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Appendix A
Transcription of Face-To-Face Dream Group Communication
Transcription of Face-To-Face Dream Group Communication
Dream Table, Thursday, 6/21/90, Saybrook National Meeting
(Names removed)
DREAMER: AE (Female)
PARTICIPANTS:
DA(Female), RB(Male), CC(F), DH(M), JH(M), LJ(F), SK(M), LM(F), BO(F), JP(F), PP(F), SS(F), PW(F)
Researcher: Sometime during the morning, if you wouldn't mind just signing in so I have a written record of who is here, and all I'm going to do is, with the permission of the dreamer, record the session and at a later date I will transcribe the session and hopefully arrange to be able to post the dream on the electronic network.
I will, before I do any posting, take the dream back to the dreamer as I have written it up and get that person's approval. I'm not sure how this is really going to work on the network. I'll just have to proceed and see, but I can keep the person's name confidential, so that's not a problem, and the only request that I have is that as you're speaking, if you please speak clearly that will help. I'll try and get your voices as you identify yourselves this morning.
Leader: Alright, before we hear from the dreamer, let's just start with J, go around and introduce ourselves, because we do have a couple of new people here.
Group: I'm JP, AE, LM, JH, DH, DS, CC, LJ, PW, PP
Leader: Alright, I think we're ready to go ahead and hear from our dreamer.
Dreamer: This dream I had about a month ago, and in the dream, I was in my parent's house, upstairs in the bedroom area. My parents were both there. My mother and father were there, and my youngest sister, and in the dream it was as though my youngest sister was a lot younger than she is now. She's seven years younger, but she was like a young girl then.
In the dream, Mike, my ex-husband had died, and he was laid out like on a table, like people get laid out when they've died, and I remember saying, "We can't leave him out here." (Saying this to my parents) "because it would be very upsetting for my younger sister to see that body." So I put him in the closet. The closet, I remember, was in her bedroom, with sliding doors, and I remember standing in front of the closet with the door open, and he was hanging upside down in the closet, by his feet, with his clothes on, wearing a suit, a business suit, and it was as though he were a carcass in a butcher shop. It was horrendous, and what was even more horrendous was, I wasn't even upset at the image. I mean I was upset at myself not being upset as it were.
So he was hanging up by his feet and his body was down and his head was sort of like that [THE DREAMER STRETCHED HER NECK BACK AND UP] and he had this huge like a smile, he was inanimate. It was like all his teeth were showing, like a smile, but it was like a mechanical smile and the other thing that was very weird was, you know when animals like pigs and calves and things have been disembowled, you know, they're ribs are there and it's kind of empty. It was like that with him, except he was fully clothed. I could tell that in the dream.
So, that was the dream as I remember, and I tried to recall, I don't remember anything happening after the dream. I don't really remember what was going on, anymore than what I told you in the beginning, except it was a family situation. I only have mother, father and a sister.
Leader: Okay, thank you. Now, questions? Remember the questions can only be about dream content, they can not be interpretive.
Female: Who put him into the closet?
Dreamer: I think I put him in the closet, but I don't remember putting him in the closet, but I remember saying, " We must put him away." I think it was me that put him in.
Male: Were you your present age?
Dreamer: Yes.
Leader: When you were upset about not being upset, was that in the dream? Was that a part of the dream, or was that your feeling upon awakening?
Dreamer: I think it was both in the dream and in awakening. I think I was not upset in the dream. There was a coldness that I felt in the dream.
Female: Did you see your sister in the dream, besides in the beginning?
Dreamer: No. Yet, she was around, that's what I know.
Female: At the end I was trying to remember, I think it was just my memory lapse, of how your mother and father came into it in the beginning?
Dreamer: They were there in the beginning. They were there in the house with me.
Female: Were they just sort of sitting there, or what?
Dreamer: They were sitting there or standing there. They were there in that I was talking to them, and saying that we must get rid of this body. This isn't good for Barbara to see. We must put it away.
Male: In waking life, is your parents' bedroom on the second floor upstairs?
Dreamer: Yes.
Male: And your sister's room, is it upstairs?
Dreamer: Next to it.
Male: And it was that way in the dream?
Dreamer: That room that was my sister's used to be mine, and that closet used to be mine. Being the older child, I first had that. It was a small bedroom in the house, and I first had it.
Female: What was your ex-husband's name?
Dreamer: Mike.
Female: And your sister's?
Leader: That really is not pertinent, because that keeps us from projecting. I'm going to call a curfew on that until later.
Male: Were there any colors in the dream that were significant to report?
Dreamer: Not significant. I do remember the color of the closet door was pale blue, and it was pale blue in real life. There was no vivid color in the dream.
Female: You said he was disembowled or cut open when he was hanging in the air?
Dreamer: Well, it was as though he was. He was fully clothed, you know like the ribs were sticking out and it was kind of caved in.
Female: Was he like that before you put him in the closet?
Dreamer: Before he was just lying on the table with a thing over him.
Female: A sheet?
Dreamer: Yeah, a sheet, but in the closet it was marked that he was wearing a business suit. He was in business, so that was normal, and he was a very skinny person, also.
Male: Any sense in the dream why he had died?
Dreamer: It was like a matter of a factness about the fact that he had died. You know, that Mike died, and there was a concern around between me and my parents, mostly my mother. We were concerned that he had died. We were concerned about how it should be handled.
Leader: Any other questions?
Male: So the concern was more between your mother and you, not your father and you.?
Dreamer: My father was a bit discontented(?), as he was anyway.
Leader: Well, fine. Now we will start to give our interpretation of the dream, as if it were our dream, and for this, Anna, would you mind passing your dream around, so people can sort of refresh their memory as we go along? Okay, whoever is ready can go.
Female: If it were my dream, it would relate to my dealing with the divorce and whether I really resolved putting the ex-spouse away somewhere, and then the image in the closet reminds me of the hanging man from the Tarot deck and the aspect of there's a certain balance there, but the out of balance is the main thing.
Dreamer: Is that what the hanging man means?
Female: I'm not sure I remember all that very completely, but somebody else might.
Female: It usually means initiation, seeing things in a new way.
[MURMUR OF GENERAL RECOGNITION]
Male: If this were my dream, I think I would take it relatively straight forward for what it was saying. That this person was no longer a part of my life, and would almost perhaps be a confirmation of feelings that I already had about the separation, and almost a reminder of it for me of whether or not that person was still alive they were essentially dead, and I would be struck by the fact of the sense of disembowelment, the very life force for so many people exist more in the belly than in the brain, some of the ancient things that the liver and various organs, and he was lacking into that substance and I would be struck by. It was just a reminder there really wasn't anything in there, then in real life and here is a reminder in death that there really isn't anything in there anyway and so it's all but natural that I don't have great feeling about the loss, because there's nothing there to have loss over.
Male: If it were my dream, I'd be struck by the play on words. What's coming to me is hang-up. He's hung up in the closet upside down. Something that is just a hang-up.
Female: If it was my dream, I would notice my mixed feelings about my sister, that I would protect her, but in fact I would hang this carcass right inside the sliding doors, which would be pretty scary when you opened the doors and saw him.
Leader: Well, if it were my dream, I'd be interested in the family dynamics. It's as if my family is concerned that I'm not remarried and I'm putting the corpse of my past marriage in the closet to say so that I can bring it out and say, "Look, I was married once, and this is what happened to it." So it's sort of a defensive maneuver on my part to protect my life style, my life decisions against any pressure from the family to maybe prematurely enter into another marriage, especially my mother, who shows a little bit more concern than my father does in the dream, and maybe to sort of warn my sister, "Look, don't you get mixed up with somebody like I did."
If it were only about my ex-spouse, I personally don't have an ex-spouse so I have to talk epigraphically here. If it were basically about my or somebody else's ex-spouse, I don't see that it is important to bring the family in. I could just see putting that dead corpse in the closet of my memories, that's done, that's finished, that's over, but whenever I have something to learn from it, I can bring it out and remind myself, but bringing the family in really adds the unique dimension to the screen. It's the corpse itself that is unique, but doing it from the family setting just adds to the complexity.
Female: If it were my dream, I would be thinking about how responsible I feel for something that's dead.
Female: I think if it were my dream, I would look at the image of the younger sister and see that it's the child in myself maybe having to face death and another part of me not wanting to look at it and trying to hide it in some way.
Female: If it was my dream, I would see the younger sister as myself and that, although I, in my present state was I quite finished with my husband and could hang him up in the closet, and that the disemboweling or the lack of organs or whatever it is in the solar plexus area I would see as him losing all his power. He no longer has power over me in my present stage, but I would see my concern about my sister as that part of me that's younger still has not really finished with him, that my current self is trying to hide that away from her because she really hasn't processed that. She really hasn't processed the marriage and she really hasn't processed the divorce.
Male: If it were my dream, I would be aware of at least functionally the absence of the masculine.
Leader: If it were my dream, I would also be puzzled by that because one masculine image is dead and put in the closet , the other masculine image is distant and so I'm wondering if this is a positive or negative aspect of my life that there's this absence right now in the dream.
Male: If if were my dream, I'd feel there was one element of masculinity clearly in there and that was the taking of essentially the carcass, a butcher's task, and hanging the body in the closet and viewing it almost like a butchered animal.
Leader: Okay, last chance, anybody else?
Female: If it were my dream, the very first thing you mentioned is that he was laid out on the surface. Surface sounds like an important word for me to look at to see if this is something that is surfacing or if this is just everything is concrete as is on the surface.
Male: If it were my dream, I'd look at the hanging again. When I said hang-up before, the other thing that's come to mind is topsy-turvy. It's an upside down kind of relationship when you hang something and put it away, so I question whether it's been put away properly.
Female: If it was my dream, I'd look at the fact that I put it in what is now my sister's closet and that would make it clear to me that that part of myself had not processed the whole thing, the fact that he hasn't had a proper funeral and that she hasn't had a chance to participate in that funeral.
Male: If it were my dream, I would spend some time thinking about the second floors.
Female: If it were my dream, I'd also note that you said in the dream that you wanted to put him to rest in a proper way, but yet did not complete it in what is conceived to be a proper way, but the desire was there to begin with, to put something to rest.
Leader: Okay, any other comments? Okay, Dreamer, we will turn the dream back to you.
Again, if there is anything you do not want recorded, you can request the recorder go off at anytime during the rest of the session, but it's up to you now to share what you want with us in terms of your current feeling about the dream after our projections.
Female: I'm sorry, I wasn't here when you told your dream and I had a little trouble reading it, but a couple of things that I was struck by and I don't know if people have already commented on this, but, the fact that, one, it was the closet, besides being your sister's closet, which I also think is highly relevant, the younger sister is also in the sliding door and that your ex-husband is hung upside down almost like the Fool in the Tarot, even though his leg isn't at that angle, but he's hanging by his feet. I was also very struck as I couldn't quite read what you wrote here, that the ribs were sticking out, even though somehow it was covered.
Dreamer: It was like a carcass.
Female: That part was big, but otherwise he was fleshed on his bones. There's that whole notion of sort of giving breath and giving birth also from the ribs. There's an ecology of that. I think it might be relevant to that. His carcass, you said, had like, you reiterated a couple of times, it was dead and inert, but yet it had this sort of ghoulish, mechanical smile on his face, which I think is something to pay attention to as well.
Leader: Okay, thank you, S. Now, we'll move back to the Dreamer.
Female: I was calling it the Fool, but it is the Hangman in the Tarot
Dreamer: In responding right now, is this the appropriate time to give some background?
Leader: Yes, now you can give the background.
Dreamer: Well, the relationship began in 1964, a long time ago and it ended nine years ago, and it was very amicable and the ending was very amicable. I just came back from England for six weeks and never saw him this time. We tried to talk on the phone and we didn't manage, and we tried to meet up, but it was never a really serious attempt, and in fact in the end, I just thought, "Oh, forget it. Hike! What does it matter anyway." That was on my mind. But I often had dreams about him . I often have dreams with my sister, although I think she is me.
Leader: And now you can tell us your sister's name.
Dreamer: Yes. Barbara..
So, yes, I think what you talked about, it's very accurate. It hasn't really been put to rest, properly, clearly, because it keeps coming up in dreams. And I think the thing about the family being there is very pertinent and I think the talk about the masculine in my life right now is definitely an issue. Sometimes conscious, sometimes not so conscious, or parts of it are conscious, but how it relates to all this other stuff is less conscious normally speaking, and I think it's true my parents would like to see that I was remarried and could never understand why I ever left him, because they thought he was wonderful, so it brings all that up.
The disembowelment part, I think the comment about the feelings, how that relates to the feelings is very true. Not just that I have no feelings left for him, but that he has none left for me, and he did have for a long time after we separated, a lot. It was obvious. He's remarried and he's got two children now. I think that was a bit of a hurtful thing, actually. He no longer had that like it was always a bit after I left he liked to see me and my importance to him was a bit one-sided, and now it's like the shoe's on the other foot. It's like it's gone for him, and it's really gone for me, but I've not got used to that.
This about feeling responsible, I always did feel very responsible for him when I was married to him, and it took me a long time to leave him, and I mean there was a bit of (what I now realize) co-dependancy, I now realize for me. I saw him at Christmas very briefly, and I saw him at the same time as I saw another man that I had known since I was eighteen when I knew them both. I married Mike and the other man married my friend. We met at Christmas and we met in a pub and it was just for lunch and I found myself really being (they're both called Mike) drawn toward the other man. Not sexually, but personality wise, we had tons in common. It was Mike really. I felt obliged to bring Mike into the conversation. It was hard work like it always had been. There was this animation going on between me and the other Mike and then in the end I thought, "Well, God, I don't need to look after him anymore," but I still had this guilt thing because Mike was a little introverted and shy and he was always on the fringe, but then I didn't need to care anymore because I wasn't married to him, but I still did, actually. I felt guilty. I felt guilty, so there was that side.
So, and this thing about not really being dead and buried properly, I still don't really know what to make of it. It was a childhood, he was a childhood sweetheart. We were really close friends all through our twenties and early thirties and then we just - I moved on and he's always been a dear person to me and I've never really known what to do with him, the fact that he's out of my life, so it hasn't been a proper ending, there's never been a proper ending, really. I mean, I left him, a year later I came here, and we didn't get divorced for about four years, and by default we got divorced. I realized I might need to get married to get a green card. I didn't actually. I thought, get this divorce through as fast as possible. I might need my options opened here, and that's how it actually happened.
L: Does it make you sick to your stomach?
Dreamer: What part is that, L? Are you thinking about?
L: Did you ever feel like you ripped your guts out or you wanted to rip his out?
Dreamer: No. Not consciously, never. I always had sweet feelings for him and a bit of guilt thrown in, toward him, basically, for leaving him. Possibly, I always felt he was more, I mean, we had a sexual relationship, but it always like he was a brother, He was always like, our friendship was like friends. Psychologically, he's not anything like as strong as me, I don't think.
Female: Is the protectiveness of him similar to your protectiveness of your sister. Were you with your younger sister, was she at all shy?
Dreamer: No, she wasn't shy, but she was young.
Female: Were you, in fact on some level her protector?
Dreamer: Not so much in real life, but in my dreams. She's often been in my dreams. In fact, she once had this illness where she was going to die in the dream, and I think it was me, actually. I don't have children. She has two children now and she's thirty seven or something and she's grown up with children of her own. She's like even more grown up than me and yet she's got children.
Leader: We're having the discussion phase, so anybody can ask questions or offer further interpretation, if they'd like.
Male: I guess one of the things that I just wonder about in hearing some of this is if in your dreams, your sister is the new opportunities for you. As you said she followed along in your room and I just wonder if in your dream, that little sister doesn't represent the potentials to follow what you've already done that are now available.
Dreamer: Yes, that could very well be.
Female: Dreamer, if you are resolved to end this relationship and put a closure on it, how would you like to do it?
Dreamer: I don't know. It's hard for me to say. One thing he said which I thought was the most ridiculous thing he ever said was when he first remarried about three years ago, he said, "Oh, you must come and stay with us." The wife he married, apparently, she was acrophobic, she didn't like to go outside. When she got the child, she could hardly look after the child. I think she was psychologically a little disturbed. It's my own opinion. But it was Mike's opinion too. That was his like fantasy of life would go on, like I'd go and stay with him.
Leader: But that is what a brother would ask a sister to do. [GENERAL AGREEMENT]
Female: You always take care of everybody.
Female: You know what struck me in the beginning, when he was laid out. I know a lot of times when people go to funeral home to view a body, it doesn't seem quite real, that they are dead. They look like they are asleep, but there's no question about a hanging carcass whether that's dead or not.
Transcription of Face-To-Face Dream Group Communication
End
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