Michael Murphy's Book of Dreams E-Book

Michael Murphy

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 231

Beschreibung

In Michael Murphy's Book of Dreams, the author, broadcaster and psychoanalyst examines 65 dreams, unlocking the fascinating insights they offer. His accessible style and expert analysis will help you understand the unconscious thoughts that lead to dreams and explore how their hidden meaning can guide you in your daily life. Discover how to analyse your own dreams and how to make sense of the seemingly random material that derives from the unconscious. Learn the meaning of recurring dreams and identify those that signal change is needed. There are dreams about pop stars, relationships, dead people, animals, addiction, the apocalypse, holidays, the Leaving Cert and more. This book will encourage you to work with your dreams in order to reach a deeper understanding of what you really want in life and discover how to achieve it.

Leseprobe

MICHAEL MURPHY’S

BOOK OFDREAMS

Gill Books

For all dreamers everywhere, that the poetry of dreams may enrich the prose of your everyday.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword by Dr Patrick Randall

Introduction

1. Anima and Animus Dreams

Barry’s dream of the crying girl

Conor’s dream of the woman in black

Anne’s dream of her dead cousin

Aidan’s dream of Paloma Faith

Darragh’s dream of being with a girl he had never seen before

2. Shadow Dreams

Albert’s dream of Roy Keane helping him move house

Nessa’s dream of Madonna and Nicole Kidman

Brian’s dream of getting into a fight, but not being able to hit

Maeve’s dream of two people hanging from a tree

3. Self Dreams

Timothy’s dream of being elected president

Ultan’s dream of being invited to dinner with the emperor of China

4. Animal Dreams

Bridget’s dream of a cake full of rats

Dermot’s dream of pigeons pooping on him

Kate’s dream of a white snake

Doireann’s dream of the mouse and the cat

Emer’s dream of the giant spiders

5. Sex and Relationship Dreams

Deirdre’s sex dreams about her male friend

Eileen’s dream about her old friend who died

Fidelma’s dream of going to her ex’s house

Adam’s dream of a girl he really likes

Padraig’s constant erotic dreams

Rory’s erotic dreams never about his girlfriend

Seamus’s dream of being with a sexy girl in a bar

Grainne’s dream of living with her two brothers and their girlfriends

Hannah’s dream of having an affair with her best friend

Irene’s dream of falling in love with a man who keeps getting taken away

Niamh’s dream of jogging with a colleague

6. Journey Dreams

Finn’s dream of winning a radio competition

Rachel’s dream about going on holidays

Helen’s dream of being a cowboy

Gareth’s dream of being in a wheelchair

Jeanine’s dream of climbing into the sky

Fiona’s dream of Sydney

Ita’s dream of getting lost

7. Trickster and Shapeshifter Dreams

Sarah’s dream of her tutor being a transgender serial killer

Kevin’s dream of a roller coaster, Superman and an octopus

8. Nightmares

Eamonn’s dream of a betting shop

Hugh’s dream of doing the Leaving Cert

Kathleen’s dream of a pale blue mermaid

Laura’s dream of something holding her down

Jarlath’s dream of being thrown around the room

Kieran’s dream of being in a nightclub

Nora’s dream of being possessed

Lorcan’s dream of a post-apocalyptic Ireland

Orlaith’s dream of the end of the world

Patricia’s dream of a public beheading

Róisín’s dream of having murdered someone

Sheila’s dream of a figure standing over her in bed

Michael’s dream about a woman hanging outside the window

Tina’s dream about a woman falling down a lift shaft

Niall’s dream about being at a gig

Una’s dream of being trapped with an evil old lady

9. Persona Dreams

Maura’s dream of walking in public

Iseult’s dream of ending up in public in her underwear

Aileen’s dream of going to work on roller skates

Bridget’s dream of her front teeth falling out

Catherine’s dream of her face covered in acne

10. The Symbolic Language of Dreams

Declan’s dream of carrying loads of things from one room to another

Emmett’s dream of holding the baby

Frank’s dream of swimming in a cube

Tessa’s dream of driving her car

Garvan’s dream of being on top of a massive crane

Ian’s dream of being able to fly

Jeremiah’s dream of a storm hitting the house

Luke’s dream of his eighth birthday

Endnote

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Author

Also by the Author

About Gill Books

Foreword

We have all come to know Michael Murphy through his work as a broadcaster, producer and television personality. Michael’s voice permeated our homes with an air of sincere urgency and care when he broadcast the news on radio or television. His was the voice you listened to, not just because of what he was saying, but because of how he was saying it. Michael expressed himself with such articulate care and compassion that we felt somehow better about ourselves: it made us feel that we were worthy of such care.

Michael has devoted himself to careful, artful articulation as a broadcaster, writer and psychoanalyst. This was evident in his first book, At Five in the Afternoon, in which he documented his struggle with prostate cancer and invited us to witness his courageous journey. Following this he passionately explored sexuality, complex human relationships and commitment in his second prose work, The House of Pure Being. Michael’s passion and engagement with the human condition continued when he published two collections of poetry, The Republic of Love and A Chaplet of Roses, in which he took us on an emotional tour that left us reflecting on, sharing and celebrating life.

This present work of Michael’s once again challenges us. This time it is a challenge to explore the unconscious through our dreams. The book is a natural progression in Michael’s writing, and it shows itself to be a thoughtful integration of his years of psychoanalytic practice, nuanced communication skills, curiosity and abundant humanity. Armed with these years of analytic experience and a profound knowledge of psychoanalytic theory informed by the writings of Jung, Freud, Lacan and others, Michael respectfully and warmly analyses the dreamscape.

In Michael Murphy’s Book of Dreams, Michael has intelligently and artfully provided interpretations and hypotheses that are free from psychoanalytic jargon, yet not lacking in depth. He maintains the sanctity of the original dream, and respectfully offers insights to decode the prompts from the unconscious that provide direction and support to the dreamer. Michael conducts his analyses with warmth, compassion and an instinct for the fulcrum message of the dream.

His attention to detail is reflected in his painstaking delving into the possible meanings of words through etymology and ambiguity, where he examines the symbolism of dreams from all perspectives.

Michael opens with a succinct yet thorough introduction to the basic functions of the dream, and he introduces the process of analysis in an understandable, friendly manner, which illustrates how the unconscious communicates through the dream drama.

Following his introduction, Michael documents brief dreamscapes which he analyses. This is a characteristically brave departure, as Michael has only the dream upon which to work: he has no knowledge of the dreamers nor of their lives. However, undeterred, he arrives at deep and potentially significant therapeutic findings for those whose dreams he analyses.

Michael’s work also challenges the professional psychotherapist, and encourages them to invest time and effort in understanding their client’s unconscious communications and dreams. While Michael Murphy’s Book of Dreams is not a dream interpretation manual, it offers the professional reader a courageous illustration of this work in action that cannot but inspire them.

Michael’s approach is respectful, curious and informed. He is at times serious and considered, and at other times, he incarnates the humorous trickster, encouraging his clients to view themselves with compassion and humour. Michael’s approach is always respectful and supportive, which ensures his clients’ safety.

The dreams are characteristically oblique and obscure when examined literally, and their meanings are hard to discern initially. Michael’s transparent and thorough examination of each dream helps the reader see the dream from the analyst’s perspective, and witness companionably the process of analysis.

This collection of contemporary Irish dreams will further our insight into the Irish psyche and how we make sense of our conscious and unconscious processes. Michael’s work will doubtless continue to contribute to our understanding and acceptance of ourselves into the future. I am delighted to witness this work. Michael has yet again given us a courageous and compassionate look at our humanity by illuminating our unconscious processes, and showing how their integration into our consciousness can enrich and bring balance into our daily lives.

Dr Patrick Randall

Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist

Director, Forensic Psychological Services, Dún Laoghaire, Co.

Dublin

Introduction

Everyone dreams, but not everyone remembers their dreams, which is a pity. Because by paying attention to our dreams, we can ground ourselves in the deepest truth of our being, and make wiser choices that work towards our greater good. Consciously, we see our lives as if through the tiny viewfinder on a mobile phone, whereas unconsciously, we see our lives as if writ large on a massive cinemascope screen. So it’s sensible to allow this bigger picture – as seen in our dreams – to inform our lives, and to follow our dreams.

Dreams have played an important role in many cultures throughout history. In the ancient world, dreams were seen as messages from the gods. The biblical patriarchs Abraham and Jacob were guided by their dreams, and so too was Joseph in the New Testament. The Egyptian god of dreams, Serapis, had many temples throughout Egypt. In Greek religion, Morpheus was worshipped as the god of dreams. He formed the images and visions that communicated what the gods wanted the dreamer to know. Visits were made to the temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, for healing guidance from dreams. This ancient wisdom of dreams, which has been revered over thousands of years, is available to us today when we honour our dreams.

Dreams arise from bursts of activity in a biologically ancient part of the mid brain. The limbic system has to do with emotions and plays a role in memory storage. It also includes the most primitive, instinctive part of the brain, responsible for REM sleep. REM or dream sleep evolved 130 million years ago. Dreams occur regularly throughout the night every 90 minutes, each episode persisting from 5 to 40 minutes. They account for a quarter of each night’s sleep. The presence of REM sleep in many species, such as dogs, cats, horses, elephants, probably all higher animals, is shown by the movements and sounds they make while dreaming, which indicates that dreams must perform a crucial survival function in mammals.

Scientific research shows that dreams are involved with memory storage. Dreams are a neural process whereby information essential to the survival of the species gathered during the day is reprocessed into memory during REM sleep, so that our collective survival strategies are updated. Our own private dreams also contribute to this collective tapestry. By paying attention to our dreams, we can draw on this vital, unconscious resource to more appropriately react to the circumstances we face, and to make better choices that will contribute to our future survival and success.

Dreams are formulated in a pictorial language that we can only understand when we put the images into words. That’s why it is a good idea to keep a dream journal in which to write down our dreams. However, it is wise to discuss our dreams only with people we love or who support us, because our dreams are very revealing self-portrayals. They reveal certain situations in our unconscious in symbolic form. The words we use when describing them are sacred, as they arise from our soul. Far from being ephemeral, dreams are a basic fact of experience, and they should be honoured as such. Often we can also experience the emotion carried by a dream at night while we sleep, and this can carry over into the next day while we are awake. We can then better understand the dream’s symbolic significance by analysing those feelings, no matter how uncomfortable, unsettling or even consoling they might be.

Dreams chart a hero’s journey through life, rather like a film. We are the producer and the director, we choose the camera angles, we write the drama, and we commission the actors. The archetypal hero pattern in dreams shows the process or the various rites of passage that we need to undergo in order to accomplish our psychological growth. This journey goes from childhood through the adolescent transition into early maturity, followed by the midlife transition into middle age and the late-life transition into late maturity and old age. This life journey leads us to become more mature human beings.

There are many different elements and themes that occur regularly in dreams, which act as signposts that mark the stages in our spiritual journey. Identifying these can help us to decipher the metaphorical and figurative nature of dreams, so that we may understand and be guided towards maturity by what they communicate.

The Animus is the masculine side of a woman’s unconscious. There are four stages of this symbolic inner development for a woman that often manifest in dreams. First, an Animus figure may appear as a male figure who personifies physical power, such as an athletic champion. This is followed by an action hero, a man who takes initiatives in the world. Third is a more intellectual figure, such as a professor or a philosopher. Finally, the fourth inner male figure in a woman’s dreams essentially incarnates meaning and purpose for her. He is a well-rounded figure, who incorporates all of the three previous transformations, and can be regarded as a wise, old man.

The Anima is the feminine side of a man’s unconscious. The first stage in the development of the Anima or inner feminine is often personified in dreams as a woman who represents instinct and sexual relations. The second is more a romantic figure, but one who is still characterised by sexual elements. The third stage corresponds to the goddess or the Virgin Mary, which is a symbol of love raised to the heights of spiritual devotion. The final and fourth stage is a figure who yields wisdom, and can be represented by the personification of wisdom known as Sophia, who was the central concept of Hellenistic religion, corresponding to the Holy Spirit in Christianity.

The goal in paying conscious attention to this unconscious evolution in our psyches is to bring more balance into our lives, and ultimately to become wise and whole human beings. The Animus and Anima archetypes, which have the characteristics of the opposite gender, are a guide for our inner world and are personified in Animus or Anima figures in dreams. These figures have many gifts to share with us from the unconscious masculine or feminine within, not least in sexual matters, but also in broadening and balancing out our personalities.

Shadow dreams feature people of the same sex as the dreamer. A Shadow figure often appears as inferior or negative, and embodies the unpleasant qualities in ourselves that we prefer to hide. For example, a Shadow figure may appear in a man’s dream as a man trying to break into his house. The intruder may embody qualities the dreamer was forced to repress by parents or teachers when he was young. However, these qualities – like being streetwise, confrontational, stubborn or belligerent – could help him now as an adult if he were to bring them back into use.

There’s always a secret sympathy with this rejected part of our personality that reveals itself in our dreams. We like to help the enemy within, which shows up in the embarrassing mistakes that we make or in our slips of the tongue. If we remained in blissful ignorance of the repressed negative qualities in our Shadow, we would be in danger of being possessed by them and of acting them out. Our dreams can alert us in time to this danger. We can also project these negative attitudes outwards and wrongly scapegoat others, since often we don’t recognise these traits as our own until a dream points them out.

Many dreams concern the Self, the archetype of wholeness and the unifying centre of the psyche. The Self is usually perceived in dreams as other, for example, as God, the sun, the president, the queen, or even as language or speech that comes from a numinous other place. Such dreams induce awe.

Helpful animals can appear in dreams to assist the hero in completing his tasks. We can ask why a dream shows a crafty fox, as opposed to a far-seeing eagle, or a powerful Rottweiler. It is because animals are closer to their instincts than most people, and they remind us in an era of smartphones and laptops that we, too, need to use our instinctive animal know-how. Shakespeare, who empathically understood human nature, and whose brilliant mind could describe our qualities in zoomorphic terms, listed ‘hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey’ (King Lear). All of these animals appear in our dreams and carry those references to this day. For example, a snake may appear in dreams when the mind is deviating from its instinctual basis and needs to get back on track with territorial behaviour, defence or competitive striving.

Dreams often present Persona problems. The Persona is the way we appear to others, the face we put on. This can be illustrated in dreams through the clothes we wear or don’t wear. These dreams can tell us that we over-identify with the professional role we play, and need to shed that, or that an unbalanced Persona is causing us unnecessary stress.

Trickster and Shapeshifter figures appear in our dreams when we take matters too seriously. Clown figures or the Shakespearean fool, for example, challenge and set new limits for us, astonish us and awaken us to different perspectives and new ways of approaching difficulties.

It can be useful to summarise your dream in a sentence: ‘I had a dream last night that I killed somone’ or ‘I dreamt that my teeth fell out’. Dreams of dying or killing someone concern the death of the attitudes that the victims embody, or worn-out ways of approaching life that we need to shed. Teeth dreams have to do with times of transition – getting older when once upon a time a person’s teeth fell out as we aged (with the potential to regress to childhood). The appearance of teeth in dreams also suggests we should get outside help with our problem (we don’t take out our own teeth; we seek the help of dentists). Wedding dreams represent the coming together of the opposites in our personalities, often giving birth to an unexpected third position that partakes of the two alternatives. The goal of wholeness is to be able to move between these two opposing sides comfortably. And a wedding in dreams also demonstrates to us that a transformation is possible, which is consoling. Doing the Leaving Cert and not being prepared for it shows that a transition is occurring: there’s a new challenge facing us in our lives, and we need to get up to speed with this examination, and wake up to the situation in order to prepare for it properly.

Finally, a nightmare is a dream that shouts at us to pay attention to a potential danger. It mobilises our fight or flight responses.

Dreams reveal our unconscious mind. By paying attention to our dreams and trying to decipher them, we can get additional data upon which to base our conscious choices so that we are more in tune with our true selves, which embrace both the unconscious and consciousness. Dreams always relate us to the age-old concerns of humanity: feeding, fighting, fleeing and fornication. By owning our dreams and playing around with what they have to say, by looking at the dream from as many perspectives as possible since everything and everybody in the dream refers to us, we can increase the influence of their creative power in our lives.

The dreams in this collection are contemporary and reflect Ireland today. They were chosen because they are commonly occurring, and show themes and motifs that can apply to any individual. The dreams were written down as they were related, and so reflect the dreamers’ sometimes unusual use of language. They came to me from a wide variety of public and private sources to analyse in my work as a psychoanalyst.

When I work with a client’s dream in the privacy of the consulting room, their personal associations to the dream have pride of place, in order to allow the individual truth of their personalities have its say as much as possible. Apart from giving the sex of the dreamer, the dreams in this volume are seldom amplified by many subjective associations, which serves to protect the client. The names of the dreamers have also been changed to ensure their privacy. On the one hand, the lack of context and subjective detail is a loss. On the other hand, it’s also an opportunity that allows the objective structure of these dreams to be analysed in a way that demonstrates how any dream can be analysed.

I hope that this book of dreams will help others to both analyse and live out the wisdom of their own dreams. Thus even in today’s sceptical world, which largely ignores the sacred and has forgotten the underlying myths which support our civilisation, dreams can continue to be considered as messages from the gods within!

1

Anima and Animus Dreams

The unconscious side of our personality is represented in dreams by a person of the opposite sex. The feminine side of a man’s unconscious is known as the Anima, while the masculine side of a woman’s unconscious is called the Animus. Both the Anima and Animus represent a person’s soul, and their personification as Anima and Animus figures in a dream can lead us to make a connection with our unconscious side, which compensates for deficiencies in our conscious attitudes.

The character of a man’s femininity and a woman’s masculinity are formed by our mothers and fathers, who were influenced in turn by their parents, and so on. The Anima and Animus figures in our dreams, which derive from our ancestry, accompany us on our inner journey, and lead us towards discovering our individual meaning. For example, we often choose to fall in love with people who embody this projection of our ancient, ancestral soul, because at some deep level we realise that they are compatible with us and balance out our personalities. Therefore the Anima and Animus are responsible for finding the right marriage partner! However, at a later stage in the development of our relationships, perhaps seven or eight years into a marriage, this projection of the embodiment of our Anima or Animus onto our partner has to be withdrawn and recognised for what it is: an eternal potential within, which properly belongs to ourselves. True love can then deepen the relationship. However, if this soul image is not properly understood and integrated back into the personality, the disappointment it engenders can split the relationship apart.

Anima and Animus manifest in both negative and positive forms as an inner power. A positive Anima in a man is life-giving, spontaneous, creative and inspiring; it carries the emotional side of his nature. The Anima allows a man to be receptive to the irrational, to have a capacity for personal love, a feeling for nature, and the ability to relate to the unconscious. The Anima compensates for man’s logical mind. What’s more, in our dreams the Anima figure puts a man in tune with the inner values that are correct for him, and opens him up to profound inner depths, guiding him and mediating his inner world. In tune with his Anima figure, he is able to incarnate this experience of the feminine within through writing, painting, sculpture, musical composition or dance. Negative aspects of the Anima can show up when a man is moody or touchy, irritable, rigid, pedantic, depressed, uncertain or insecure; when he is behaving like the negative stereotype of a woman, prone to waspish, poisonous or effeminate remarks.

In a woman, negative aspects of the Animus can surface in being stridently angry, argumentative, controlling or obstinate with absolute convictions; again, like the negative stereotype of a man. Negative Animus qualities also manifest as coldness and complete inaccessibility; as brutality, recklessness and malevolent silence. One can rarely contradict a sweeping Animus opinion because in the most general way it’s usually correct, although anyone being so adamant is never warranted. The negative Animus figure also personifies dreamy thoughts full of desire and judgements about how things ought to be but aren’t. These things can serve to cut off a woman from the reality of life. On the other hand, positive aspects to the Animus drive a woman to get things done and be focused, always leading towards positive and healthy life-giving relationships with other people. A positive Animus gives a woman spiritual firmness and compensates for her softer, maternal qualities. He opens her to new, creative ideas. Often the Animus takes form in dreams as a group of men, symbolising the received wisdom of the collective, rather than being solely an individual contribution.



Barry’s dream of the crying girl

I had a dream I walked into a room and found a crying girl. I looked away and when I looked back, she was drowning in a river. – Barry

This is a dream about an Anima figure, a representative of the feminine side of the male soul. Barry’s Anima presents as a girl. A female child originally had the meaning of a maidservant. So the girl is presented to Barry as a servant – one who serves another for wages – she is not Barry’s equal, nor is she a grown-up, mature woman. Indeed the history of the word ‘girl’ refers to a young person of either sex, so this Anima figure is quite undifferentiated, and is perhaps even a male suffering from connotations of prissiness, oversensitivity and effeminacy. So we can conclude that Barry is having a dream about a negative Anima figure.

According to the drama of the dream, Barry ignores what he should notice: when he sees the distress of the Anima who is crying, he looks away, instead of being protective and moving towards her to comfort her and find out what’s wrong. This scene serves to underline Barry’s gauche immaturity being expressed in the dream. Then in a moment of increased tension, when Barry looks back, the girl is drowning in a river. Drowning, or dying by submersion in water, is a metaphor that describes the crying girl’s feelings of helplessness, and symbolises her grief and sadness at the situation. Shakespeare used the same motif in his play Hamlet, when Ophelia drowns in a river.

This is a warning dream. Barry is shown in the most graphic terms that he is in danger of losing his feminine side, which has to do with relating to others and employing his softer feelings, and which has personified in his dream as an undeveloped girl. His Anima is in danger of death by drowning, be it through her tears or the river.

The dream presents this situation to Barry without showing its conclusion, so there is still time to try to save her. The dream gives Barry a choice: to do nothing, or to rescue the representative of his soul before it’s too late.

This is a good example of why we should pay attention to what the unconscious shows us in dreams. If Barry doesn’t act on the dream, his Anima figure may not have the opportunity to grow up and become his equal.

Barry uses the word ‘drowning’. We often use that word figuratively to indicate being overwhelmed, inundated, flooded or submerged. So we can ask the question: what is causing Barry’s inner feminine side to drown? Is there a grief or sorrow in his life that is so overwhelming he’s unable to face up to it in a mature way? Does this grief come from his childhood, when something had such a traumatic effect that it left him emotionally frozen? What is blunting Barry’s finer feelings, coarsening him, leaving him in danger of being swallowed up? Could it be drink, for example, because the base of the Old English verb ‘to drown’ also means ‘to drink’?