The dream world is so strange. Freud had so much fun trying to explain it. Dreams have had such a mixed set of explanations. It wasn’t only Freud that focused on them. In the Old Testament Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat was just one example. All cultures have stories about dreams and their hidden meanings. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new theory trying to disprove this as all just chemical reactions within the brain came out. Supposedly you only dream in black and white. If you begin dreaming in color, your synapses are overly stimulated. If you ate a pepperoni pizza late at night and had a vivid dream, it was because of the chemicals you ingested. Fever, chemical ingestion/withdrawal, extreme stress can all produce intense dreams. Some of our patients in detox had very vivid dreams.
Some people would say they never dream. They do, they just don’t remember. Freud would have his patients keep dream journals by the side of their bed so they could write down the dreams immediately upon waking. Otherwise dreams can be forgotten almost immediately. Repeating dreams or dreams that you cant forget are important. I would be asked, “What does it mean”, and the standard answer was “What do you think it means?” The subjective meaning we place on our dreams can help open up our understanding of ourselves.
So anyhow yesterday I dreamed that I was going back to work on a part time basis in two different agencies. The one agency had mostly teen-agers and God knows I NEVER want to work with teen-agers again. They seemed to like me and a friend of mine ran the agency, but teens change quickly. One of the things about working with them is you have to be ready for their intensity and rapid mood changes. You can be their hero one moment and the worst villain on earth the next. It is always about being an idealized parent or a very evil and misunderstanding one. I always respected people who could make a career of that kind of work. I would work with their parents in family therapy and help them find ways to work thru problems with their kids. This dream agency seemed like I was going to have to work with just the teens.
The other job was just a standard agency that I seemed to be a consultant in. The strange thing was I was bringing my own couch (a small love seat) to each agency. I was really getting ticked off in that I had it in my car and I had to bring it to each place each time I worked. It didn’t have any cushions and that was strange. I don’t remember sitting in it or any one else sitting in it. Now what does this mean? Got me. I am not analytically oriented as much as I am structurally. I don’t ever remember having a patient where we would spend the time analyzing a dream. Usually I would offer support and confirm their own analysis and move on to other issues.
So what do I think? I think a part of me still misses being a therapist, but I need to think about the burden that it was. It wasn’t unbearable (the love seat had no cushions and I was able to carry it), but it was still a burden. The fact that one of the agencies had mostly teen-agers might mean that despite my ambivalence about retiring there are still limits in what I would want to do.
I really did have an interesting job. I met amazing people from all walks of life. I tried to listen to their stories and help them make sense of their past and make plans for their present. I wouldn’t give up a minute of it—–but I am starting to understand how it did affect me. I would get so focused on helping others that I would often forget about myself. I think this time now is still one of discovery. What will I find out ? I remember when Sammy Sosa played for the White Sox ( yes he did Cub fans!). He was a very streaky hitter. When he was on he was a miraculous ball player who could do anything. When he wasn’t he was terrible. One of the announcers was talking about him during one of his terrible times. He didn’t want Sammy to change and wanted him to just keep swinging “because sooner or later he’ll hit something”. I think that is what I am trying to do. If I just keep at it maybe I will come to a deeper level of understanding. We’ll see.