A revenge dream

 A confirmed bachelor in his sixties who has accepted living the rest of his life without partaking of any romantic feminine charms, relying upon for companionship his brother, his only sibling,  two years his senior, who too is a confirmed bachelor (the two have lived together all their lives, in the same house where they were born, doing everything together, including working at the same store for 40 years, taking vacations together and even retiring on the same year), dreamt the following:

Richard (my brother) was sick. His legs were hurting for six weeks. He was having problems with his heart. The cardiac nurse was sitting next to us. I was going to take him to the doctor. She started by raising his legs. That hurt him very much. It was like he had bad leg cramps. Hopefully soon they will give him an EKG. I was so worried. I picked him up in my arms and carried him to the round table. I was surprised as to how light he was.  

Now this patient and his brother despite being like ball and chain have a complicated relationship and the patient harbors deep ambivalence towards him. On one hand he cannot praise his brother enough and be grateful to him for never leaving his side through all the ups and downs of his life, including his psychotic relapses which would be quite incapacitating and full of persecutory fears and also for his brother's extraordinary piety. Both are devout Catholics and their only aim and purpose in life is to make it to heaven. But Richard is far more pious of the two. As a young man while studying to become a doctor he abruptly abandoned that pursuit to serve the church and become a priest. Though he never fulfilled that dream either, settling for just taking a vow of frugality and working as a low paid clerk in a warehouse. He goes to church daily, spends none of his 401k wealth, which is substantial due to the stock bull run of the eighties and nineties, eats the simplest of fare, with oatmeal patty sandwich as their staple for lunch. This piety of Richard, the patient counts upon, will not only secure him a berth in heaven but the surplus of which will pull him in there too. For he dreads going to hell more than anything in the world despite having spent all his life doing nothing but being kind and helpful to others. And this arises, though he incredulously smiles with disbelief when I bring this it up to him, from his having indulged in the mortal sin of masturbation (or more correctly the incestuous fantasies associated with the masturbatory act). He has given up the practice long ago but the temptation still exists trying to make inroads into his thinking, in disguise of course, which generates fresh guilt. Unlike his brother he avoids going to church, but once a week, and when he does he has to sit on the pew closest to the entrance in case obsessive thoughts of insulting the priest and Jesus Christ Himself, start emerging in his mind requiring him to make a hurried exit. He feels like that the congregation can hear his thoughts and will render him a sound thrashing for disrupting the church proceeding with his blasphemous irreverence.  He also feels in his heart that much of his piety is to cover up his "addiction" and since God is privy to everything no matter how well one hides (by deflecting attention from the shameful practice with random dissimulating thoughts and behaviors) he is slated to go to hell, unless of course his brother's extraordinary piety will save him. On the negative side of the ambivalence he often makes fun of his brother's over the top religiosity, his tasteless oatmeal sandwiches, and he gets great joy in quipping that Richard will make it to heaven before anyone else does.  

The patient is familiar with the technique of dream interpretation and so without any preliminaries I asked him to associate with the dream element Richard was sick.

First nothing came to his mind, but then he associated it with his cousin Courtney telling him about her brother Mat being in hospital from a crushed leg. Mat was working on his chimney with a hammer, and the old weather-beaten chimney collapsed and bricks fell upon his leg and crushed it. They could save his leg but he will have to walk with a limp. The expression of pleasure on the patient's face, though without his being conscious of it, was unmistakable. This gave me further confirmation of what I had long been aware about this patient that his extreme consideration of others is a reaction formation to a sea full of repressed cruel impulses. This constitutional sadistic proclivities had been greatly reinforced by the bullying he and his brother were subjected to by his schoolmates and which in turn had happened, partially at least, by their father's condescending, harsh, unemotional, exploitative attitude as the necessary component of upbringing.   

The patient continued "Mat's son, Lukas, had to pick him up in his arms and carry him off the roof to take him to hospital." 

"That sounds like the element of the dream I picked him up in my arms and carried him to the round table. So it is injury of Matt and his rescue by his son Lukas is what you are transferring on to Richard." 

His legs were hurting for six weeks what thoughts come in connection with that?

Richard has had red eye for seven weeks. 

 But in dream he is sick for six weeks?

The dream occurred a week ago. So six weeks makes sense.

Six weeks of hurting with red eye had become six weeks of hurting with leg pain, the malady which had happened to  Matt. .

He was having problems with his heart where is that detail taken from? 

Richard has no problems with his heart. But I worry about him having it nonetheless. In night I often wake up with dread and go to his room and check upon him to make sure he is still breathing and not dead with a heart attack. That detail comes because Courtney when recounting about Matt's accident also talked about what was happening with Dave, her other brother. Dave was going to the mailbox when he had  bad leg cramps followed by a heart attack. There was a clot in his leg which went to the heart.  

So you have not just transferred your cousin Matt's suffering of leg getting crushed by the bricks upon your brother but your cousin Dave's leg cramps and heart problem too. 

"Not only that," the patient continued, "but Dave gets attacks of shingles in his eyes. So there was another identification between Dave and Richard, both having painful eye conditions, which made it easier to transfer Dave's other medical problem, the heart attack, upon Richard. .

Why did the nurse started (the treatment) by raising his leg?

Matt is a dentist, who is very proud not only of his skills as a dentist but of his physical agility and healthy lifestyle. He also treats all of his siblings and ours, his cousins, dental problems for free. It was his fit body condition and quick reflexes which made him move fast and save his other leg from getting crushed too. Though he will still walk with limp now for the rest of his life. Once again he broke into a slight laughter, relishing his cousin's misfortune though without any clue of it in his conscious mind.

But there is another element to the leg being raised. Richard and I like watching football and in it you often see players kicking their legs up in the air to prevent leg cramps. So the nurse raising his leg was a transference from curing Charlie Horses on the football fields to curing Richard's heart problem through curing his cramps by raising his leg.   

That hurt him very much

This was to find satisfaction of his sadistic impulses through replaying his cousin Matt's suffering and humiliation as the two brothers, though very grateful and thankful to their cousin for taking care of their dental needs free of charge,  have always chaffed at his superiority. But it was also a discharge of his  (unconscious) hostility towards his brother through transferring Matt's plight upon him. 

Hopefully soon they will give him an EKG

This was to reverse the pleasure at his brother's suffering through providing him cardiac care, the first step of which per his layman's mind was to get an EKG.

Who is the Cardiac nurse?"

I guess it is Courtney. By telling the plight of her two brothers she sparked the wish in me for my brother to have leg pain and a heart attack too. To make her compensate for this mischief mongering of hers she was made a party to saving Richard's life. 

Why do you carry him to the round table? Why does he feel so light?

Matt's superiority to us was reversed when his son Lukas picked him up as if he was a feather. Matt is  below average in height, Lukas is 6' 4". In the dream I was identifying with Lukas and carrying my brother as if he was light like Matt.  By identifying with Lukas I was towering over my cousin and my brother. In real life they both act superior to me. In dream I was being superior to them.  The round table has an interesting history. When we were  young, for a class project I made a commode [chest of drawers] which did not come out good, especially its roundness, and I was in tears.  Richard had come to my rescue and had worked upon the commode till it was perfectly round and my project looked pretty good. The round table in the dream was a reminder that your brother has been good to you all your life. Recall how he helped you with that commode. Now wishing him leg pains and heart attack is not right. You better get some cardiac help for him and save his life.  

But there was another reason why Richard felt so light. In real life in many respects he has been the patient's albatross. In his youth the patient was interested in a girl who had reciprocated his feelings and he had overcome his massive inhibitions towards being a happily married man arising from his endless guilt and very poor self esteem. And he was about to propose to her when his brother told him to break it off as he disapproved of the girl. His loyalty to his brother combined with his severe castration anxiety triumphed over his love for the girl. The initial sacrifice had appeared a slight burden which he thought he would easily be able to brush aside. But just the reverse happened. Over time it  became an ever heavier load to carry. Being an extremely libidinal man living a life of abstinence had not been an easy task. It was the resentment over this fate of his, caused at least partly by his brother's jealousy and need to control, which lay behind dreaming of his brother's leg cramps and heart attack. But then his affection for his brother had reasserted itself to save him from death by heart attack. And the task was made easier by reversing the load that his brother had subjected him to as surprisingly light.  

  

The Dead Girl and The Stereo System - A dream that could be analyzed primarily by typical symbols

 A retired patriarch in his mid seventies, father of six children and grandfather of at least a dozen, a devout catholic, straight as an arrow in his dealings with others,  on the matter of sex having given up its practice with his wife of fifty years for quite a while due to excessive familiarity, the libido sublimated into church activities, helping others, rescuing abandoned or hurt animals, taking active interests in grandchildren's progress, and   doing whatever else that would please God, so he is on the right side of His ledger when his  earthly sojourn ends, came to the session with the following dream - he is a prolific dreamer and communicates the psychic material in the treatment primarily through dreams -  and which he had titled on the page where he had neatly typed it as he always does with dreams that he finds of interest:

"The Dead Girl and The Stereo System" 

My dream was very disturbing because I thought it was real. Someone, unknown person, was behind me but I don't know who it was. We approached a door at the end of a dark, narrow hallway and an older woman abruptly pushed out the body of a young dead woman. The dead girl had long brown hair and was about in her 20's, The older woman said to me; "Here, you can have her, do what you want. " I got the impression she was telling me I could have sexual relations with this dead woman. the person who had been with me left. Although I was shocked, I picked the woman up in arms and carried her to a public area with people on a beach. I had a blanket with me and covered us up like she was sleeping at the beach and figured someone would find her there eventually and call the authorities Later I thought "I can't believe I had sex with a dead woman! They'll find DNA on her body and link her to me, I'll be in trouble." Then I thought; "This must be be a dream but it seemed like it really happened so it can't be."

The scene switches to another place where I was going in an apartment with some stereo equipment along with several other guys. I knew we were not supposed to be there as it was not ours nor were we invited, but we went in anyway. I noticed a guy sleeping in a bed partially covered up with blankets and thought "He's going to discover us here and we'll be in trouble." The guy woke up and instead of us running out, I made up this story about us delivering stereo equipment to his apartment, as if I got the address wrong and just came in. His daughter also arrived and asked where the equipment came from and I said "Sears." I noticed something else in the apartment with a Sears tag on it. We continued to try and install the equipment as though they won it as a prize. 

Analysis: 

The dream was very disturbing because more intense, forbidden, and taboo the wish that dream shows fulfilled, greater is the punishment/disturbance over it. And nothing is more forbidden, taboo and intense as are the oedipal/incestual wishes. Let us see if at the completion of the analysis this tenet of psychoanalysis proves to be true. 

 It felt real - the more pent up the wish greater is the satisfaction obtained from its if it finds representation in dream, and greater the satisfaction more real the dream feels while one is dreaming it.  

Someone, unknown person, was behind me but I don't know who it was.  Unknown person in dreams usually signifies someone very familiar (generally family member) whose identity is repressed to enable the dreamwork to do its job.  Familiar is rendered into unknown through "reversal". Whispering voices of paranoid schizophrenic, which are often very annoying and irritating, because their tone is hostile and derogatory, but whose identity and the content of what they are talking  remains indecipherable, sometimes not rising above the level of tinnitus, are  no more than the voices of family members often arguing with each other over the patient's conduct. 

On my conjecture the unknown person was his father keeping an eye on him, he rejected it because the person was someone of the same age as himself. 

"Perhaps it is that aspect of you which, incorporated from your father, acts as your father towards you, your conscience?" 

Patient agreed with that and added that yes the unknown person was felt as a restraining influence, whose oppressive influence waxed and waned but was never absent throughout the dream.   

We approached a door at the end of a dark, narrow hallway and an older woman abruptly pushed out the body of a young dead woman. The dead girl had long brown hair and was about in her 20's

Based upon they being typical symbols the door was interpreted as the genital opening and the narrow hallway genital passage. The old woman was his mother, the brown-haired dead girl was his sister. Patient first found it hard to accept these conjectures which were based upon my great familiarity with this patient's intrapsychic life, he being in treatment with me for at least a decade.  A general conversation followed in which we discussed among other things how the abuse of mother-incest (mother-fucker) is treated as the worst insult across all cultures, but in India sister-incest (sister-fucker) is used too and perhaps more often and  no doubt because while conveying the same  category  of insult,  the guilt over it is less. This led to the patient recalling that the older woman's stocky legs and the brown hair of the young dead woman was taken from the stocky legs of his mother and brown hair of his sister respectively. 

The older woman said to me; "Here, you can have her, do what you want. " I got the impression she was telling me I could have sexual relations with this dead woman. the person who had been with me left. Although I was shocked, I picked the woman up in arms and carried her to a public area with people on a beach. I had a blanket with me and covered us up like she was sleeping at the beach and figured someone would find her there eventually and call the authorities

The guilt over having sex with the mother was too strong for it to make it into the manifest content so it had to emerge as having sex with his sister. The horror of sister-incest is markedly less. The unknown person's leaving, and the mother herself handing him the sister, was to do away with the restraining influence (censorship) emerging from the parental source (superego). If the mother herself was ordering him to indulge in incest and the father now absent from the scene of the crime it was easier to dream the forbidden.  However absence of the parents was replaced by presence of other people on the beach.  As we emerge out of the influence of the parents fear of pubic opinion replaces their absence in keeping us in line.  To overcome the public disapproval of what the was planning the wish nullified it by doing the act under the cover of the blanket. This dream is a good illustration of how "the wish" and "its censorship" struggle back and forth in construction of dreams bringing all the dream distortions.

Later I thought "I can't believe I had sex with a dead woman! They'll find DNA on her body and link her to me, I'll be in trouble." Then I thought; "This must be be a dream but it seemed like it really happened so it can't be."

Once the wish was fulfilled the censorship now took the upper hand and the fear of  the act being discovered by authorities took hold of his mind. The anxiety was about to wake him but the wish to sleep countered it by making him realize that it is just a dream.  But the censorship not to be left behind declared  that if it feels like it really happened then it is not a dream but reality. The feeling that he was really indulging in incest and not dreaming it was not just adding to the pleasure from the wish fulfillment but also causing the distress ("the dream was very disturbing"). 

The scene switches to another place where I was going in an apartment with some stereo equipment along with several other guys. I knew we were not supposed to be there as it was not ours nor were we invited, but we went in anyway.

 As he managed to continue to sleep despite the anxiety and distress at doing the forbidden, the wish sought another round of satisfaction through a second edition of the act. The genital passage of the mother became apartment, his genitals became the stereo equipment, and now to lessen the guilt he was going to participate in the company of other men. Herein lies the psychology of orgies and of multiple men having sex with a single woman  It is to lessen the fear and guilt of indulging in the forbidden sexual act by shifting the blame to the group instead of shouldering it all by oneself. The restraining influence (censorship) is now felt by the nagging feeling that we are not invited to the apartment and it is not ours (the mother and sister belong to the father).  

 I noticed a guy sleeping in a bed partially covered up with blankets and thought "He's going to discover us here and we'll be in trouble."

The sexual act that took place earlier in the cover of the blanket is now truncated in its manifestation by just showing the blanket.  The guy is his father and himself rolled into one, with part of the father acting as the restraining influence - "He's going to discover us here and we'll be in trouble." - and part as an accomplice in the crime. 

The guy woke up and instead of us running out, I made up this story about us delivering stereo equipment to his apartment, as if I got the address wrong and just came in.

The guy was now entirely the restraining father, and he was making excuses for the crime of incest. Excuse of wrong address was trying to pull wool over his father's eyes by making it an accidental incest not a deliberate one.

His daughter also arrived and asked where the equipment came from and I said "Sears." I noticed something else in the apartment with a Sears tag on it. We continued to try and install the equipment as though they won it as a prize. 

Guy's  daughter was of course his sister.  Sears was allusion to his mother and sister both being dead. The dream refers to Sears twice.  Sears stores are all closed and dead now.  Telling the guy (father) that he is installing the equipment as a way to provide them as prize was attempt to con him that I am not "screwing your wife and daughter" but giving you a present. 

The question arises why did he suddenly had this eruption of incestual desire given his age and his long ceasing to be a physically sexual person.  As we get older the desire to reunite with the mother (incest with her)  emerges in the dream as reuniting with the mother-earth and is frequently symbolized by reaching journey's end, though usually shown by reversal as missing out on reaching the journey's end by not being able to make it on time to the airport or in failing to board the train due to various obstructions or being lost on the streets unable to find the address where one is supposed to be.  In this dreamer's case the  wish to reunite with the mother, which all of us did for at least nine months uninterruptedly and throughout life long for its repetition, instead of showing it in symbolic/displaced form showed it in its raw sexual version, the oedipal version.  This was perhaps made possible  by sister-incest replacing the mother-incest. The element of derailment to prevent from reaching  journey's end (death/mother-incest)) which in other dreams in shown as missing the train, plane etc. is shown here by the sexual act getting derailed into occurring with the sister instead of the mother.

 The greatest sorrow of the patient's life is the death of his sister when she was just 38 due to alcoholism. He has always carried a load in his heart for not doing enough for her to save her from her  cruel fate. If there is one thing on his bucket list it is to  make amends to his sister for this failure of his. The love making was not just to seek pleasure in the incest but to rescue her from her fate. It is through having sex and giving a child to our partner we rescue each other from death. 

That his sister was made dead before making love to her was partly expressing his ambivalence towards his mother and sister, especially towards his mother who could be very mean towards others, including him - he still  harbors great resentment and death wishes towards her - but partly by making her sister dead while he was indulging in the forbidden act, he was making sure that the sister does not notice what he was doing to her, for if she was dead she wouldn't notice a thing, let alone that she was being made his sexual object.