Monday, May 18, 2015

A typical Oedipal Dream

A woman in her mid fifties who lives by herself upon her disability income, and depends heavily upon an older man, who is in his late seventies, for transportation, and for bailing her out every now and then with small sums, half way through the session declared that she went to bed with this benefactor of her's.
Though she started treatment less than an year ago, and sees me only once a month, due to successful analysis of a few of her dreams, has shown a good improvement in facing up to the shackles of her agoraphobia, and had actually come to the session driving all by herself for the first time in years.
In the session initially she talked about her boyfriend - who is different from her benefactor - and how she is finding him more and more unappealing because he is a control freak who constantly judges her, finding faults with whatever she does. Their relationship is not that deep. They met only a few months ago, and she feels that he, who was divorced a couple of years ago, is using her as stop gap girlfriend till he finds somebody better. But lacking confidence in herself she has been unable to leave him.
She triumphantly declared that while her benefactor's wife went to Florida,  he invited her to his house to stay overnight and they ended up making love. And though he is much older than her, she declared that the sex was highly satisfactory. When asked if he could perform to her satisfaction, considering he is in his late Seventies, she said sexual satisfaction and dissatisfaction has less to do with how one performs than how one feels about the person one is making love to. Pleasure and unpleasure from sex is all in your head.
Then after talking some other things she suddenly brought up the following dream.

I am setting up a party event at of all places in the White House. Obama and I sneak around and we make love in a corridor. But Michelle was catching on to it. For she looked as if she was wondering as to why Obama would like to hang around so much with a help.

Patient added that she feels no sexual attraction towards Obama, so it is weird that she was making love to him in the dream. Now we know that kings and queens, presidents and celebrities, are used by the dream-work to represent parents. So behind Obama stood her father and behind Michelle her mother. Her Oedipal wishes towards Obama (father substitute) being hindered by the spying Michelle (mother substitute).

Confident that this Oedipal dream was sparked by her making love to her benefactor while his wife was away in Florida, I asked the patient if the dream occurred immediately after the event.

Patient said no. The dream had occurred a few days before that.

But after talking a few other things she went back to the dream and said, "The dream occurred before we made love because I knew that is what is going to happen. The dream occurred on the night when I first heard she was going to Florida, and the thought had flashed through my mind whether it will land up in our making love. I did not give much attention to the thought and actually till that night we made love, I did not think it was going to happen because I respect his wife. But may be unknown to me the wish to make love to him must have been aroused in me when I first heard that we will be alone together and it was that wish which saw its fulfillment, before its actual occurrence, in that dream."