Jeane: I can only recall flashes of what I dreamt. In one scene, I’m talking to someone about how I had gone down the street, from one building to another, and during that I ran into a girl I used to know. In the interim years I had dated a man who used to be her boyfriend. I know that this girl never completely let go of him. I don’t know if she was aware that I dated him some time after they broke up.
My sense is that she might be going out with him again, but it could also be that I am going out with him again – it’s not completely clear. Either way, when I see her I’m not sure how to talk about all this.
That’s the first flash I have of the dream. I see myself discussing this situation with another friend, wondering how I should handle the situation. Do I talk about it openly with her? And, do I even know how to talk about it?
John: In this flash you are touching on something that has a few layers to it. On one hand, it seems like an everyday, ordinary event in the outer. On the other hand, there is something more going on through which you have an inner knowledge.
In other words, you have dated her ex-boyfriend, but you don’t really think that she’s aware of that. So what you are dealing with is having an inner knowledge that she doesn’t. If the girl doesn’t know this, it’s not recognizable; therefore you wouldn’t talk about it.
This is your way of depicting a reflective, inner layer. In the dream, there is you and the girl, seemingly separate people, yet they are both parts of you. So in this seemingly banal scenario, you are showing that a part of you can see both sides of the equation, while another part of you cannot.
In terms of dreaming, the scene could be about anything – it’s not particular to this girl or an ex-boyfriend. So on one level of the dream you are having this awkward situation that could happen in life. But then at a deeper layer, it is showing you a threaded access point through which you can bring the deeper knowledge – both sides of the equation – into daylight, so to speak. From this fragment it isn’t exactly clear what that knowledge is, but your system knows and it is trying to make this transference from a deeper level into the more conscious level.
