Dream. “I am standing at the foot of marble stairs. I expect some danger from the left where a person clothed in authority, with tyrannical appearance, is approaching. I ask a female figure standing at the top of the steps, and who seems to be some acquaintance, relative, mother or sister, for help. I try to run up the steps but cannot. The figure extends me a helping hand but that hand is so weak, lifeless, that I feel helpless. I wake up in deep anxiety.”
Attitude. We have in this case a “flight to the mother” coupled with fear of the powerful father. The patient had always suffered from some fear, fear of examinations as a school child, fear of competition in all life matters, fear of marriage, fear of decisions. He lived with his mother and sister and had an affair with a woman considerably older than himself whom he called “mother” and who called him her “boy.”
We shall now see a dreamer wrestling with a sentimental problem, seeking a solution for it and refusing to accept the solution suggested by an outsider.
Dream. “I was in a car with Albert, sitting in my usual seat but the steering gear had been moved so that I could steer from my seat. I was very inexperienced and felt anxiety. I was going down a steep city street and at the bottom, saw a house before which I wished to park; there were red lanterns and signs, however, which prevented me from stopping there. I went on and Albert disappeared, then I was in the open country climbing a hill and a man (A.T.) stood there and I asked him which way to go. The machinery bothered me, I didn’t know what button to push but trusted my intuition and went all right. Finally I reached a desert stretch where there was nothing and in great anxiety awoke.”
Attitude. The subject in love with a married man, had long hoped that he would secure a divorce and marry her. She often went motoring with him. Their affair was not satisfactory, however, and she had often considered the possibility of a separation.
The situation is handled in the dream as follows. She has had her way and is running the car from her usual seat (he has come to her point of view) but she has misgivings about the experiment (unconsciously, she is not very keen any more to marry him); she tries to park in front of a house (their future home); red lanterns (danger signs, obstacles, law, custom) prevent her from doing so. She then starts out without him and asks her analyst for advice. He encourages her to go on her way but she reaches a deserted place and feels so forlorn, so hungry for human company that she escapes from the nightmare through awaking.
Even when no change is observable in a patient’s condition in the course of an analysis, constant attention to his dreams will enable the analyst to notice unconscious changes which very soon afterward translate themselves into a conscious modification of attitude.
The following dreams illustrate that point:
At the beginning of the analysis a patient, following in his dreams as well as in his neurosis, the line of least effort, dreamt he had solved a mechanical problem by means of a very simple apparatus consisting in a rocking chair, two thumb tacks and an old rubber coat. Later when he resumed closer contact with life, the machinery of his dreams became real machinery and he continued in his sleeping thoughts the calculations which had occupied him during the day and which to him were a constant source of pleasure.
A patient whose ambition was to become a singer but whose husband was decidedly hostile to her plans, first brought me the following dream in which she frankly relied on me for advice: