Dream 3 January 2011

In my dream I am back in analysis but not with my previous analyst.  My husband and I both see the same analyst one after the other in her rooms, a shop front dwelling a few kilometres up the hill from where we live.

This new analyst is friendly enough and I like her.  I am conscious as I lie down on her couch of a long history of past discussions with my previous analyst but I try not to let them over swamp the present.  In the current session I try to break up my thoughts on anger.  I tell my analyst about a recent incident when I cannot work out whether I is me ho is angry or whether it is the person I am with who is angry.  I pause and then remember how I saw my mother in the street that morning.  I tell her as much and she sighs exasperated.  I should have known it was time to finish and not launched into a new topic.  I fee hurt and affronted.  She should have warned me or at least tole me thsat we had to finish.  How was I to know.  I could have gone on for hours yet.

Now it is my husband’s turn.  He lies down on the couch and just as I did before him he begins to talk about his experience, which for him includes his thoughts about his previous analyst.  It does not seem odd in this dream that we are both present for each other’s analysis.  It is rather like the way I sat in on his session when we both visited the eye doctor, as if we have no secrets from one another.

I am intrigued to hear my husband talk about the difficulties his previous analyst had in expressing himself artistically.  Just as this man had been stuck in his painting so too my husband now feels stuck in his artistic pursuits.

I leave the session room and detour through the toilets to collect our daughter who has asked that I drive her home.  As I walk through my analysts room to collect my keys she speaks over my husband to me.

‘You go from your analysis into driving your children.’  I realise I am angry with her now.
‘That is my life,’ I say.  Even as I realise this is not entirely true.  I spend a great deal of my life these days writing.  I am not simply in analysis and ferrying my children places but I am angry with my analyst for dismissing me and therefore I feel sorry for myself.

In my dream there are tradesmen working on my house.  The front veranda has been uprooted and it is hard to get o the door.  One of the tradesmen becomes so tired he needs to go for a sleep and I help someone visiting to find him a spare bed.  I tell him he must pile up the pillows.  They are soft and soggy and although there are several of them, unless he piles one on the other he will not have a good sleep.

I find myself cleaning out the toilet.  The toilet brush had fallen in and I worry about soiling my hands.

Dream 7 January, 2011

In my dream a young man takes my hand.  He has the olive skin of someone born in the Mediterranean and seems awkward and uncertain as though he has never had a girlfriend before and does not know what to do.  We walk together to a building filled with small offices.  We climb rough wooden stairs.  We do not speak, but I feel safe enough, confident that he will not hurt me.  He is too gauche, too clumsy in his manner to want to hurt anyone.

We enter an office on the third floor and take our seats to watch the last session where an older man, whose arms are covered in tattoos massages another.  It might seem erotic if it were not so contrived.   Eventually my Mediterranean man steps forward for his turn.  He hands over money in twenty-dollar notes and takes off his clothes.  He starts to masturbate his penis.  Its orb swells to the size of a fist.  I had thought that under instructions from the man conducting the sessions I must gaze encouragingly into my young man’s eyes but there is no need for this.

My young man is intent on pleasuring himself and is oblivious to me.  Later after time is up, he tucks his deflated penis back into his trousers.  We go to a shop where I buy him a present, a set of eggcups hand painted with bunny rabbits.  It is a deceit, I fear.  I am trying to give an impression of approval, but already I despise this man and it will not be long before I drop him.