Tag Archive for ‘Dreams’

Three Types of Men: Foreign lover/Abusive father/Good father

Published on February 25, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 79 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Depth Psychology, Dreams, Foreign, Igor, Javier Bardem, Lily, Love, Psychoanalysis.

Remember the post, the one from a few days ago, the one I was whinging about not having any dreams. In terms of daytime dreams I am still without one. Writing a book, having a baby, or moving to Chicago have not been replaced with the desire to open a tea shop or take up Bikram yoga. However in terms of night time dreams I have had two.

Dream number one was a bit on the X-rated side. I won’t go into lurid detail. I will just tell you that Javier Bardem and I were doing things that birds and bees and educated fleas do. What felt important in this dream was the level of connection Javier and I had. And Javier’s instructions to me felt VERY important. Javier was very keen on me “opening up to him”. It seemed that he was trying to open me up so he could fill me up(metaphorically). Please, stay with the metaphor—this isn’t about sex, it’s about metaphor—really. In the dream it felt like Javier and I were very connected and I trusted him and I did open up to him. I told Igor all of these associations.
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I’m something at Igor

Published on February 21, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Dreams and Quotidien. 80 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Bion, Book, Chicago, Desire, Dreams, Kindle, Lacan, Lake Bluff, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Publishing, Winnicott, Writing.

I don’t know what I am at him. I want to say angry but that doesn’t feel right.

Here is what I know. When I started seeing Igor I wanted to go home. Back then I knew where home was. I hated where I was. I still wanted a baby even though I knew I would never have one. And I knew I wanted to write and publish a book. Back then there were things that I knew that I wanted.

Now, two and a half years later, I don’t want to move back to Chicago. Now I am okay with being where I am. That may sound like progress to you but to me, as of last week, I started to wonder if it was apathy, surrender, and a general loss of hope. I have no desire to have a child, I am too old and that ship has sailed. And I have absolutely no desire to publish a book. None. And I would like to blame that last one on Igor only all the credit for that lost dream goes to iPad. As soon as I started to read books on iPad I no longer had any desire to publish a book. To want to publish a book in today’s publishing world is like wanting to break into silent film just as the talkies came out. Books, I am afraid, are a dinosaur that is moving into hospice care ( Borders is shutting down stores and when you go into Barnes and Noble and they are selling a device that will soon make their store unnecessary, and Amazon is now selling more electronic books than actual books). As soon as I read my first book on an iPad I just didn’t care about publishing anymore, video had killed the radio star. I am already working in the realm of digital media. I have two blogs and a web page. That is much online presence as I want. I don’t want to publish “books” for Kindle. Does that mean I am old and outdated? Or does it just mean I know what I don’t want?
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Again with the leopard, the shoes and the dreams

Published on February 10, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Dreams, Objects and Psychology. 48 Comments Tags: Boots, Cole Haan, Dreams, Igor, Louboutin, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Transitional Objects, Transitional Space, Winnicott.

“Here is the dream”, I tell Igor, “I am at Bloomingdales and I am on a big sofa and I am trying on shoes in the shoe department.”

“Which Bloomingdales?” Igor asked.

“I don’t know”, I answered surprised that he knows more than one location. I just can’t imagine Igor shopping at Bloomies.

“Sitting next to me is an African-American woman, she is sitting to my right, and she is trying on shoes. I overhear her telling the saleswoman that she isn’t going to take the leopard print boots. I get excited and I tell the saleswoman that is helping me that I want those boots. I imagine that they are the Cole Haan leopard boots that I didn’t buy two years ago and how I have lamented letting them get away.”

“Did you really want those boots in real life?”, Igor asked.
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Oui Wednesday

Published on February 2, 2011 in Quotidien. 34 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Dorothea, Dreams, Igor, Lily, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Westie.

1. Dorothea was 100% right on. I took her dream interpretation with me to Igor’s as I knew she was right. He isn’t usually interested what any of my friends think about my dreams but when he heard Dorothea had made an interpretation he clamored to hear it. The truth is that I think Igor is a bit smitten with Dorothea(ever since he heard her first dream interpretation he has had a bit of a soft spot for her).

This is what genius Dorothea said about the dream I wrote about on Monday:

This may be my own tunnel vision here, but I think this is related to the feelings you’ve expressed in the previous posts. To pull in another character from Greek mythology, perhaps you are feeling like Icarus — you are scared that you are flying too close to the sun. You’ve exposed your true (and lovely!) face by giving up your anonymity. You’re feeling good about living in (sunny) Pasadena. You can read these as assertions of your ego: “Hey, look at me, I’m writing this cool stuff that I want the world to see!” (for which the world is better off)! “And I’m going to claim Pasadena as mine, too!” And this makes you vulnerable.

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Red-faced

Published on January 31, 2011 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Dreams and Quotidien. 52 Comments Tags: Beauty, Belette in Psychotherapy, Body, Carl Jung, Dreams, Igor, James Hillman, Myth, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Skin, Skincare, The Self, Vampires.

At least I dreamt that I was. In the dream I had been out in the sun and I didn’t have sunblock on. I had remembered that I had been using skincare products that made me especially susceptible to the sun’s harmful rays. In the dream I panicked. “My face”. I somehow saw my face( in a mirror?) and it wasn’t just red it was a purplish burnt looking red. It felt permanent and that I would be damaged by this exposure. That was it, that was the entire dream. When I woke up it had felt like a nightmare. So what does this little dream mean?

Let’s start with where the dream begins: I was out in the sun. What does it mean to be out in the sun? For me, as an introvert with Irish skin, it means that I am in two places that feel a little uncomfortable in( out and in the sun) and in a place that I need to be protected from—I am vulnerable when I am out in the sun. The sun is out in the day time, when all the action happens. Hence the sun is more of an ego state( masculine) while the moon is symbolic of the unconscious( or the feminine. or the receptive). To get too much sun is to have too much ego state. Sun is light, warmth, and generative but it can also be burning, destructive and killing. The sun is the centre of our solar system. It is symbolic of enlightenment. Carl Jung theorized that the sun was an archetype of the human concept of the Self.”

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Cinderella in my closet

Published on January 26, 2011 in Belette's Favorites, Childless Not By Choice, Dreams, Meaning Making and Objects. 64 Comments Tags: Austin, Childless Not By Choice, Dreams, Grief, Infertility, Lake Bluff, Los Angeles, Loss, Shoes.

On a sunny Southern California day in January, the month we moved to Chicago, I took a trip to an outlet mall outside of the city. I was there to find coats, gloves, scarves and other winter weather gear. We were ill prepared for the freezing temps of Chicago and I had to stock up fast or face hypothermia and/or freeze our tuckuses off. Thanks to Eddie Bauer’s subzero line I was over-prepared for the snow in one stop and I even bought unnecessary hand warmers that one uses for skiing and car lock deicers that I never used. But since I was already there at the outlet mall, I thought I would do a little more shopping just to see what I could see. What I saw was a beautiful and delicate pair of black lace pumps at Cole Haan’s outlet store. I knew, at once, that they were highly impractical. I also knew that I didn’t have a life that required much in the way of evening shoes. However I fell in love and I was feeling that wonderful “we are moving out of L.A. ” dream come true feeling and everything felt like it was coming up roses and that soon all our wishes would come true. And since the shoes were on sale, I, without too much rationalization, bought them.

The Cole Haan black lace pumps went in a moving van across the country and they, unworn, found a home in my Lake Bluff closet. The entire time that we lived in Chicago an occasion never arose in which these lacy shoes were needed. They stayed in their box patiently waiting for the day when they would have their time in the sun( or the snow). The day never came.
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Freudian Express: Dreams

Published on January 14, 2011 in Dreams, Psychology and Psychology Today. 27 Comments Tags: Dreams, Freudian, Freudian Sip, Jungian, Psychology, Psychology Today.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “I had the craziest dream last night,” I would be in Paris right now staying at the George V, drinking champagne and eating platters of foods not found on the menu of Applebee’s. Most of the time, people that share their “crazy” dreams with me tend to tell me their dream to illustrate how crazy their dreams are and not to actually understand it. They tell me, “There was a bear, a pig and a guy who looked like Simon Cowell, only he was really my mother, and we were on the tea cup ride at Disneyland and we had to make the teacups go really fast or Sarah Palin was going to start dancing on top of the Matterhorn,” and then they look at me, expecting me to affirm their sense of what a wacky dream it was and how their dream is proof that dreams are just wild and meaningless. Instead I calmly and quietly ask them, “So, what do you make of it?” The dreamer usually looks at me like I have asked them to explain advanced physics to them, replying, “I don’t know, it’s just crazy. ” And that is usually the end of it. The dream is then discarded and no further inquiry occurs.

Read the rest of this post over at my column Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today.

Have a lovely weekend! See you back here on Monday.

Last night I dreamt of Lake Forest

Published on December 20, 2010 in Belette in Psychotherapy and Quotidien. 22 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Chicago, Dreams, Forest and Bluff, Home, I hate L.A., Igor, L.A, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Libertyville, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, psychotherapy.

I was on the outside of my house. I was standing on the side of it. It was on an incline and I was looking up at it. It was a beautiful house( not my house, we didn’t live in Lake Forest and we didn’t live in a house as grand as the one I lived in). I was there looking at it. I was narrating. I was saying, “I wish I had known those last four weeks we were there that we were leaving. I wish I had spent more time in the city and in Libertyville Park.” I looked longingly at the house. The more I talked about it the more distant it felt.

The good news is that I didn’t wake crying. And even better that I didn’t dream about any babies. I hate baby dreams the most.

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I/eye emergency

Published on December 13, 2010 in Belette in Psychotherapy, Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 77 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Bion, Cassandra Complex, dream analysis, Dreams, Envy, Psychoanalysis, Psychology.

Here’s what happened-ish: So I was in my psychoanalytic psychotherapy class and one of the instructors started taking about something that happened with one of her patients. I, being a careful listener with a good memory and a person with a capacity to make intuitive links, thought that maybe the patient she was talking about was a patient she talked about a few weeks ago. So, I naively asked her, “Is this the patient you were talking about before?” Even before she answered me I could feel from looking at her face that I had asked the wrong question. Once her eyes had returned to their sockets and her jaw had been lifted from the floor she was able to use her voice to express her shock. “Yes.” She said. But she didn’t say yes like you or I would. She said “yes” as if she was responding to an unwanted insight about the day of her death from a psychotic and smelly psychic.

Her co-teacher then said in accusing tones, as if to underscore their shared shock at my question,”You have a really good memory“. I can tell you that I never imagined someone could make that sound like an insult, but he managed to do so. I defended myself as I felt ashamed and disoriented by his accusation of me daring to have such a good memory, ” I have a therapeutic memory,” I said. And I didn’t say that in any inflated way. It is just the truth. Being a therapist has given me a MUCH better memory. I am able to remember details about my clinical work in a way that I can’t in other areas of my life. Going to a grocery store, I continue to require a list or at least a mnemonic device to remind me that I need milk, bread and coffee (the mnemonic for that is “The caffeinated money cow“).
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Cover Girl

Published on December 3, 2010 in Belette's Favorites, Dreams and Psychology. 47 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Dreams, Forest and Bluff, Igor, Lake Bluff, Media.

My story made the cover. No, I am not a debutante of a bygone era. And I am also not a member of the Deer Path Girls’ Cross Country Team. I’ll let you figure out which story is mine.

Sorry, as of yet, there is no link to the actual article. I haven’t even seen it yet. This is so surreal. Am I dreaming? Speaking of dreaming, I dreamt the other night that He-weasel and I bought a house back in Forest and Bluff. He had a job. Everything was settled. And then I woke up. As I told Igor, I think my dreams have become masochistic. If I dream tonight that I am getting published in the New Yorker I think I am going to give up on sleep.

Tag Archive for ‘Dreams’

Three Types of Men: Foreign lover/Abusive father/Good father

I’m something at Igor

Again with the leopard, the shoes and the dreams

Oui Wednesday

Red-faced

Cinderella in my closet

Freudian Express: Dreams

Last night I dreamt of Lake Forest

I/eye emergency

Cover Girl

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