An example of a composite structure in dream formation which throws light upon the origin of Indian deities having multiple heads and arms

 A young man, barely 21, who is extraordinarily shy and therefore does not approach girls at all and lives an isolated work-oriented life, had the following dream:

I am lying in my bed. It is very dark. There is no light at all. He later modified this and said there was some street light, but almost negligible.  Suddenly a frightening figure starts coming towards my bed. It has four eyes and four arms. In fright, I run out into the street.  As I am making my escape, I run into a friend. He takes his shirt off, which I find hilarious. and I take off my shirt too. But unlike my friend, I am not as comfortable doing.  Then we reach a mall, where there are walls and next to them stairs. I try to raise myself up by my hands and arms on one of them but cannot get to the top of it.  Then I frolic up and down the stairs as I used to do in school.    

The background darkness symbolized the extent of the repression of his libidinal impulses.  There was some street light was allusion to the therapy lifting this repression and  his taking courage to come out of his isolation. The strongest component instinct of his sexuality is that of scopophilia. To look at others and to show himself. As a child he loved climbing on trees. It was a sublimation of the instinct to look at other people from a high vantage point without getting noticed. His current extraordinary shyness and isolation is a reaction formation to this overdeveloped scopophilic instinct.  His friend's taking off the shirt was influence of the therapy to take courage in showing off himself. Failure to hoist  himself up reflected his lack of confidence in being sexually potent. A fear of performance. The climbing up and down the stairs was seeking sexual satisfaction through the fantasy of actually going back to school and showing himself off as he did while he was in school. 

However, the most interesting finding was the frightening figure of four eyes and four arms. It of course symbolized the repressive agency, the superego, the fear of conscience. I first interpreted it as the punitive aspect of his father prohibiting his sexuality. But patient wanted to know why it had four eyes and four hands and then it dawned upon us, simultaneously, that it was a composite figure of both the parents. His mother and grandmother have played much greater part in his upbringing than his father - parents being divorced at an early age.

So conscience is not just made up of the fear of father, but fear of the mother as well. It also occurred to me that Indian deities who often have multiple arms and sometimes multiple heads are composite figures - condensation of multiple authority figures from childhood.  

The multiplicity of the heads and arms also represented denial of the fear of castration - reversal of the loss of penis through showing an abundance of it; both the head and arm being typical phallic symbols.