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Why You Dream of Intruders: The Hidden Meaning of Break-In Dreams · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: The way that traumatic intrusive thoughts work is you don't
0:04
Speaker 1: want to think about it, but you kind of can't
0:06
Speaker 1: stop thinking about it. It just comes unbidden into your
0:10
Speaker 1: mind all the time. And it does visit you as
0:13
Speaker 1: an intruder. Now, I think that any intruder is usually
0:18
Speaker 1: a psychic intruder is asking for integration.
0:25
Speaker 2: Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:30
Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:34
Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:37
Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:43
Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:47
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:52
Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
1:07
Speaker 1: From time to time on the podcast, we like to
1:09
Speaker 1: look at certain kinds of dreams because, of course, dreams
1:12
Speaker 1: are very individual. What your dream means is very particular
1:17
Speaker 1: to you. However, there are common themes in dreams, and
1:22
Speaker 1: we like to explore those from time to time. So
1:24
Speaker 1: this week on the podcast, we're going to be looking
1:27
Speaker 1: at intruders. What do intruders mean psychologically? And specifically, what
1:32
Speaker 1: do they mean when they show up in our dreams?
1:35
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I looked up in
1:38
Speaker 1: preparation for this episode is the etymology of intrusion. As
1:42
Speaker 1: you know, we like to look at the meanings of
1:43
Speaker 1: the words because there are layers of meaning attached to words.
1:47
Speaker 1: An intruder comes from two Latin words, from in, which
1:51
Speaker 1: means into or toward, and trudere, which means to thrust
1:56
Speaker 1: or to push. So something pushes or.
2:04
Speaker 5: Joseph, I'll let you go there.
2:05
Speaker 3: I don't know. But please continue.
2:12
Speaker 1: What pushes or thrusts its way into our lives? And
2:17
Speaker 1: how does this show up in dreams? And how can
2:19
Speaker 1: we understand that?
2:20
Speaker 4: And I'm thinking just about the definition here and the
2:24
Speaker 4: word itself of intruder. Something comes in without our consent.
2:29
Speaker 3: The ego's consent.
2:30
Speaker 4: Yes, the ego's consent.
2:32
Speaker 3: Exactly.
2:32
Speaker 4: Exactly. And it's often perceived as very unwelcome and manifests
2:40
Speaker 4: in dreams often in very negative ways from the point
2:45
Speaker 4: of view of the dream ego. That somebody breaks down
2:50
Speaker 4: the door or climbs in a window or, you know,
2:53
Speaker 4: a hundred variations on that theme. And the dream ego
2:57
Speaker 4: often goes, I don't like this, or it finds it dangerous,
3:02
Speaker 4: but you know, some way it's usually perceived initially as unwelcome.
3:08
Speaker 3: Right. So it's like, if your house is on fire,
3:11
Speaker 3: the fireman is kind of an intruder, but he's a
3:13
Speaker 3: welcome intruder. Right. But if you have a drug and
3:17
Speaker 3: alcohol problem, your family does an intervention, that intrusion is
3:20
Speaker 3: something people are often very ambivalent about.
3:22
Speaker 4: Yeah.
3:23
Speaker 3: But both might actually save your life.
3:25
Speaker 5: That's interesting.
3:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
3:27
Speaker 3: But the ego's got to figure out its relationship to
3:32
Speaker 3: the The force or the experience it didn't consciously invite.
3:37
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. That's great. I like that framing.
3:41
Speaker 4: And as we know, because we selected it for this
3:46
Speaker 4: week's podcast, intruder dreams are ubiquitous.
3:51
Speaker 2: Yes.
3:52
Speaker 4: There are some other themes that I think almost everybody
3:55
Speaker 4: has had a dream about this. So almost everybody has
3:59
Speaker 4: had some kind of a dream about intruders.
4:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say that it's probably the most
4:05
Speaker 1: common kind of dream that I hear in my practice.
4:08
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if you guys have that too.
4:10
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not, it's not like I hear one
4:12
Speaker 1: every week or anything, but, but like you said, Deb,
4:15
Speaker 1: it's fairly, it's fairly ubiquitous. Like someone's, you know, I
4:18
Speaker 1: think about it, someone's trying to get in the house.
4:20
Speaker 1: I didn't lock the door or I'm desperately trying to
4:23
Speaker 1: lock the door, but the person's pushing in. And then
4:25
Speaker 1: when I lock the door the person goes over to
4:27
Speaker 1: the window and they're often very very frightening and and
4:31
Speaker 1: we have when we have one of those dreams we
4:34
Speaker 1: have a tendency to think about oh something bad in
4:38
Speaker 1: my life is trying to hurt me so when we
4:41
Speaker 1: interpret it once we wake up we think like oh
4:44
Speaker 1: yeah you know that that boyfriend that i'm having trouble
4:47
Speaker 1: with that this is really him it's about him and
4:50
Speaker 1: the way he's trying to hurt me and i'm always
4:51
Speaker 1: like not so sure about that you know.
4:55
Speaker 3: So if we step way far away, I'm going to
4:58
Speaker 3: borrow an idea from Whitmont and Pereira in their book
5:02
Speaker 3: on dreaming.
5:03
Speaker 4: Portal to the Source.
5:05
Speaker 3: Portal to the Source. They have a category of dreams
5:08
Speaker 3: they call re-evaluation dreams or revisiting dreams. And they kind
5:15
Speaker 3: of group intruder dreams in that way. Because it may
5:18
Speaker 3: very well be that something that we have dissociated from
5:21
Speaker 3: or feared and pushed into the unconscious, which generally is
5:25
Speaker 3: either a feeling or a character trait, is kind of
5:28
Speaker 3: coming back for one more pass through that ego terrain
5:33
Speaker 3: to say, you sure you don't want a little bit
5:35
Speaker 3: of what I have to offer? You know, even if
5:37
Speaker 3: you're not sure about it or I make you a
5:39
Speaker 3: little anxious, but there is something to be considered if
5:45
Speaker 3: one can find that right attitude.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I really like that. Something to be considered. It
5:51
Speaker 4: presents itself often in a way that the dream ego
5:54
Speaker 4: and then the waking ego find aversive. But it's something
6:00
Speaker 4: to be considered. So we have a number of dreams
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Speaker 4: in which intruders manifest themselves, and we are going to
6:11
Speaker 4: consider these intruders. Well, let's start with this dream that
6:17
Speaker 4: comes from a 41-year-old woman. And it's a long dream,
6:21
Speaker 4: so just sit back and let yourself be read to
6:25
Speaker 4: and let it kind of flow over and through you.
6:29
Speaker 4: Here's the dream. The car that my husband and I
6:33
Speaker 4: own had broken down. The tow truck was a dromedary camel,
6:38
Speaker 4: which took the car on its back. In the morning,
6:41
Speaker 4: I looked out the window and saw that the dromedary
6:44
Speaker 4: was still sitting there on the corner of our street
6:48
Speaker 4: with the car on its back. I pointed this out
6:51
Speaker 4: to my husband. The dromedary had seen this and came
6:54
Speaker 4: back to check on us. Our apartment seemed more like
6:59
Speaker 4: an upscale version of the one we own in real life.
7:02
Speaker 4: It had two sliding windows spanning the entire length of
7:06
Speaker 4: the apartment, lots of plants and minimalist furnishings. I didn't
7:10
Speaker 4: see any books or travel souvenirs. Everything was quite stark.
7:15
Speaker 4: We had wooden floors and white sofas. Suddenly, the dromedary
7:20
Speaker 4: started stamping on the window with its hind legs like
7:22
Speaker 4: a madman with incredible force. It clearly had the intention
7:26
Speaker 4: to break it. I was scared, perhaps partly because of
7:30
Speaker 4: the animal's immense anger, but also because of the potential
7:35
Speaker 4: shards of glass that would fly around if he managed
7:38
Speaker 4: to break the window. I hid behind the couch. Eventually,
7:43
Speaker 4: he managed to kick a whole crack in the window
7:46
Speaker 4: from the top left corner to the bottom right. My
7:50
Speaker 4: husband stayed calm and was already looking online to see
7:53
Speaker 4: if we were insured for such damage, which turned out
7:57
Speaker 4: to be the case, but still a hassle dealing with
8:00
Speaker 4: the paperwork and repairing the window. Then the animal started again,
8:05
Speaker 4: now against the other window, and then my husband had
8:09
Speaker 4: had it. He slid the window open and the dromedary
8:13
Speaker 4: calmed down. It seemed like my husband was talking to him,
8:17
Speaker 4: like he'd invited him in. The moment the animal steps
8:21
Speaker 4: into the house, he transformed from a dromedary to a
8:24
Speaker 4: man in his early 30s with brown, slightly wavy hair
8:30
Speaker 4: wearing a black suit. I was scared of him at first.
8:34
Speaker 4: My husband walked him through our living room. Finally, when
8:39
Speaker 4: I saw he didn't do any harm, I took him
8:42
Speaker 4: by his arm and pulled him toward the cracked window.
8:45
Speaker 4: I moved the plant that was in front of it
8:47
Speaker 4: so he could see it clearly and said to him,
8:50
Speaker 4: You should see what you've done here. Do you see
8:52
Speaker 4: these circular cracks in the glass? It's all cracked and broken, right?
8:57
Speaker 4: That's not good, and you can't do that again. No
9:00
Speaker 4: more stomping. The way I said it was as if
9:05
Speaker 4: I was still convinced I was talking to an animal.
9:08
Speaker 4: or like a mother reprimanding him, the naughty boy. Then
9:13
Speaker 4: he wanted to dance with me, but I thought that
9:16
Speaker 4: wasn't possible since I'm married and it would be awkward,
9:19
Speaker 4: even disrespectful toward my husband. But it was my husband
9:23
Speaker 4: who said, oh yeah, just go ahead, he won't do
9:25
Speaker 4: any harm. And I waltzed with him briefly. The man
9:30
Speaker 4: seemed satisfied and walked back to the window. Just before
9:34
Speaker 4: he left, I noticed that the t-shirt he was wearing
9:37
Speaker 4: under his blazer was too short, as if he'd grown
9:40
Speaker 4: out of it, leaving his stomach partially exposed. He didn't
9:44
Speaker 4: have a big belly, he was more of a normal
9:47
Speaker 4: to slim figure, and he had belly hair, so it
9:51
Speaker 4: showed he was all grown up. And he seemed happy
9:54
Speaker 4: to have been allowed in, and then he simply left.
9:58
Speaker 4: He didn't speak during that whole time. For context, she says,
10:03
Speaker 4: I had this dream on the 11th of August in 2023.
10:07
Speaker 4: By then, I had been unable to work for more
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Speaker 4: than a year due to severe burnout following the breakup
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Speaker 4: with my family in 2019 and an untenable work situation
10:19
Speaker 4: from 2018 to 2022. I started Jungian analysis in March
10:27
Speaker 4: of 2022. She says the feelings in the dream were
10:30
Speaker 4: fear of the animal's immense strength and of the potential
10:34
Speaker 4: injury from the glass. Once I realized he didn't mean
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Speaker 4: us any harm, I dared to be firm with him.
10:41
Speaker 4: I think I actually enjoyed the dancing. And some other
10:45
Speaker 4: feelings and thoughts she adds are The dream was frightening, overwhelming, harm,
10:52
Speaker 4: broken boundaries, injuries, loss of control, and occasionally they can
10:58
Speaker 4: be allies. And she adds, it's remarkable how clean the
11:02
Speaker 4: house looked because at that time in real life, there
11:06
Speaker 4: was chaos in many areas of my life. The only
11:09
Speaker 4: good thing that was going on was my marriage. And
11:13
Speaker 4: even nowadays, it's difficult to keep the house decluttered because
11:17
Speaker 4: I love to spend time with my dream material, astrology,
11:20
Speaker 4: depth psychology. And when my current astrology course ends, I'm
11:24
Speaker 4: going to enroll in your dream school in March of 2026.
11:29
Speaker 4: So welcome aboard. I'm really looking forward to it. And
11:35
Speaker 4: she says her occupation is a data analyst. but currently
11:40
Speaker 4: trying to reorient my career by taking mythology and astrology courses.
11:44
Speaker 4: I also have a degree in psychology. Okay, here is
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Speaker 4: a lot here, but it's a very coherent story, isn't it?
11:55
Speaker 4: It's pretty easy to summarize. The tow truck, the car,
12:00
Speaker 4: how we get around in the world breaks down. A
12:04
Speaker 4: camel is the tow truck and simply puts the car
12:07
Speaker 4: on its back. And then this camel is outside stomping
12:13
Speaker 4: like a madman and breaks in by breaking windows. And
12:20
Speaker 4: then when our dream ego kind of takes a kind
12:24
Speaker 4: of a schoolmarm stance toward the camel of, don't you
12:28
Speaker 4: do this, that, that, that, they wind up dancing together.
12:32
Speaker 4: Her husband says, sure, go ahead. And she actually said
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Speaker 4: at the end, she enjoys the dance. and our dromedary
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Speaker 4: camel makes his departure.
12:43
Speaker 1: You know, the interesting thing about this dream as regards
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Speaker 1: intruders is the camel is trying to get in, and
12:50
Speaker 1: he's doing it in a way that's really quite frightening.
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Speaker 1: There could be shards of broken glass flying. He's very insistent.
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Speaker 1: He has immense force, and I think she even says
13:01
Speaker 1: anger or something. And then when it changes is the husband.
13:07
Speaker 1: Opens the window. So usually if you have an intruder
13:11
Speaker 1: trying to get in, you think, well, I need to
13:13
Speaker 1: close the window. But this husband, he says, my husband
13:16
Speaker 1: has had it. He slides open the window and then
13:20
Speaker 1: the camel calms down.
13:23
Speaker 5: So this goes.
13:24
Speaker 1: With what Jung says, that as we take a step
13:27
Speaker 1: toward the unconscious, it comes toward us, right? If we
13:31
Speaker 1: turn a fearful face toward the unconscious, it looks back
13:34
Speaker 1: at us in a frightful way. So then, the husband
13:38
Speaker 1: starts talking to him and invites him in. So at
13:42
Speaker 1: this point, he goes from being an intruder to a guest.
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Speaker 1: And this reminds me of a famous story from Tibetan
13:51
Speaker 1: Buddhism where Milarepa, he's a monk who lives this very
13:56
Speaker 1: solitary life. He leaves his cave to go out and
13:59
Speaker 1: collect firewood. And when he comes back, the whole cave
14:02
Speaker 1: is taken over by demons. And he frets and he
14:05
Speaker 1: shouts and he does all kinds of things to try
14:07
Speaker 1: to get rid of the demons and they're going nowhere.
14:10
Speaker 1: And finally he says, okay, looks like we're all going
14:14
Speaker 1: to be here together. What do you need to teach me?
14:17
Speaker 1: And at that point, they all disappear except one. And
14:22
Speaker 1: he says, okay, well then eat me if you wish.
14:27
Speaker 1: And at that moment, that last horrible demon just disappears.
14:33
Speaker 1: So it's something about our relationship with the unconscious. And
14:37
Speaker 1: what I want to say about this dream is that
14:39
Speaker 1: the husband is an incredibly positive figure in this dream.
14:44
Speaker 1: The husband seems to know how to relate to the unconscious.
14:48
Speaker 1: He's the one that knows how to talk to the camel,
14:51
Speaker 1: bring him in, which allows the camel to transform from
14:54
Speaker 1: a camel to a man, right? Now it's much closer
14:56
Speaker 1: to consciousness. And then he's the one that says, no,
15:00
Speaker 1: by all means, Go ahead and waltz with him.
15:03
Speaker 3: So there's a couple of different interesting barriers in this.
15:08
Speaker 3: So the first thing I'm seeing is that the vehicle
15:12
Speaker 3: of agency, the car, it's not working. You've kind of
15:16
Speaker 3: lost your agency. You're stuck. And there's a problem. And
15:22
Speaker 3: often when we lose agency, we feel ashamed. Yeah. And
15:28
Speaker 3: it's really hard to tolerate the shame. the dromedary tow
15:33
Speaker 3: truck is kind of carrying this kind of regression, this shame,
15:39
Speaker 3: this kind of failure. And it's a relief to go
15:42
Speaker 3: back inside and just kind of close yourself off from
15:45
Speaker 3: this kind of feeling of failure. But as it always is,
15:48
Speaker 3: I open the door a little later and there's my failure.
15:54
Speaker 3: Just looking at me and the dromedary is just holding
15:57
Speaker 3: your failure for you, just kind of looking over and Suddenly,
16:02
Speaker 3: having made a bit of eye contact, it comes towards
16:04
Speaker 3: and you lock the door. And the interesting thing is
16:07
Speaker 3: that the glass in the window is both the protection
16:14
Speaker 3: from the shame and what I would say in this dream,
16:17
Speaker 3: the cause of the shame. Because when the animus opens
16:22
Speaker 3: the window and lets it in, it becomes a man
16:28
Speaker 3: who And now she is conscious of feeling ashamed. I
16:32
Speaker 3: don't think she's ashamed to dance with him. And then
16:36
Speaker 3: the animus says, oh, do it anyway. Don't be ashamed.
16:42
Speaker 3: And so the animus allows her to dance with whatever
16:47
Speaker 3: that content is that she really wants to not tolerate.
16:54
Speaker 3: And it's okay. Because many of the filters that we
16:59
Speaker 3: put up to protect us from what we think will
17:02
Speaker 3: shame us happened in really early childhood. And those kinds
17:06
Speaker 3: of things generally wouldn't have the same corrosive effect if
17:09
Speaker 3: we met them in adult life.
17:13
Speaker 4: You know, what I'm building on here, there are two things.
17:19
Speaker 4: One is that the first appearance of the dromedary is
17:23
Speaker 4: really pretty magical. He takes the whole car in his
17:26
Speaker 4: back and walks along the street and presumably plops it
17:30
Speaker 4: back in their driveway. And then our dromedary basically waits
17:35
Speaker 4: all night long. And there he is. He's on the
17:41
Speaker 4: street corner. He came back to check on us.
17:46
Speaker 5: Wow.
17:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:48
Speaker 5: And then when.
17:49
Speaker 4: He's not immediately, I'm positing this, He's not immediately let
17:54
Speaker 4: in of like, oh, hi, you're still here. Thanks for
17:57
Speaker 4: bringing our car back. That was so great. Would you
18:00
Speaker 4: like some breakfast? No, it's terrible. And that's when he
18:04
Speaker 4: starts stomping and breaking windows. And part two is that
18:12
Speaker 4: when he does come in, our dream ego retrieves the
18:18
Speaker 4: agency that you were saying she had lost. with the
18:23
Speaker 4: breakdown of the vehicle that moves us through life. She
18:27
Speaker 4: has plenty of agency, and you could just see her
18:30
Speaker 4: shaking her finger, and you can't do that, and so
18:33
Speaker 4: on and so forth. And then comes transformation into a man,
18:39
Speaker 4: and next thing you know, they're dancing the dance of life.
18:44
Speaker 3: So she's had a burnout at work. Sounds like a
18:47
Speaker 3: broken car. Oh, right. Okay. You know, the vehicle of
18:52
Speaker 3: your career is kind of broken down.
18:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, she had a breakup with her family, a breakdown,
18:58
Speaker 4: another car. Right.
19:00
Speaker 3: What's one to do? And often something that's really painful
19:03
Speaker 3: and we're kind of looking somewhere else, it gets housed somewhere,
19:07
Speaker 3: at least temporarily when we're not, we don't feel strong
19:10
Speaker 3: enough to look at it.
19:13
Speaker 4: Well, and in this dream, there's a hint of what
19:17
Speaker 4: is to come. sort of like a foreshadowing in a
19:20
Speaker 4: story because she's housed in an apartment that's a more
19:26
Speaker 4: upscale version of the one we own in real life.
19:31
Speaker 4: Nice big sliding glass windows, lots of plants, everything neat
19:35
Speaker 4: and tidy, white sofas. Who would dare? But it kind
19:42
Speaker 4: of foreshadows that here's where you're living. in a more upscale, clean,
19:50
Speaker 4: minimalist environment with lovely sliding windows, sliding glass door windows.
19:59
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to bring up another
20:01
Speaker 1: thing about this dream that we haven't talked about. The camel,
20:04
Speaker 1: like it's a camel.
20:05
Speaker 3: Of all things.
20:06
Speaker 1: And so the camel is the intruder and camels can be,
20:09
Speaker 1: you know, they they they're big, they're powerful. So it
20:13
Speaker 1: is kind of scary to think of a camel, you know,
20:16
Speaker 1: barreling down your windows. But camels, of course, I mean,
20:20
Speaker 1: we try to think of sort of like what's the
20:22
Speaker 1: dominant about a camel? And it's that they can go
20:25
Speaker 1: for really long periods of time. They're adapted to live
20:28
Speaker 1: in the desert. You know, the time frame of the
20:32
Speaker 1: associations is interesting because you get the sense she had
20:36
Speaker 1: a sort of difficult period that lasted for a number
20:39
Speaker 1: of years. The intrusion from the unconscious was the thing
20:44
Speaker 1: that was going to give her the sustenance, the energy,
20:49
Speaker 1: the liquid, you know, the water reserves. Although they don't
20:54
Speaker 1: store water in their hump, they store fat. I was
20:57
Speaker 1: just looking it up. But the point is, they can
20:59
Speaker 1: go for a really long time without drinking. So, you know,
21:04
Speaker 1: the unconscious was saying, this is what you need.
21:06
Speaker 5: You need me. I'm tough. I'm adapted to this. I
21:10
Speaker 5: can get you through it. You got to waltz with me.
21:13
Speaker 4: Yeah. And camels get you through the dry spell.
21:17
Speaker 3: The inhospitable terrain. Yeah.
21:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, the desert where nothing grows and it's barren. You know,
21:25
Speaker 4: like those periods when, you know, a lot of us
21:29
Speaker 4: have experienced it and so have I, of that, you know,
21:33
Speaker 4: career change, loss of a job. Now what? I don't know.
21:38
Speaker 4: But they get you through a transition. They're also, by
21:42
Speaker 4: the way, very ornery. Camels are extremely disagreeable.
21:48
Speaker 1: I once.
21:50
Speaker 4: went to India and they have something called the Camel
21:53
Speaker 4: Fair and the Pushkar Camel Fair. And I don't know
21:58
Speaker 4: how many camels there were, a couple of billion.
22:00
Speaker 3: I think.
22:01
Speaker 4: And you could hear them screeching and protesting. And I
22:07
Speaker 4: kind of really like the image of that, too, of
22:11
Speaker 4: that this is a creature that has a real sense
22:15
Speaker 4: of self, of what you want might not be what
22:18
Speaker 4: I want, but You know, we're going to kind of
22:21
Speaker 4: wrangle it out together if need be.
22:24
Speaker 3: Now, she's also said that she's burned out. That's kind
22:27
Speaker 3: of a collapse of voluntary propulsion. She's like a car
22:31
Speaker 3: that's run out of gas. And so something much more
22:35
Speaker 3: archaic comes in to carry something or other. It's not
22:40
Speaker 3: carrying the ego, but it is carrying something that you're
22:44
Speaker 3: aware needs repair or more gas or somehow. is abiding
22:51
Speaker 3: through the dark night of your soul, so to speak.
22:56
Speaker 3: And it's fine because, you know, the camel's totally prepared
23:00
Speaker 3: to walk across the desert of the dark night in
23:02
Speaker 3: the soul. In fact, it's totally built for that. Right.
23:06
Speaker 5: We should all have an inner camel.
23:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything's fine. There it is on the corner waving
23:12
Speaker 3: its little two-toed thing. Lo and behold. And something that
23:18
Speaker 3: the unconscious has carried now must be returned as it
23:22
Speaker 3: ever is. Which is kind of almost like a definition
23:24
Speaker 3: of analysis in and of itself. And the dreams often
23:29
Speaker 3: give it back to us. And often long after we've
23:32
Speaker 3: forgotten it. Like I didn't even know the camel was
23:35
Speaker 3: carrying my car. I thought I left that car behind
23:38
Speaker 3: when I was 30 and now it comes back when
23:39
Speaker 3: I'm 40.
23:40
Speaker 4: Yeah.
23:42
Speaker 3: The unconscious has an interesting preserving salt-like capacity.
23:47
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I'm thinking that her associations to the dream
23:53
Speaker 4: were really pretty negative, frightening, overwhelming, harm, broken boundaries, injuries,
23:59
Speaker 4: loss of control. And the dream actually delivers a very
24:03
Speaker 4: different message, doesn't it?
24:06
Speaker 1: Let's look at another one, another one of our dreams.
24:12
Speaker 1: And this comes from a woman who's 31 years old.
24:15
Speaker 1: And here's the dream. It's nighttime and I'm tidying and
24:19
Speaker 1: packing items up in my grandparents' house, a 1920s craftsman,
24:24
Speaker 1: with wide open cartonless windows all around the perimeter of
24:27
Speaker 1: the house and a large porch in the front. I'm
24:30
Speaker 1: with an employee I just hired a couple of weeks
24:32
Speaker 1: ago who is very sweet and about eight years younger
24:34
Speaker 1: than I am and whom I'm mentoring. The porch light
24:38
Speaker 1: comes on suddenly and I tell my employee to lock
24:41
Speaker 1: the door because I sense that something wants to get in. Instead,
24:45
Speaker 1: she opens it and outside, a young woman with long
24:48
Speaker 1: dark hair and blank white eyes, no pupils or irises,
24:52
Speaker 1: is trying to stumble her way in. Her movements are
24:56
Speaker 1: slow and her shoulders are hunched. She doesn't speak. It
25:00
Speaker 1: seems like she's half alive, as if whoever created her
25:03
Speaker 1: didn't finish the project and forgot to give her eyes
25:06
Speaker 1: or a soul. She doesn't seem dangerous and appears rather pitiful, weak, confused,
25:11
Speaker 1: and lost. Yet I am terrified of her. I scream,
25:15
Speaker 1: push her out, and slam the door shut. I wake
25:18
Speaker 1: up in a sweat. So here's some context. I have
25:22
Speaker 1: a stable, demanding career path that leaves me feeling empty,
25:26
Speaker 1: and I want to leave the city I grew up
25:27
Speaker 1: in but don't know what to do or where to go.
25:30
Speaker 1: I am also recovering from a traumatic childhood and a
25:34
Speaker 1: young adulthood and seeing a wonderful therapist and trying to individuate.
25:39
Speaker 1: The main feelings in the dream, it started with anxious busyness,
25:43
Speaker 1: I am frantically packing and tidying even though I have
25:45
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. It turned into fear when the porch
25:48
Speaker 1: light came on and then sheer terror when the girl
25:51
Speaker 1: tried to get in. I felt disturbed upon waking. And
25:56
Speaker 1: her associations to intruders? The girl was petite and had
26:01
Speaker 1: long dark hair like me. I frequently dream of my
26:04
Speaker 1: grandparents' house, my only safe and stable place as a child,
26:08
Speaker 1: and there are often ominous intruders trying to get into
26:11
Speaker 1: this house during these dreams. Dreams set in the house
26:14
Speaker 1: always feel significant and memorable to me. I also frequently
26:18
Speaker 1: dream of intruders that leave me feeling terrified and helpless
26:21
Speaker 1: as I try to prevent them from getting in. And
26:24
Speaker 1: she notes that she's a fundraiser for a non-profit. So
26:30
Speaker 1: some similar themes perhaps to the last one, but also
26:33
Speaker 1: very unique.
26:36
Speaker 3: So I think what's different, you know, with the dream
26:38
Speaker 3: we just read is the animus helps the ego and
26:44
Speaker 3: demonstrates this welcoming capacity and it turns into something very positive,
26:49
Speaker 3: this dream is really caught in the tension. It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
26:54
Speaker 3: Whatever that girl represents, the ego is really, really fighting it.
27:00
Speaker 3: But there is an employee who perhaps knows something that
27:08
Speaker 3: could be different. Right, so....
27:12
Speaker 1: The employee seems like a potential shadow figure, one who might,
27:18
Speaker 1: as you said, Joseph, have a different way of relating
27:21
Speaker 1: to this unconscious content.
27:24
Speaker 4: It's a really very interesting shadow figure. Dream Ego is
27:31
Speaker 4: the boss. This other figure is the employee. So she
27:35
Speaker 4: violates supervisory entitlement and hierarchy. She said, don't answer the door.
27:45
Speaker 4: This is like a fairy tale. So what's going to
27:48
Speaker 4: happen next?
27:50
Speaker 3: Of course. Snow White always opens the door.
27:52
Speaker 5: That's right.
27:56
Speaker 4: Exactly. She says, lock the door. And instead, she opens it.
28:01
Speaker 4: And here comes this puzzling second shadow figure, the young
28:06
Speaker 4: woman with long, dark hair, like that of the dreamer.
28:11
Speaker 4: And blank white eyes, no pupils or irises, trying to
28:15
Speaker 4: stumble her way in. What's interesting is our dream ego
28:19
Speaker 4: is terrified of her, even though she doesn't seem dangerous,
28:24
Speaker 4: and instead appears pitiful, weak, confused, and lost. So instead
28:31
Speaker 4: of having the sense of, oh my goodness, this poor waif.
28:36
Speaker 3: Needs help. It's interesting that the house... is also connected
28:42
Speaker 3: with the ancestors, that there is some kind of safe
28:46
Speaker 3: inherited structure, perhaps even the only safe place in childhood.
28:52
Speaker 3: So I might say that the setting is the kind
28:55
Speaker 3: of core security complex, and she's really determined to take
29:02
Speaker 3: that role of, you know, nothing's going to, change my
29:08
Speaker 3: security complex without my permission. And it's as if the
29:13
Speaker 3: security complex itself is inhabiting her, that she's become like
29:19
Speaker 3: a sentinel on behalf of the house as a complex.
29:24
Speaker 3: And the shadow figure, or perhaps the uncanny, more confident
29:30
Speaker 3: part of her, is showing something else. You know, maybe
29:37
Speaker 3: this is not such a big deal, but she can't,
29:40
Speaker 3: she's not ready yet.
29:42
Speaker 1: Part of what I wonder about this dream is that,
29:45
Speaker 1: I mean, it feels very relevant to me that she
29:48
Speaker 1: has a traumatic history. Because when we have trauma, and
29:51
Speaker 1: trauma by definition is experience that hasn't been able to
29:55
Speaker 1: be metabolized.
29:57
Speaker 4: Right.
29:58
Speaker 1: And so literally those contents are intruders in our lives.
30:02
Speaker 1: I mean, actually, if you look at the DSM criteria
30:07
Speaker 1: for the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, one of them
30:10
Speaker 1: is intrusive thoughts. So what happens when you've had a trauma,
30:15
Speaker 1: I used to work with Vietnam vets who'd had traumatic
30:19
Speaker 1: experiences in Vietnam and the way that traumatic intrusive thoughts
30:23
Speaker 1: work is You don't want to think about it, but
30:27
Speaker 1: you kind of can't stop thinking about it. It just
30:29
Speaker 1: comes unbidden into your mind all the time. You see
30:33
Speaker 1: it again. You see your buddy being, you know, blown
30:36
Speaker 1: up by the device or whatever it is. And it
30:39
Speaker 1: does visit you as an intruder. Now, I think that
30:45
Speaker 1: any intruder is usually a psychic intruder is asking for integration.
30:52
Speaker 1: So this poor woman, and I think it shows, I mean,
30:55
Speaker 1: you can tell she's doing psychological work, right? Because now
30:57
Speaker 1: she knows that this woman is, what does she say?
31:01
Speaker 1: That she's, you know, she's pathetic. She needs help. The
31:07
Speaker 1: dream ego can recognize that it's still too frightening to
31:11
Speaker 1: think about engaging with her, although there's a part of
31:15
Speaker 1: consciousness or a part of the personality, I should say,
31:17
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure it's really conscious, that's like, yeah,
31:20
Speaker 1: come on in. But, you know, she's in a therapeutic process.
31:24
Speaker 1: My imagination is that dreams subsequent to this one will
31:29
Speaker 1: show her being able to engage with those parts of
31:32
Speaker 1: herself that have been defensively lopped off, but now are
31:37
Speaker 1: seeking integration. And of course, if, you know, one suggestion
31:41
Speaker 1: to this woman, if it feels safe and perhaps in
31:44
Speaker 1: conjunction with your therapist, is you might want to do
31:47
Speaker 1: an active imagination. This is a part of you. That's
31:52
Speaker 1: been expelled and now is coming back.
31:55
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I'm paying attention to the image of these
31:58
Speaker 4: eyes that would be, you know, very upsetting and off-putting
32:05
Speaker 4: to see just blank white spaces where.
32:09
Speaker 5: Eyes should be.
32:10
Speaker 4: And eyes are often very much a symbol of consciousness,
32:15
Speaker 4: you know, of what we can see. And we say
32:19
Speaker 4: things like that all the time. Oh, I see what
32:20
Speaker 4: you mean. I see your point, that there is something
32:26
Speaker 4: that is so lost and confused that is very unconscious
32:33
Speaker 4: and pitiful, weak, confused, and lost. And that that is
32:37
Speaker 4: content that is very, very hard to let into the safe,
32:43
Speaker 4: stable space of the grandparents' house.
32:46
Speaker 3: Now, windows are often thought of as kind of the
32:49
Speaker 3: eyes of the house, and there's a lot of energy
32:52
Speaker 3: around the wide open the curtain lists they're around the
32:55
Speaker 3: entire perimeter right which also is kind of a picture
32:59
Speaker 3: of a nervous system that is hyper aroused yeah that
33:05
Speaker 3: there's kind of too many open channels putting information in
33:09
Speaker 3: that she is scanning and trying to organize and be
33:13
Speaker 3: very very vigilant about what could get into my nervous
33:17
Speaker 3: system or my life or my mind And we see
33:20
Speaker 3: that kind of high alert energy. And the girl who
33:26
Speaker 3: comes in or presents is also kind of a house.
33:29
Speaker 3: She has energy inside the body of the house, but
33:33
Speaker 3: her windows to her soul have been blacked out. I
33:37
Speaker 3: don't know what to make of it, but it's interesting.
33:41
Speaker 3: She's unfinished in some way or impaired or perhaps maybe
33:47
Speaker 3: even benefiting from from the darkening of the eyes so
33:50
Speaker 3: that they're not like blazingly searching all the time, you know,
33:55
Speaker 3: which can be exhausting.
33:58
Speaker 4: That's a good metaphor of who sees how we see,
34:02
Speaker 4: what can't be seen, what we can bear to see.
34:07
Speaker 3: So the other thing that I would think is that
34:09
Speaker 3: the girl that comes in and she's so uncanny, she's
34:13
Speaker 3: kind of unfinished. And one of the things that that
34:17
Speaker 3: I might associate that with is the golem, which is
34:22
Speaker 3: this protective creature that is made out of mud by
34:28
Speaker 3: the Jewish community that is in desperate circumstance and needs
34:31
Speaker 3: help and needs protection. Has she summoned the golem but
34:38
Speaker 3: can't recognize that she has summoned it? Hmm. So she
34:44
Speaker 3: just treats it as unwelcome and strange and frightening and intruding.
34:50
Speaker 3: But the strange thing about the intruder dreams is you
34:56
Speaker 3: actually summoned, something in you summoned the content back. Right.
35:04
Speaker 3: We just don't remember it. Or the part of us
35:07
Speaker 3: that beckoned is just a little bit behind us, like
35:11
Speaker 3: the servant. Like we can imagine that girls may be
35:14
Speaker 3: behind her looking at, you know, the girl with the
35:16
Speaker 3: dark eye saying, come on in. And the ego's like,
35:19
Speaker 3: don't you let anyone in there. So there's a way
35:22
Speaker 3: in which things are working around us and behind us
35:26
Speaker 3: that often will trick the ego to try to get
35:30
Speaker 3: it out of the stuck place, out of its defenses, perhaps.
35:35
Speaker 3: So she's left in a lot of distress. And so
35:38
Speaker 3: one of the medicines in the dream is to regard
35:43
Speaker 3: wow look at how much energy how much distress gets
35:50
Speaker 3: activated when you feel that you cannot control what comes
35:56
Speaker 3: in to you into your mind into the body what
36:00
Speaker 3: activates the feelings and there's a fierce determination to stay
36:07
Speaker 3: regulated it's neither good nor bad it's just a picture
36:14
Speaker 3: of it. And it's kind of up to the dream ego, like, well,
36:18
Speaker 3: is that okay with me? Do I think this requires
36:22
Speaker 3: some intervention or not? It's not clear yet.
36:26
Speaker 5: Joseph, do you want to pick another dream?
36:29
Speaker 3: All right. Our dreamer is a 30-year-old female, and here
36:34
Speaker 3: is her dream. I've had two very similar dreams recently
36:39
Speaker 3: within a short time frame. The first is that I'm
36:43
Speaker 3: living in a flat, feels like a university accommodation, quiet, small, dark,
36:50
Speaker 3: and one day arrive home to realize that the letting agency,
36:55
Speaker 3: the rental agency, has hired out one of the rooms
37:00
Speaker 3: without me knowing. The new tenant has let himself in,
37:05
Speaker 3: written a note on the fridge to introduce himself, and
37:08
Speaker 3: started to fill the fridge with his food. which was
37:11
Speaker 3: boxes and boxes of bologna.
37:15
Speaker 4: Bolognese.
37:17
Speaker 3: Oh, no, it's bolognese, but I'm going to call it
37:19
Speaker 3: bologna because she's very upset with it, and most people
37:22
Speaker 3: are upset by bologna. But maybe it's bolognese. I'm not sure.
37:29
Speaker 3: I love bologna and bolognese, but I'm very upset. The
37:33
Speaker 3: second dream is I arrive home, this time to a house, bright, spacious,
37:38
Speaker 3: white walls, and with friends. and I go into the
37:41
Speaker 3: kitchen to make a cup of tea and realize there's
37:44
Speaker 3: a woman in there of a similar age, and I
37:47
Speaker 3: couldn't figure out whether she lived there or not, and
37:50
Speaker 3: I didn't know who she was or why she was there.
37:55
Speaker 3: So much less frightening than the one we just talked
37:57
Speaker 3: about where she's really in a terror. This is kind
38:00
Speaker 3: of a dream of, she's really offended more than frightened.
38:06
Speaker 3: She's like, what are all these cases of bolognese or bologna.
38:10
Speaker 3: Get away to my house.
38:12
Speaker 4: And that is what's making us laugh right off the
38:15
Speaker 4: bat that we played around with it is, first of all,
38:19
Speaker 4: I really like the term from probably, I'm guessing, the
38:23
Speaker 4: UK of the letting agency instead of the rental agency.
38:27
Speaker 5: That's right.
38:28
Speaker 4: Somebody let this person in and look at the, you know,
38:34
Speaker 4: the terrible travesty that has taken place. It's boxes and
38:39
Speaker 4: boxes of bolognese or bologna. The dream maker can have
38:45
Speaker 4: such a sense of humor of here is what has
38:48
Speaker 4: intruded upon you. Boxes of Italian food.
38:52
Speaker 3: Right. Which actually is a resource, which is often when
38:56
Speaker 3: the animus shows up, sometimes it's bearing gifts.
39:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.
39:00
Speaker 1: And she says her associations with bolognese is my go-to
39:04
Speaker 1: meal when I don't know what to cook. So, right,
39:07
Speaker 1: it's a resource.
39:08
Speaker 3: So he's trying to help her out, you know?
39:11
Speaker 5: She likes it.
39:13
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think about this,
39:15
Speaker 1: it's really, they're both charming.
39:17
Speaker 5: It's like, wait, what are you doing here?
39:19
Speaker 1: I love this guy's like, can you imagine you come
39:21
Speaker 1: home and there's just like some guy and he's like.
39:24
Speaker 3: A stranger stocking your refrigerator against your will.
39:29
Speaker 5: He's like, hi, I'm your new roommate. You know, it's
39:32
Speaker 5: it's very funny. But it does.
39:35
Speaker 1: It's a great, great, great illustration of the fact that
39:39
Speaker 1: the ego thinks that it is the master in the house.
39:43
Speaker 1: And it's not. That we think, our conscious personality thinks,
39:48
Speaker 1: this is all there is. I'm in charge here. And
39:52
Speaker 1: then we kind of become aware of like, wait a minute.
39:55
Speaker 1: There's like a whole multitude of other people living in
39:59
Speaker 1: my psychic house with me.
40:01
Speaker 5: And I don't have control over them all.
40:04
Speaker 3: Now, she's getting brought back to the university house because maybe...
40:09
Speaker 3: remembering that she used to be able to tolerate sharing space,
40:14
Speaker 3: tolerate not knowing quite as much as we do when
40:17
Speaker 3: we're older. There's an invitation, like, can you remember that
40:21
Speaker 3: it kind of was okay to have things be a
40:24
Speaker 3: little loosey-goosey around you?
40:27
Speaker 4: Some other force in the psyche, I'm building on what
40:30
Speaker 4: you were saying, some other says, no, you're not just
40:34
Speaker 4: a sole determiner of what Or who gets into your house?
40:39
Speaker 4: Because there is a letting agency who lets this man
40:45
Speaker 4: with all these boxes of bolognese in. So there, what
40:50
Speaker 4: are you going to do with this? And in the
40:53
Speaker 4: second dream, we don't know how she got in, but
40:56
Speaker 4: there she is making herself at home. In the dream,
41:01
Speaker 4: he goes, I don't know who she is or why
41:03
Speaker 4: she's there. Well, Here is what the rest of you,
41:07
Speaker 4: the dream maker, as we like to call this energy, says,
41:13
Speaker 4: here she is. We're presenting you with something that, something,
41:18
Speaker 4: someone you don't know who lives in your house, in
41:23
Speaker 4: your apartment.
41:25
Speaker 5: Who might have much bolognese.
41:26
Speaker 3: So like this goes into the category of the friendly threat.
41:32
Speaker 4: Ah.
41:34
Speaker 3: And by the way, people do complain about their neighbors
41:38
Speaker 3: that are a little overly friendly. God, they want to
41:40
Speaker 3: come over all the time. Every time I see them,
41:43
Speaker 3: they like are asking me to come over and party
41:45
Speaker 3: with them. But what is it about the friendly invitation
41:52
Speaker 3: that we're just so ambivalent about? How are we wired
41:55
Speaker 3: that friendliness somehow doesn't sit right with us? How did
42:00
Speaker 3: that happen? I love filling the fridge. I just think that's,
42:05
Speaker 3: That's just a fantastic thing to complain about.
42:10
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think the thing that all three
42:13
Speaker 1: of these dreams have in common is the intruder is
42:16
Speaker 1: something that is not ego, that has been pushed or
42:23
Speaker 1: thrust into awareness in some way, shape or form. And
42:26
Speaker 1: it can be very very distressing and frightening as we
42:30
Speaker 1: saw in that second dream. It can be a little
42:32
Speaker 1: bit absurd and silly like it is in this dream,
42:35
Speaker 1: or it can be, it can change and transform as
42:40
Speaker 1: it did in the first dream. And Joseph, I really
42:42
Speaker 1: like what you said sort of at the top. It's
42:44
Speaker 1: like even when we think that the intruder is an
42:49
Speaker 1: unwelcome stranger, somehow some part of us has issued that invitation.
42:56
Speaker 3: The shoemaker and the elves. Like in the middle of
43:00
Speaker 3: the night, some little helpers kind of come in, which
43:03
Speaker 3: is kind of scary and turns out to be kind
43:07
Speaker 3: of wonderful. So the idea of the secret benefactors, the brownies,
43:13
Speaker 3: the house spirit, the elves, kind of show up because
43:19
Speaker 3: something is watching you from the deep part of the unconscious,
43:25
Speaker 3: And in the 11th hour, we'll try to provide what
43:28
Speaker 3: is needed.
43:30
Speaker 1: And you may, the ego may feel very threatened by that.
43:34
Speaker 1: Or I think the other thing that's somewhere in all
43:36
Speaker 1: of these dreams is, is the intruder is going to
43:39
Speaker 1: demand that the ego attitude change.
43:43
Speaker 4: Yes.
43:44
Speaker 5: And that is always upsetting.
43:47
Speaker 4: Yeah. I really like what you said, Joseph, about the
43:50
Speaker 4: friendly threat, because in the first dream, The new tenant
43:55
Speaker 4: wrote a note and left it on the refrigerator to
43:58
Speaker 4: introduce himself. Hi, here I am. My name is whatever.
44:03
Speaker 4: And there's all this good stuff, presumably. It sounds good
44:07
Speaker 4: to me in their fridge. And in the second dream,
44:10
Speaker 4: the woman who just is there when our dream ego
44:13
Speaker 4: comes in, she says that this person is friendly and
44:18
Speaker 4: calm and seemed comfortable.
44:21
Speaker 5: She's right at home. I'm like, hi.
44:24
Speaker 4: So I think this has to do with a place
44:29
Speaker 4: in development of just a realization that your ego is
44:34
Speaker 4: not the sole force in your psyche. Nothing bad has happened,
44:40
Speaker 4: but you, dream ego, didn't choose it.
44:43
Speaker 1: Right.
44:43
Speaker 4: You didn't approve it. You didn't talk with the rental agency.
44:47
Speaker 4: You didn't screen the new tenant. You didn't agree to it.
44:52
Speaker 5: And, hmm.
44:53
Speaker 4: What else is happening in your life that you haven't
44:57
Speaker 4: chosen or decided or agreed to that actually could be helpful, interesting,
45:05
Speaker 4: or a real addition to your life, including bolognese?
45:11
Speaker 3: Exactly. Bounties of bolognese, bologna, bolognese. Dinner's ready. But one
45:18
Speaker 3: of the questions that we could ask for when we
45:21
Speaker 3: think we're under threat, ask ourselves, I'm so worked up
45:25
Speaker 3: by the dream or I'm so worked up by my coworker.
45:29
Speaker 3: Am I harmed or am I offended? Because we can
45:34
Speaker 3: get confused. Both can activate the nervous system. But sometimes
45:39
Speaker 3: we just we treat something that's just kind of offending
45:41
Speaker 3: our sensibilities. Like, my God, I didn't choose to get
45:45
Speaker 3: all that stuff in the fridge. But I don't need
45:47
Speaker 3: to treat that like an assault. Right. I mean, it
45:51
Speaker 3: just may offend me that somebody just was a bit
45:54
Speaker 3: entitled around the refrigerator. That's handleable. We can kind of
45:59
Speaker 3: tolerate being slightly offended because it didn't meet our expectations.
46:03
Speaker 3: But we have a tendency to think it's more dangerous
46:07
Speaker 3: than it might actually be.
46:09
Speaker 4: And you could also just be curious.
46:12
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
46:13
Speaker 4: There's the note on the fridge. I have a new tenant.
46:16
Speaker 4: He introduces himself. All this food in the refrigerator.
46:20
Speaker 5: What the heck? Who is he?
46:23
Speaker 4: Wait a minute. But obviously it's not bad that what
46:29
Speaker 4: is there is interesting, tasty, nourishing.
46:34
Speaker 3: Exactly.
46:35
Speaker 4: The intrusion makes for a very nice dinner. Mm-hmm. And
46:41
Speaker 4: it would seem like at least a week's worth of dinners.
46:44
Speaker 4: Same thing in the second dream. The woman is comfortable
46:47
Speaker 4: and friendly. So the dream ego's attitude might be one
46:52
Speaker 4: of curiosity. How did you get here?
46:54
Speaker 3: Tell me about yourself.
46:55
Speaker 4: What's up?
46:57
Speaker 3: I also want to just lean a tiny bit in,
46:59
Speaker 3: which we can't say this, but this was my analysis.
47:03
Speaker 3: And I would say... One, what's your relationship to food?
47:08
Speaker 3: But it reminds me a little bit of the way
47:13
Speaker 3: some kids are very ambivalent about taking in food from
47:17
Speaker 3: the parents. Like, it's hard to get the kids to eat.
47:23
Speaker 3: And there's a tension in some archetypal way between getting
47:28
Speaker 3: food into the baby and the one who has the
47:31
Speaker 3: duty to keep that baby up and running. a fraught
47:38
Speaker 3: relationship with whether or not life is permitted to feed you,
47:46
Speaker 3: or whether I'm going to spit out anything that somebody
47:50
Speaker 3: else gives me, a good idea, advice, an opportunity, a meal.
47:55
Speaker 3: I'm all going to spit it out because something about
47:58
Speaker 3: the early environment, which probably was a relational problem, the
48:03
Speaker 3: feelings I was fed, the way I was perceived, how
48:07
Speaker 3: I was spoken to was so distasteful, so upsetting, that
48:13
Speaker 3: I'm not going to let anyone feed me anything, that
48:16
Speaker 3: being fed becomes an intrusion. And then you're the only
48:22
Speaker 3: one who can feed you, which means all of life
48:26
Speaker 3: is kind of sitting there with like plates of stuff
48:31
Speaker 3: that it wants to share with you, but uh-uh-uh, I
48:34
Speaker 3: made that mistake once, not going to do it again.
48:37
Speaker 1: I want to offer just a quote that I think
48:39
Speaker 1: goes well with this dream. This is from The Collected Works.
48:42
Speaker 1: Jung says, in other words, they should not set the
48:45
Speaker 1: ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority,
48:48
Speaker 1: but should ever be mindful of the fact that it
48:51
Speaker 1: is not the sole master in its own house and
48:55
Speaker 1: is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call
48:58
Speaker 1: the unconscious. So, We all have intruders of all kinds
49:04
Speaker 1: all the time.
49:05
Speaker 3: What's another dream that we're interested in?
49:08
Speaker 1: This is a 28-year-old woman. Here's the dream. I woke
49:12
Speaker 1: up in my bed to see a stranger, a man,
49:15
Speaker 1: holding a glass of water for me and approaching to
49:17
Speaker 1: put it on my bedside table. I wanted to scream,
49:21
Speaker 1: but no sound came out. I woke up my husband,
49:23
Speaker 1: who looked baffled and totally unaware of the presence of
49:26
Speaker 1: the intruder in our house. I tried to speak to him,
49:29
Speaker 1: but again no sound came out. I got up from
49:32
Speaker 1: the bed and went to the door to find it unlocked.
49:35
Speaker 1: There was a key left in the lock, but it
49:37
Speaker 1: was neither mine nor my husband's. I assumed it was
49:39
Speaker 1: the intruder's. The keychain was red and yellow and had
49:43
Speaker 1: the icon of a firefighter on it. I tried to
49:46
Speaker 1: use it to lock the door, but it wouldn't turn.
49:49
Speaker 1: I took it out and used my key and it
49:51
Speaker 1: worked and I was relieved. It crossed my mind to
49:55
Speaker 1: check if my laptop had been stolen and I glanced
49:57
Speaker 1: to the left and saw that my entire desk had
49:59
Speaker 1: disappeared from the living room and the TV unit was
50:02
Speaker 1: put in its place. I realized we'd been robbed. I
50:05
Speaker 1: screamed at the top of my lungs in real life too.
50:09
Speaker 1: And that's when I woke up. And she says, I've
50:12
Speaker 1: recently been training as a psychotherapist to fulfill the requirements
50:15
Speaker 1: of my training. I've had to terminate my relationship with
50:18
Speaker 1: the therapist I'd been working with online for four years
50:21
Speaker 1: and to find a therapist who is locally accredited and
50:24
Speaker 1: with whom I can meet in person. I still haven't
50:26
Speaker 1: found a new therapist and I'm anxious about finding the
50:29
Speaker 1: right match. On the day I had this dream, something
50:33
Speaker 1: had triggered my retrospective jealousy and I reacted strongly, losing
50:37
Speaker 1: control for a bit and then feeling immensely ashamed. The
50:41
Speaker 1: main feelings were paralysis and terror and glimpses of safety.
50:45
Speaker 1: And she says, I associate intruders with evil and firefighters
50:49
Speaker 1: with safety and courage. Although it's so interesting, Joseph, you
50:53
Speaker 1: made that excellent point at the beginning that firefighters could
50:55
Speaker 1: be an intruder.
50:56
Speaker 3: You know, the first thing that just strikes me is,
51:02
Speaker 3: how violently the soul can respond to having your therapy
51:08
Speaker 3: or analysis intruded upon by like a policy. That is
51:13
Speaker 3: a really, really rough place to be in.
51:16
Speaker 4: Yep.
51:18
Speaker 1: And I think, well, I certainly had some experience of
51:22
Speaker 1: that in training.
51:23
Speaker 5: You know, it's like, nope, you can't see this person.
51:25
Speaker 5: You have to see this person.
51:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
51:28
Speaker 4: I'm so glad you mentioned that, Joseph. It's very, very powerful.
51:35
Speaker 4: She's had four years of work with someone that's been
51:40
Speaker 4: a really good fit. It's such a special relationship to
51:44
Speaker 4: feel seen and known and have trust in such a
51:49
Speaker 4: deep way. And then be told, sorry, but in order
51:54
Speaker 4: to complete your training, you're just going to have to
51:56
Speaker 4: make this little switch.
51:58
Speaker 5: And it does feel.
52:00
Speaker 4: just administrative and not honoring of what a huge loss
52:08
Speaker 4: this is. And not a loss that feels natural. You know,
52:14
Speaker 4: if we lose a pet or someone in our lives,
52:18
Speaker 4: it doesn't feel imposed, mandated, dictated. It's very, very sad.
52:24
Speaker 4: But I'm so appreciative of what a confluence of feelings
52:30
Speaker 4: could be unleashed by having to change therapists.
52:36
Speaker 3: And I can imagine the guy with the glass of
52:38
Speaker 3: water is kind of your new therapist. Can I get
52:40
Speaker 3: you a glass of water? Get out of my psyche!
52:43
Speaker 3: And you're like, wow! It's almost like she has court-ordered
52:47
Speaker 3: therapy all of a sudden. But the new one, she
52:52
Speaker 3: hasn't made space yet for the new one to come in.
52:57
Speaker 3: And in a sense, it's kind of putting her to bed.
52:59
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like dad coming in to give you
53:01
Speaker 3: a little glass of water on your bed stand before
53:04
Speaker 3: you go to sleep, which also is a bit of
53:06
Speaker 3: a threat of a regression.
53:08
Speaker 4: And she talks about her retrospective jealousy that happened in
53:14
Speaker 4: her waking life. So we're on the trail of something
53:17
Speaker 4: that has regressed, perhaps due to the loss of her
53:22
Speaker 4: longtime therapist.
53:24
Speaker 3: Her container.
53:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
53:26
Speaker 3: And then she's saying, I'm kind of uncontained. I'm leaky
53:31
Speaker 3: right now. And so the other therapist has said, well,
53:34
Speaker 3: you're kind of catching fire. May I offer you a
53:37
Speaker 3: glass of water in your time of distress?
53:39
Speaker 4: No!
53:40
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, okay.
53:44
Speaker 1: I think we have here another kind of ambivalent intruder
53:47
Speaker 1: figure because actually the intruder is, first of all, associated
53:50
Speaker 1: with firefighters.
53:51
Speaker 3: Yes.
53:52
Speaker 5: And also is bringing her a glass of water. Now,
53:55
Speaker 5: of course, in real life.
53:56
Speaker 1: If I woke up and there was a strange man
53:58
Speaker 1: bringing me a glass of water, I would absolutely freak out.
54:02
Speaker 1: But in the dream world, we could say, well, as
54:04
Speaker 1: you're saying, Joseph, like he's there to offer her something.
54:07
Speaker 1: And I think as per your point in the previous dream, like,
54:10
Speaker 1: you know, do we accept what the world is bringing us?
54:14
Speaker 1: Do we accept what the unconscious is bringing us? And,
54:18
Speaker 1: you know, obviously she's struggling with that. I think it's
54:22
Speaker 1: interesting that he appears to have taken something. He appears
54:26
Speaker 1: to have taken, what was it, her entire desk. So
54:33
Speaker 1: I wonder if he has also, this intruder from the unconscious,
54:38
Speaker 1: has been responsible for some kind of internal reordering. You
54:43
Speaker 1: don't need that desk and that laptop anymore. Here's the TV. Now,
54:47
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with that exactly, but
54:49
Speaker 1: it's like, I think you need this, not that.
54:52
Speaker 5: I think you need the water, not the desk.
54:55
Speaker 3: Kind of an interior designer. Honestly, the shadow is an
54:59
Speaker 3: interior designer who's going to like mix up the stuff
55:02
Speaker 3: in your house. Yeah.
55:03
Speaker 4: Well, it's quite a switcheroo from here's, here I am.
55:09
Speaker 4: She's a trainee psychotherapist. She's got her laptop where we
55:14
Speaker 4: take all our notes and write papers and do research.
55:17
Speaker 5: See your therapist if you're seeing your therapist online.
55:20
Speaker 4: It's your lifeline and, you know, it's a work instrument.
55:26
Speaker 4: And her desk that it rests on, this is about work.
55:30
Speaker 3: Yes.
55:31
Speaker 4: And we take our training as serious. And our intruder says, no,
55:39
Speaker 4: why don't you just chill and watch TV? The TV unit.
55:45
Speaker 4: So she hasn't quite been robbed. It's that something has
55:49
Speaker 4: been moved around, you know, and who knows, maybe her
55:54
Speaker 4: laptop is in the kitchen now. But there's been a rearrangement.
56:01
Speaker 4: And I wonder if there's a hint here in this
56:04
Speaker 4: dream of firefighters use water to put out fires. It's
56:09
Speaker 4: only a glass of water, but nevertheless. Nothing really terrible
56:14
Speaker 4: happens in this dream. A dream ego is terrified and
56:19
Speaker 4: can't even scream she's so scared. And nothing really terrible happens.
56:25
Speaker 4: And I wonder if part of the message is being
56:29
Speaker 4: asked to kind of think about how you feel is
56:35
Speaker 4: one thing, about the loss of your therapist and the
56:40
Speaker 4: situation in the dream. And what is actually happening in
56:45
Speaker 4: the dream, and perhaps in waking life, isn't that bad.
56:52
Speaker 3: And you know what I'm wondering is, the scream and
56:56
Speaker 3: how she's interpreting it, because I suddenly am wondering if
57:00
Speaker 3: it's the scream of resentment, that I had this kind
57:05
Speaker 3: of thing humming along, this rule arrived, And unfortunately, she
57:11
Speaker 3: didn't wait until she found a new therapist so she
57:14
Speaker 3: could have kind of a handoff. Something inside of her decided, well,
57:18
Speaker 3: if I have to give it up, I'm going to
57:19
Speaker 3: give it up now, and then she's going to hover
57:21
Speaker 3: and hunt, kind of go on a hunter-gatherer process that's
57:25
Speaker 3: been going on for months. So it's almost like her
57:29
Speaker 3: resentment about having to give up the therapist became a
57:34
Speaker 3: kind of self-punishing thing process and when we're resentful when
57:41
Speaker 3: the correction is office we refuse it out of spite
57:46
Speaker 3: it's like yeah you made me do that I'm not
57:48
Speaker 3: even going to find a therapist and if I find
57:50
Speaker 3: one I'm not going to drink the water it gives
57:52
Speaker 3: me and if it comes into the bedroom I'm going
57:55
Speaker 3: to tell it to go to hell because I shouldn't
57:57
Speaker 3: have had I mean because I shouldn't have had to
58:00
Speaker 3: do this I've been forced against my will yeah which
58:04
Speaker 3: so it's maybe a scream of outrage Oh, I think
58:08
Speaker 3: that says it really descriptively, that it's outrage.
58:13
Speaker 4: And you're right. We experience that with little kids. You
58:19
Speaker 4: can't have this for lunch, but you can have that.
58:23
Speaker 4: And the child says, no, then I won't eat any
58:25
Speaker 4: lunch at all.
58:27
Speaker 3: Exactly. I'll punish you by not having anything. Oh.
58:33
Speaker 4: So there's maybe some defiance in here, too.
58:37
Speaker 1: Right.
58:39
Speaker 4: All are totally understandable human reactions to being told to
58:44
Speaker 4: do something you don't want to do that really is meaningful.
58:51
Speaker 1: Well, I really have enjoyed the different ways that intruders
58:56
Speaker 1: have appeared in these dreams today. And, you know, there
59:00
Speaker 1: is such a theme, but they've also all been so different.
59:05
Speaker 1: And I hope it's been Helpful to listeners as you
59:08
Speaker 1: parse your own interests. dreams.
59:10
Speaker 5: And I want to share that our.
59:12
Speaker 1: Next foray into looking at dream typographies is going to
59:19
Speaker 1: be a juicy one. we're going to be looking at
59:22
Speaker 1: sex dreams. So we will put a link in these
59:26
Speaker 1: show notes where you can submit your sex dream for
59:29
Speaker 1: discussion on the podcast. And stay tuned. We'll be doing
59:33
Speaker 1: that one when we get some good juicy dreams to
59:39
Speaker 1: talk about.
59:39
Speaker 3: And you can think of our podcast as just giving
59:42
Speaker 3: you a glass of water on your bed stand when
59:45
Speaker 3: you least expect.
59:50
Speaker 4: Thank you all for sending in your dreams. And please
59:55
Speaker 4: move on to our next Dreamography on Dreams About Sex.
1:00:01
Speaker 3: Yes. I feel like I should end the episode with
1:00:03
Speaker 3: like bolognese smeared over my face or something. Like I've
1:00:06
Speaker 3: been chowing down in the fridge and then I turn
1:00:09
Speaker 3: and look caught suddenly at the 11th hour.
1:00:14
Speaker 5: Yes.
1:00:15
Speaker 1: May you welcome your interesting intruders.
1:00:17
Speaker 5: How about that?
1:00:18
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
1:00:21
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.
1:00:22
Speaker 1: To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic or join
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