Background
Sandra, a 40 year old woman, yoga teacher, massage therapist and movement therapist came to me for homeopathic treatment of a chronic cystitis (inflammation of the bladder). In addition to the bladder problem she described a high baseline level of anxiety. She felt that the fear and the bladder were connected—that “fear wrapped around the bladder and the sexual center”. She also described herself as having a “murderous violent anger” in her; and she was concerned about her tendency to fall into an addictive binging pattern with several substances, including wine, cigarettes and marijuana.
Sandra was also aware that I worked with dreams, and came to the session with several dreams, including this one:
The Dream
“I’m at a friend’s house….. We’d had a few drinks and I was about to leave. I asked her for some herb, because I wanted to smoke a joint before I went to bed at night; (which is always a pattern I’ve had; this is part of my binging pattern; I won’t touch anything, but then if I do I’ll consume everything; it’s got a real addictive behavioral pattern about it.)
So I asked her for a joint, and she said no, she didn’t have enough, and I thought that was being really petty of her. But I said: “don’t worry about it”, I walked out the door and I got into this cab.
There were two men in the cab, they looked Pakistani, but they were Arab; a slight man sitting in the passenger seat and a heavier man sitting in the driver’s seat.
I got into the cab and the cab was already at $7.50; they were charging me for having waited for me. That just really annoyed me; I said “That’s crazy, you can’t charge me before we even start the drive.”
The guy in the passenger seat got really angry. We started driving, I said “No!” (I’d had a couple of drinks, I wasn’t going to take that.) I went to open the door. He just got really angry and took off…I couldn’t even get out of the cab, I felt like I was taken over by what was happening and he was racing up the street, and he starts getting really violent, completely freaking me out.
As we got up to the red light I jumped out of the car, and the guy ran after me. Suddenly this woman I used to go to shiatsu school with, was suddenly there, and she had a cigarette in her hand. She ran over and tried to help me.
I was trying to take money out of my wallet to give to the guy to stop him from freaking out, all I had was a fifty, he wanted to just grab the fifty out of my hand, and there was this huge tussle…and I woke up with my heart just beating crazily.”
As I listened to the dream it was soon evident that this was an important one, and one that we could do some good work with. This was unmistakable, because three or the Sandra’s key current concerns were present in the dream— fear, anger, and substance use. Clearly the dream was right on topic, it was about what was most concerning her.
As in so many dreams, the situation depicted was extreme and intense; as if her unconscious mind was telling her: “Here, look—here is an exaggerated depiction of the situation you are currently stuck in. Perhaps if you see it in this exaggerated form it will help you understand how it all works, and you may then be able to do something about it.”
So let’s use the dream of “The Two Taxi Drivers” to run through our method, and illustrate a few of its key features.
The Dream with Analysis
Analysis Summary
Whenever reference to drug use appears in a dream, suspect that it is saying something about the dreamer’s self care system (see Section 5.6. Self Care System Motifs) Self care system dreams depict how we manage to cope with our lives; how we handle our energy and our stress, what we need to do to make it all work.
In this case Sandra’s system contains:
the ego--she wants the substance so she can relax out of the driven state
a superego part (the friend who doesn’t want to give her the substance)—this part does not want to be stuck in the addictive binging pattern, and thus is in conflict with the ego.
the two drivers-- they personify the driven state, which is fueled by deep anger. She does not have good relationship and communication with this part. If she does not use the substance, she is more influenced by this part. The fact that there are two drivers, not just one, is individualized information that the dreamer may be able to make some connection to—perhaps she feels the angry driven-ness around two key issues. These drivers have the combination of good and bad traits which characterizes shadow figures (anger, but also drive) (see Section 4.3. Shadow Motifs). They cannot be considered true shadow figures, because they are not unconscious parts, the dreamer already know about them, she is already aware that her drive is rooted in her anger. But they are not yet well integrated into her persona; there is a sense that more understanding is needed about why they are so angry.
the second friend, the smoker who tries to help- this is an interesting figure, perhaps representing a potentially helpful resource that could be better utilized in handling the angry driven energy.
Possible Dreamwork
With a self care system dream, try to help the dreamer identify with all the parts of the system, ask them to try on each one in turn (The “Be the Part” technique is central to many schools of dreamwork, including this one. See Section 3.5.3.-- Connecting Through Identifying With a Part). When this is done the dreamer can usually get a better sense of how their internal system operates, and often a possible improvement can be imagined.
In this case the drivers provide the most promising work point. How can their anger be investigated and modulated, without losing all the drive, but manifesting the drive in a way that does not make such severe demands on the energy system and set up the need for daily substance use?