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.