English Teacher

I am aware our section did not have to log a dream until next week, but last night I had a dream that was chock full of dysfunction, and so I would like to share.

The dream begins as I am lying in a bed with my friend Daniel, whom I have no romantic relationship with. The room is unfamiliar to me, dark and warm, with golden sheets. I am dressed in a nightgown made of white satin, laying on his shoulder, and he is asleep. I turn from him, to sleep on my back, which causes him to stir. He rises from the bed in red silk pajamas, and I sit up now in the middle of the bed to see where he is going. Before he steps out the bedroom door, I am sucked down into the bed, and screaming, am dropped into a high school building. I am now dressed in an armed service uniform, and I am walking through the halls with Dan. The school building is my old private elementary school, and the students walking down the halls are my old elementary school classmates, although they are older; perhaps nineteen or twenty years old.
Dan and I and sit down in a classroom, and a girl from my elementary is sitting next to us. Avita and Dan are introduced to each other by me, and the two begin to overtly flirt with each other. For some reason, I get extremely upset, or jealous, and I run out of the classroom and into the hallway, which is an army recruitment center, but is also the hallway in the basement of Frese Hall on the Queens College campus. Dan runs after me but never catches me, and I continue running for what seems like hours down this hall, until I get to a hotel room door. I rummage through a masculine wallet, and I take a black room key.
Once swiped, I open the hotel door, to reveal Daniel and my cousin Nicole (only with blonde hair) sitting and eating grapes on the same bed I was sleeping in. I began to yell in rage, except I couldn’t hear the sound of my voice, so I am ranting and raving around the room completely inaudible. Finally I get so frustrated, I jump on top of them on the bed, but I never touch them because I am sucked into the bed and thrust into a hotel lobby. It is a fancy imperial room, with high white ceilings, and white marble flooring. I feel so alone, because everyone walking by me are strangers to me, and they are all carrying briefcases. I try talking to the people, particularly remembering a woman in a purple pencil skirt and suit jacket, but everyone ignored me and continued walking as if I was invisible. I continued walking around the building to find Dan, and I found him in a crowded cafeteria. He spotted me, and began to walk to me, but the more I called to him, the more people were walking with briefcases toward me pushing into me, and covering my view. I woke up soon after the people started to cover me, and I felt like I was being trapped or transported some place new.

I remember having this dream a few years ago, and every so often I remember it before falling asleep.

I was laying in bed, with a small lamp still lit on my right dressing table. I am staring out into the hall, when I see a movement through the blackness. I think it is all my imagination, and I close my eyes to avoid creating a further illusion. Now, however, I can hear footsteps, heavy like rocks falling onto the tile beneath me. I open my eyes to see a dark figure, looking down at me from behind a mask. I can not make out who, or what, it is. The figure is thin, and tall, wearing a black mask and cape. From the eye-holes in the cape, I decipher deep brown eyes, and grayish, white flesh surrounding them. I sit up slowly, until my head hits a tall white head board with columns (which I actually do not have). I freeze, even more frightening because the figure has not moved or spoken since first observed. I try to move, but I can't. I am glued to the headboard and my eyes are forced to stay open by nothing more than my intense will to close them. I try to scream but I open my mouth and stop. He (I somehow decide he is male) finally moves, grasping his neck with his hand. With the other hand he turns out my light. In a moment, I feel a hand on my throat, the pressure so intense I wake up at the exact moment I fear I am going to be killed.

At first glance, the Freud readings were challenging. Firstly, I believe some of his attempted clarifications of dream terminology are not directly defined, and are often inferred through the text only. Secondly, the first time I read his work, I was not in the right mind frame. Initially, I was focused on being critical of his manipulating the clients through his desire for proving his theories accurate. After reading the selected texts a few times, and having the ideas I read reinforced through classroom discussion, I can see why he is an apt choice for us to commence our study of dreams with, flaws and all.
I most enjoyed reading the case studies of his own and his patients’ dreams. I respected his ability to disclose personal information about himself and his dreams, but I was not satisfied by his decisions on what was “too personal.” I always wanted more from his dreams, because I felt I could not analyze them the way he would examine others. His dreams never had sexual content or innuendo, and he consistently had dreams that related to a handful of occupational topics. And so, I felt like many of his dreams may have been revised.
Free association was most intriguing because it is a way to decode the ambiguity of dreams. I found it interesting that Freud uses the word “transport[ing]” to express the transition to free association (on page 82). The wording gave me the impression that free association can be the distinct median between our awake and asleep lives. Freud explores the patients psyche though free association, which sounds pretty promising.
I also found myself curious about Freud’s process of proving dream conclusions. His treatment of dreams seems to be extremely complex. I began to wonder if the dreamers in any of his studies ( as well as ourselves as dreamers) could ever clearly remember recalling various works and texts that remind us of the contents of our dreams if we were not prompted by an outside source. Freud seems to use two very different analyses when working on his own dreams, and working with others. There seems to be a discrepancy between his procedures, which makes his method questionable. I thought I would see examples of free association during his time of analyzing patients’ dreams, but he does not employ it outright.

I had this dream last night. I am in bed (all of my dreams start with a bed, hmm...) and I feel something on my face. Something extremely cold and wet was on my forehead, but I was not the least bit afraid. I picked the object up off my head to find that it is a snake. It had the body of a snake, but had long limber arms and legs. The snake also has a red head, and human face. Horrified, I drop the snake, it is lands on my stomach. Suddenly, I realize I am naked, and the snake is on my bare skin, slithering around the side of my waist. I freeze, even though my thoughts are urging me to hit the snake off the bed and run. The snake opens his mouth to reveal a forked tongue. Immediately I am aware that this snake is the devil (a rather biblical condensation), and I try to grab him and throw him against the wall. The snake is stronger than I, and actually propels himself back onto my stomach, and my hands are now incapable of touching him. The snake again reveals his forked tongue, and begins to precision it across my stomach from right to left. The tongue is burning hot, and I can feel the intense pain like it was actually happening. I notice the tongue also leaves what looks like a reddened road across my waist. As soon as the snake has completed a the road, people and trees start growing out of my stomach, and I actually see a fully developed society running and skipping across my body. The little people are laughing, and the laughing gets so loud I wake up.

Comparing our two pals, Freud and Jung...

After reading the chapters for Hartmann I had this dream...

Reading Kafka was a new experience for me, and one that was filled with complexities.