LET'S FOLLOW OUR DREAMS TO AWARENESS

 

Of all psychological behavior manifestations, I believe that dreams are still the least understood. In his Interpretation of Dreams (1899) Freud stated that dreams are “the royal road to knowledge of activities of the unconscious mind”; in other words, dreams are the tool to use when we want to understand what is going on in our conscious mind. Freud’s theory is especially useful when related to feelings of hostility that we deny because we are not ready to acknowledge them. Unfortunately, when we try to analyze our dreams more often than not we can barely follow their logic. However, sometimes we get the key to unfold their mystery. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that, strangely enough, only took me a couple of minutes to grasp, probably because its meaning was ready to enter my consciousness. By means of several well-chosen metaphors, the dream was a perfect description of my relationship with a longtime friend who, as time went by, had become my nemesis. Although for several years I had not had any kind of relationship with this friend, I always remembered our encounter as one of the most significant of my life. We had met when we were young and had found that, in many ways, our ideas about life were alike. Then, as time went by and we became older, my friend became distant and hostile. Since I was at a loss about our broken friendship, I did all I could to reach this friend halfway; but nothing worked. The hostility went on for so long that finally our relationship ended. Despite the fact that my friend’s behavior had deeply hurt me, for some reason I was unable to acknowledge the deception. I had covered my hurt with delusion. Now the dream was urging me to be honest with myself and own the pain that my friend had caused me. The dream’s message was easy to understand: so, as I always do, I let out my hurt feelings in a poem so as to give free rein to my resentment peacefully. That was it. By owning the sorrow my words were expressing, I had purified my unconscious and I had awarded my mind with the serenity it deserves.