All of the different parts of our dreams represent both people and things in our lives -- good and bad -- as well as different parts of our own personality....In other words, we choose people to get involved with who reflect different aspects of our own personality so that our 'internal-external dialogue' -- or stated differently, our 'I vs him or her dialogue' -- is also an 'internal-internal dialogue'.
Put another way still, the friend or lover or ideal person or antagonist you choose to get involved with for any length of time in your day to day life is generally some kind of reflection of your 'inner friend, lover, ideal person, and/or antagonist' -- your 'external people and/or objects' reflecting your 'internal people, sub-personalities, and/or objects', and visa versa. This could be a projection of your 'inner mother or father', your 'anti-mother or father'...'your inner sibling, friend, and/or rival'....or any compilation or spinoff in between...or 'outside the box of our past relationships'...
But in order to work with your dreams, you also have to be able to enter a world of 'symbols', 'mythology', 'mythological archetypes', 'transference-lifestyle analysis (memory analysis)'....to be able to associate between them, and interpret the feelings, impulses, and goals behind them...
This takes some learning, some theory, some applied theory, and practice...all coming together into the 'art of dream interpretation' or 'dream work', and better still actually 'existentially role-playing' and acting out your dream in the safe confines of a competent psychotherapist's office, a competent dream therapist's office, and or a therapeutic group setting...If you are in the process of 'working through risky stuff', you need someone who knows what they are doing and is going to be able to help you through your dream work in a competent, encouraging, and compassionate manner. The same goes with interpreting your early childhood memories -- the subject of which is still very controversial today.
You want your therapist to be able to stay with 'who you are' and stay with your own projections, fantasies, and memories, as opposed to projecting their own self-imposed, and/or one-sided theories, fantasies, and/or memories on you that may not have anything to do with you and your past or present life. Stay true to yourself and 'put up red flags' if or when you think your therapist may be steering you down a channel that has no relevance 'to you'. A good therapist will listen to you -- and adjust. A bad therapist may not listen to you and just keep going, and pushing harder, with his or her own theories, assumptions, and beliefs, no matter how irrelevant they may be to your situation. To repeat, this 'epistemological area of dream and memory interpreting' can get very cloudy and controversial. The worst therapists can bungle this area very badly and pathologically. Not to scare you from dream or memory work but just a note of necessary caution.
-- dgb, Jan. 29th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
