per week. This is an extra session this week. I need five times this week to feel better. I don’t remember the last time this happened – maybe years ago. Whatever this is, it must be deep because I feel lost, depressed and at odds with myself and the world. I’m still functioning. I still get up and work for my clients. I keep my appointments. I eat. I sleep. I drive my car. I appear to be functioning normally. But inside I am a quivering mess. Who is this woman who can’t say a firm goodbye to a lover from long ago and who accords him the power and stature of an emotionally dead Mother? Why do I allow this man to determine my emotional reactions and physical world responses? Why am I unable to just tell him, “Jake, get lost!”? Why?

As I tell all of this to Dr. Bail, I have a sudden thought – one which has been under the surface for years but which has never come all the way up and out of my mouth to discuss in our analysis. It is an ephemeral thought that comes into my mind and then slips away like the shadow that you see in your peripheral vision but that disappears the moment you turn your head toward it. The instant it vanishes, the thought that is was even there also vanishes taking with it even the memory of the thought.

Yet all of a sudden, in my extra session this week, the thought marched into my mind front and center. It was this: I need to hold onto Jake because he may be my last resort. If no acceptable, decent, suitable man comes along, at least Jake will be there to love me.

Wow! It seems like an illogical and silly thought. But as I said it out loud to Dr. Bail, I realized it was the underpinning of all of my relationships with men for all of my life. There it was – the defining theme of my emotional connection to men. Take the one who wants to be with you because you never know when or if another will come along. Better to have someone (even if he is the wrong someone for me) than to have no one at all.

I tell Dr. Bail that I am shocked to figure out that I think this. I am not in any relationship with a man these days because I haven’t met the “right” man and I tell my friends all the time, “It’s better to be alone than with the wrong person.” Yet while I have said this on a conscious level for years, the unconscious says that my emotional world is based upon the absolute reverse of this statement. I am stunned by this realization.

Dr. Bail pointed out that if I think I must take whichever man loves me, despite how I feel about him, than I must truly think I am unloveable. I think that the man I might want may not want me so I settle for whichever man does want me. Underneath this feeling of settling for another person’s feelings being imposed upon me is my feeling that I am unloveable. Unloveable people have no choice – they take what they can get.

Dr. Bail asked a poignant question; “And wasn’t this your Mother’s life? Didn’t she marry the only man who would have her and not the man she really loved because he did not want her?”

Dr. Bail pointed out that I was not afraid of Jake or afraid to hurt his feelings by telling him “no”. I was afraid I’d end up alone if I cut off his advances – maybe no one else would come alone and want to be with someone as unloveable as me. I was placating Jake to keep him available to me.

This was devastating information. I am a highly intelligent woman. I am accomplished in my profession. I have friends and colleagues who respect and admire me. And yet I will lie down and have sex with a sociopath because I am afraid of being left standing alone at the dance – deep down I believe I am so unloveable that I may as well just prostitute myself for a morsel of affection and attention. Heartbreaking for me. Sad. Embarrassing. Shameful. Shocking. Debilitating. Lost. These were my feelings. How could I have sunk so low?

Dr. Bail said that these are not my feelings, at least not my self-generated true feelings. These were the feelings of my Mother which were heaped upon me by the unconscious blows of her own imprinted material. Her damaged unwanted feelings and beliefs were unconsciously projected into my nascent being. These were the feelings of her Mother and her Mother’s Mother and her Mother’s Mother’s Mother and so forth. All the way back to the beginning of the human race, Mothers have imprinted their fetuses by unconsciously pushing their unconscious unwanted feelings into their children. After all, a fetus has no protective mechanisms. It has no intellect with which to intellectualize the experience. The fetus has no logic, analytical ability or common sense to apply to the pain. A fetus is a quivering mass of feelings. It accepts the brutal reality of the projection of its’ Mother’s unwanted feelings (imprint) just as it accepts her feelings of love and devotion. A fetus/baby can assimilate and absorb loving feelings easily and digest those feelings into its’ psyche without discomfort or stress. But the painful damaging feelings must be accepted and walled away, leaving a scarred and pockmarked battlefield in the unconscious. Only after an analysis with Dr. Bail do I feel (instead) that my unconscious is a constellation of black velvet heaven with each interpretation shining like a twinkling star of light, comfort and peace.

Women throughout the ages would certainly have come to believe that any man is better than no man at all. Someone must protect a woman, make sure she has food to eat and that she and her children are kept safe and warm. An unprotected woman and her unprotected children are somebody’s dinner. So my Mother, like the women before her, cast her net as wide as she could taking into account her race, socio-economic status, level of beauty and desirability, intelligence, etc. in an effort to find her man/her protector. My Dad fit the bill if only as second fiddle. The family folklore is that Mom was in love with a doctor who rejected her. She was not in his social class and not to his standard. Dad came along and said he was in love with her. She married him. I’m guessing that she did love him, at least as best as she could. I speculate that she was aware at some conscious level of her decision to compromise in marrying him because the doctor wasn’t available – “any port in a storm” the expression goes. My Dad was a safe port.

I’m sure my Mother had no clue about her own unconscious agenda. She did her best. I have no judgment on her. She made a life for herself in the face of great adversity. She raised us to the best of her ability.

Dr. Bail pointed out that it is my Mother’s idea to hold on to a man who may not be suitable but who will keep a woman from being alone and unprotected. I placated Jake because my Mother taught me unconsciously that this was the right thing to do. I don’t want him in my life but I don’t want my insurance policy to vanish.

My Mother is the person who ran the company before me in the dream. I am the president of my life now, but my Mother’s ideas and plans are what were generated and ascribed to me in the dream. In the dream, I am disappointed to find that those plans were not mine. Dr. Bail cautioned that I don’t want my Mother’s unconscious agenda about men to run my feelings and reactions in my life. This dream was a profound and clear message that these ideas were hers and not mine and that I should not be disappointed about this but should celebrate this new and revealing piece of information. The shadow has been brought into the light and it turns out it was cast by another. It can now be left in the stark white glare of day for reflection and contemplation. It is a powerful exposure of how and why I think about men as I do.

I tell Dr. Bail that in my last six or seven years while I have been single after two long term marriages, I suddenly realize that I encounter all men with the underlying just below the surface thought – “Is he my protector? Will he love me?”. I don’t think much about whether I like him, only whether he will accept me….not a recipe for my happiness. This is true of male colleagues, clients, friends and even strange men in the grocery store with whom I may strike up a conversation. “Will he love me? What do I need to do to make him love me?” With these self-defeating and self-denying thoughts and feelings I am feeding my already rampant feelings of being unloveable.

Dick Adams is a colleague of mine in real life – bright and capable and at first glance very reliable -- except that during a collaboration with me on a deal, he fell apart emotionally, abandoned the project and literally threw it all back to me to handle with no notice and no explanation. Dick is my Mother – emotionally unstable and unreliable, although fully capable on the external level of caring for a home, eight kids and my Dad. All of these feelings about men were my Mother’s feelings just as the new ideas and plans in the dream turned out to be Dick’s ideas. Dr. Bail is the person I am talking to in the dream to sort out the confusion. Today (and always with all of my thoughts and feelings) he is sorting out my confused feelings about Jake and about being unloveable.

In the dream I am disturbed. It all needs to be sorted. Will it be? Thank God for the fifth session this week.

DREAM FEB 17, 2010

I am being asked if I have communicated with my Mother lately about the play that is to be produced about my life. I say “Yes, I was at the cemetery to talk to her but she is dead so she is not someone who should have a say anyway in how I do my life now.” Who is asking this question anyway and is it their business? This is my story to produce.

Scene changes: I’m being given a story to produce as a movie. I can do it. I want to do it, but I’m getting a lot of pressure to let my Mother step in and direct it. I resist. I want to be in control of this story. I just don’t want her input. The show must get started into production and I need to take up the control. Everything is at a standstill until I’m ready to do that. But we need to get started and soon.

INTERPRETATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS

The dreams are a clear follow on to yesterday – in those dreams my Mother’s ideas were the ones the company (my life) was following. Here, she does the same but I am no longer disappointed like I was yesterday to find that the ideas were hers and not mine. Indeed I seem to have made progress in now understanding that I don’t want my Mother to give advice (she’s dead and in the cemetery in the first dream and, in fact, in real life). In the second dream she’s trying to direct the movie but I resist. This is the movie of my life. I want to control it. I am struggling to do that. I am trying to break the tie to the thought and feeling that I need to be with any man just to have a rescuer and protector. These beliefs and feelings leave me feeling unloved and unloveable.

Dr. Bail pointed out that relating to a man on the basis of “Will you be the one who loves me?” makes me vulnerable unconsciously and sets me up to make poor decisions and choices. Not only will I be left emotionally bereft by these unsuitable men, as Dr. Bail says – it is dangerous to relate to strange men from this place. I place myself in emotional and physical jeopardy. Could this be the basis of why women stay in abusive relationships? Better to be with the wrong man than alone? The abused woman feels so consciously and unconsciously unloveable that she accepts whatever comes her way from any man who can be her Mother’s stand-in at an unconscious level.

Dr. Bail pointed out that both of these dreams were about producing a play or a movie – both are about my producing my life without the unconscious influences of my Mother holding sway over my feelings and decisions. However, while there has been great progress on these issues since the dream of less than a week ago which heralded Jake’s desire to arrive and steal my energy and power, these dreams say I am still waiting to move forward. The analysis has exposed the issue of my need to placate him (Mom); my fear that he will be my only choice of men so I’ll keep him around (I’m unloveable so best to take what love I can get no matter the source); and my understanding that these were my Mother’s feelings and beliefs and not mine (internalized by me, nevertheless, as part of my imprint). Now, in a matter of four sessions, I am shown that my struggle with these feelings has shifted to the point of my rejecting these feelings and understanding that they are my Mother’s feelings not mine. I want to make my own rules on these subjects but the dream says I’m at a standstill. I need to get into production on the movie (move my life forward appropriately), but I haven’t done it yet. I need to get started and soon – I need to be the director and take up control.

DREAM FEB 19, 2010

I am plopped into a situation where I am to “make do”. I am to make sense of all that is happening. I live in a family (or I work in a location) that has confusing and inconsistent rules. They speak a different language sometimes from me – maybe Italian? I’m waiting to send and receive a Valentine’s Day card from my Chinese lover. Is that allowed here? Probably not because first I must sort through the rules, do my chores and adjust to what is expected of me.

Scene changes: I’m in the finale of a big event. Is it American Idol? I think I’m in the top 24. The price has been $267.

ASSOCIATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

My biological family was governed by my Mother’s imprint. It was confusing to me in real life. I felt emotionally alone and isolated. I didn’t feel I had anyone to talk to most of the time and I felt that no one understood me anyway. I want to make a change from this in my life now, but I’m still sorting through the rules.

Dr. Bail says that the dream beautifully expounds my dilemma. I am saddled with the feelings and burdens of my Mother’s imprint – the rules, chores and things that are expected of me. And yet, sometimes my family speaks Italian – which family is this?

I tell Dr. Bail that I think Italian is a beautiful and lyrical language – very melodious to the ear. He says that this would be the language of the Divine. I am moving into a space of wanting and having a family life based on spiritual principles and feelings of love and Divine melody – just as Italian is beautiful and comfortable to the ear, an inner world based on true principles and not on the imprint would be comfortable and peaceful.

I say that the sending and receiving of a Valentine to my Chinese lover reminds me of the dream in Dr. Bail’s essay about the man who is coming to the end of his analysis and dreams of a beautiful Chinese artist with whom he will become lovers. In that dream, Dr. Bail said the patient wanted to marry his unconscious. I want to marry my unconscious too, as evidenced in the dream by my wanting to send and receive a Valentine’s Day card (love) to my Chinese lover (the unconscious). I want the unconscious to rule my inner world and be my guiding force in the outer world. Sometimes, I don’t understand the Italian – this means that sometimes the unconscious is inscrutable to me and I don’t know how to truly make it my guiding light.

So, Dr. Bail says, which is it to be? The imprint of the family of origin with its rules and chores or the love of the Divine through the unconscious which will be the underpinning of my life in the future?

The last dream seems to say that I will eventually get to the finale and have my marriage with the unconscious. The “24” is “6” (2 + 4) which is the card of the lovers and the powers of true perception. I have made it to the top 24 of the group…I will make it to 6 – real understanding of my issues about why I feel unloveable and how I act in ways to play out my unconscious foundational belief that I am unloveable. The price of this understanding is $267. The number “2” is the unconscious. The number “6” is the lovers/powers of perception. The number “7” is victory. The total of these three extraordinary numbers which perfectly reflect my process on this issue is “15” (2+6+7). The number “15” is the card of the devil – the two people are in shackles but the chains are loose. Will they decide to lift them off and be free or will they pull them tighter and stay constrained? The chains are my imprint. Am I leaving my imprint that I am unloveable or am I staying with the belief which was really the belief of my Mother about her own life and self? Does the imprint win or am I loveable? Will the imprint of being unloveable continue to run my life and my relationship to men? The price of true love and true perception (the number ”6”) is that I must make the decision placed before me in the devil card (the number “15”). Do I take off the chains and have the life I want or do I continue to live under the spell of my imprint?

Dr. Bail and I both expressed satisfaction and a certain amazement at the clear and lyrical quality of the dreams presented by my unconscious and the fact that the dreams so beautifully illuminate exactly where my internal state sits at the moment. I keep dreaming and working through the issues in my analysis. I guess I will have to wait until Jake calls again to see what I have decided about whether to loosen the chains or tighten them. I guess I will see how I relate to other men whom I meet on my journey through life. I guess I will keep working on this issue until I find my love for myself. I guess I’ll just keep dreaming and working through all of the issues in my analysis.

COMMENTARY

Perhaps the most telling information with respect to this patient, crucial to understand her motivations and actions, almost the compulsion, to behave against her interests was found in an exchange several weeks later.

Her dream had to do with her ex-husband and computer repair guy coming to "fix her computer". She understood at once that her ex-husband in the dream was her Mother and that the computer repair guy was the internal saboteur - which always seeks to maintain the status quo.

She knew they had come to break into her computer, that is her mind, by programming it with her original imprint. She told them she knew what they were there to try to do and that they were to leave immediately. I said, "Well we know why these occasions of weakness with your old boyfriend occur. Obviously the imprint doesn't know that it must not come back. You have never said to it that it must not come back."

As the session went on she suddenly recalled an incident in 1995 when her parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. She asked them what it was that held the marriage sacrosanct. What had they come into the marriage to learn from one another and how did they stay together all those years?

Her Mother said, "Duty and responsibility".

Her father said, "Commitment and dedication".

She remembered these words simply and starkly. There it was. For me, as the analyst, I thought, "God, how important this is." How impressively important and I noted that nuggets like this do not come forward in the early tempestuous stages of analysis. Rather they appear when all the storms have died down in the autumn of reflection and in the relative calmness of being. I asked, "And what about fun?" "Oh," she said, "My parents never considered fun to be important. It was never a part of our family life. My parents felt it was a waste of time.”

Dr. B: You know, these profound beliefs of your parents could be a terrible burden to a young girl or boy; a day full of work, a week full of work, a lifetime full of work - this sounds more like a religious ethic. I can imagine that a young person would want to break loose and have fun like "girls gone wild."

Patient: I was drawn to my first husband because he could have fun and you know you are right about girls gone wild. That is exactly how I was when I met him and could let loose. However, after we married he still wanted to have fun but I didn't really know how to do it. I was so serious. When I met and married the man who became my second husband, he seemed to bring fun in the beginning. But that soon went away and then it was all about work at the business every day. There was nothing in life except work and business. Looking back it is clear, and awful when I see how clear, that I could not wait to get into my Mother's life and live my version of it. She scrubbed the floors, cooked the meals and did the laundry and the dishes. I slaved day and night over deals and paperwork and running the household and the social calendar. I had become her in all ways and my work was always motivated just under the surface with the thought "would I get the gold star?"

Dr. B: Yes, the gold star. I suppose in the last analysis, would your Mother or somebody love you? Would you get the REAL gold star – love? And notice that in your parents’ declaration to your question about what they had learned in their marriage nothing was said about love.

Patient: My God. I didn't even notice it. I didn't even say it.

She continued.....

Patient: You know, Dr. Bail, the strange thing about this is that when my parents were old and in the retirement home, before they passed, my Mother said, "Be sure and have fun." I was shocked that these words of advice would come from a woman who never took time for fun. The truth is that I really don't know how to have fun. I am not comfortable with it and love is another big quantity, isn't it?

She told me of a dream.....

DREAM

I have a two hour session scheduled with Dr. Bail. I lay on the couch in his office for the session. I seem to fall asleep at the end of the session. When I wake up I see that Dr. Bail is not in his chair, but his slip-on beach type shoes are on the floor near his chair. I get up and go in the other room to find Dr. Bail. I see that he is busy working. He seems annoyed with me. I apologize for falling asleep during our session. I say that I must have been very tired and now I need to leave on a trip. I remind him that he was going to lend me a weekend bag for my travels and a carry-on bag, but Dr Bail abruptly says, “I don’t loan my things”, and slams the door behind me as he ushers me out.

Her associations were to the slip-on shoes, which after some discussion she suddenly recognized as her beach flip-flops, which she keeps in the trunk of her car in case she decides to stop at the beach and watch the water or take a walk. She remembered that she had been in a mental tug of war to and fro that morning when she woke about going to the beach after her session. She thought that she should not go because she had work to do for clients, but she wanted to go even just for an hour or so to relax and be outside. To falling asleep on the couch she said that she sometimes feels as if she is not taking in all of our work in the analysis and that she is essentially “asleep”.

The important question, however, was who was I, Dr. Bail, in the dream for I do not get angry nor do I get asked to lend a bag. She thought a moment and said quietly, "You know it must be that you are actually me and that the bags which I am trying to borrow from you are actually bags which I want to have myself so that I can go away." I added, “Yes, weekends are for fun and fun is something you don’t know much about."

With a note of sadness in her voice, the patient agreed. I said, “So you are fighting against yourself. There is the workaholic part of you that just passed out asleep on the couch. That part does not want you to learn what I am teaching you in this analysis and in these sessions about your right to have fun. It would rather go to sleep to keep you 'in the dark' on the issue of fun. Then there is the 'Dr. Bail' part of you who has the beach flip flops, i.e. 'me-you' knows how to have fun but won’t share the weekend bags to allow you to go out and have that fun. That’s because the “work” part of you is in control…the part that is about Mom and her lessons of duty and responsibility. The imprint is in control of your decisions…work and struggle. The imprint does not want you to have fun, just to work. The you in the other room clearly has the capacity to have fun because the flip-flops and the weekend bag belong to that person, but that part is also working. None of you can really have fun and the "me-you" is angry that you even want to have fun. Mind you, nothing about love here. This is about an imprint that does not allow for fun or for love. This is about fun. This is about an imprint that does not allow for fun or for love. This is about the irksome problem of having fun.”

I have called this essay THE MOLECULES OF LOVE - OR NOT. This particularly frank woman is again to be admired for her courage, her willingness to look at every niche of her personality and to oust every particle that may inhibit or stop her quest. All of mankind is on a similar quest....to be able to love and be loved. Clichés like this seem to be known by all peoples the world over.

It is love's old sweet song.....

CONCLUSION

When I finished this essay, it struck me that in the series of dreams the patient had spoken of the Periodic Table. I was surprised at this association since the patient is a person who would readily admit she was far from science or mathematics in her younger school years. It was all the more surprising that this great scientific achievement would come to her mind, but it did and that she linked this to our work was of significance to me.

Certainly it has taken years to fill out the Periodic Table from its beginning in the ordering of the elements in ascending atomic weight. This was no mean achievement and it was a great step, in accord with other scientific steps in parallel disciplines, to reveal the order that exists in the Universe. This recognition gives us the sense that all of men's achievements in all fields of endeavor might have a similar order.

However, to be realistic, we have to consider whether psychoanalysis can also be unraveled in these tiny steps of understanding to a more simple order of things in the overall human experience.

I began my inquiries with the everyday life of human beings, taking what had become obtrusive to me in the course of my work - that all human beings were subject to a great traumatic event in the course of their fetal life that would leave a mark on them in everyday functioning. Since that psychic trauma would have to be accommodated, the accommodation would have to be unconscious. This state of unawareness still exists in the population and in the profession of psychoanalysis at this time. Only a small group of people, some analysts and some small groups of people of every persuasion of every nationality, are acquainted with this work

My work has been to reveal the accommodation made to this psychic injury. In psychoanalysis we call these defenses. There is another observation I have made which has been the subject of this essay and which underlies my being compelled to call "The Molecules Of….". When I thought of the molecule - this very tiny unit - known since the time of Empedocles and since then added to by many scientists, I noted one characteristic of the molecule is its balance.

One sees interconnections from one molecule to another. These interconnections are called bonds and we have different names for the increasing complexities of the entities that evolve from different configurations of bonded molecules. Many have noted that some entities have strong bonds and this strikes me as particularly similar to human feelings and human relationships from the beginning onward. We even say we are bonded to the mother and to the family. Bonds are especially powerful -- both conscious and unconscious bonds. It is the unconscious part of the bond that the most powerful and, when those unconscious bonds work along with the imprint, we as analysts have a formidable task in front of us to undo those bonds and to undo the imprint.

Naturally the strongest bond is between the fetus and the mother. Ironically from the mother's unconscious come the molecules and bonds that unwittingly traumatized the fetus. In the real world this bond is the paradigm for masochism and sadism. It is also the paradigm for masters and slaves.

In the cases of both, that is imprints and bonds, the patients feel more threatened as we get closer through the analytic work to those deeply protected sources of the patient’s psychological makeup. An inordinate amount of fear is triggered and this is the remnant of the fear of the fetus organism receiving an unexpected trauma of such proportion that I have called it the "big bang", likening it to the beginning of the Universe as it came into existence. It is this fear that compels a patient to leave the analytic work whatever the conscious rationalization may be. If, however, the patient is hardy enough, we can come to the level of the person described above in this essay and we can see a molecular pattern of life establish itself - opinions, attitudes, values handed down in everyday life by the mother and the father.

These molecular patterns can coalesce so that they can be recognized by diagnostic names: for example obsessive compulsive, borderline, anxiety hysteria, etc. To really change any of these categories, or any other listed in DSM-5 (the fifth edition of “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” published by the American Psychiatric Association) many of which are symptom complexes, a therapist would have to get down to the individual imprint and to the early molecular constellation. The analyst and patient would have to work very deeply to further weaken the imprint to the point where it has no valence in the patient's life and to free the molecules from the bonds that hold them in a recognizable psychological pathologic state.

It is to be understood that such a process is one that will leave the patient feeling that the floor has given way and he/she will be suffused with the fear of endlessly falling in space. The therapist would have taken away all recognized pattern molecules by which he/she has lived. Yet that is exactly what one must do to give the patient the freedom and the choice to combine the "molecules" into whatever pattern he/she desires. What the patient will find in this state is a kind of internal quantum mechanics, molecules flying every which way.

Finally in this work of psychoanalysis we are splitting structures that will come apart with great energy released, as indeed great energy was expended when they came together. These times can be dangerous for patients; however, we must remember that by the time patients come to this point, they have already come into significant segments of change, into significant ego changes for sanity and perception as to choices for the future. This future will be patterned by the patient with all the knowledge we have at this current time of imprints and molecular bonds of behavior.