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interpretation
of the dreams and any related
material,
seeking help from me only if necessary.
The fifteen dreamers
that I worked with
in this
project had fascinating incubations. I wish I could
share
them all with you, but I can provide only a few examples.
Jan, a sculptor,
had had quite a quarrel
with her
husband over how certain things should be done in
their
household. The matter was unresolved
at bedtime, so
she incubated a dream on it. Her incubation phrase
was,
"What are the dynamics behind
this fight over little
things?" She dreamt: I
was looking at my foot and saw
that the second toe was just
enormous, with an ugly
mushroomlike growth on it. I wondered if
I should have
the growth removed. I looked again and saw that
several
of my toes as well as the growth had
been amputated! I
then panicked. How would I ever
dance or even walk
again?
Her interpretation went like
this: Her mother
was fond of saying that the woman whose second toe
is
her longest one rules the roost. In the dream her second
toe was not only long, it
was grossly oversized and
deformed. She saw clearly that her need
to control her
husband and home had gotten out of hand. Jan
also saw
how part of her need to control
was motivated by the
fear that if she did not do so with vigor, she
might lose
all control or power. She feared giving up
her excess
control (her ugly growth)
for fear of losing all her
influence (losing all her toes).
Jan noticed how this
black and white thinking colored many of her
attitudes.
As a result of the dream, she began
to modify some of
her "positions."
Lyn, a San
Francisco school teacher, was
very
unhappy with her job. For
some years she had been
assigned to a depressing and frightening school,
where
she had to step over drunks
to get into the building,
withstand physical threats and attempted
assault from
the students, and confront staunch
resistance to her
innovative programs from the administration
and staff.
In the school system there was
one school which was
worse. If she insisted on a
transfer, she was told, she
could go there or quit. She incubated a dream on "where
and what next, jobwise?" She dreamed:
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