“I was being attacked by a wild boar. I was just about to kill it with my sword (which, weirdly, I noted to be very sharp?) when a woman stopped me. She said that the boar was pregnant and must not be harmed. Then, suddenly, the pregnant boar transformed into a man, who said he was a lunatic. The woman comforted him, saying, ‘There are different kinds of sanity.’
“So that’s my dream,” I said. “Ok, doctor, what does it mean?”
James smiled and finished off his whiskey sour. “Let’s not be hasty. It’s just drinks, not therapy. But feel free to buy me another of these for my trouble,” he said, raising his glass to get the bartender’s attention.
He continued: “First, why are you so anxious for me to interpret your dream?”
“Because it’s a weird dream! I don’t usually remember my dreams but this one feels significant, almost mythological.”
“So you think there’s a message in it?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“You want to take the images of the dream and translate them into language that your conscious mind can assimilate?”
“That sounds right. That’s the usual process, right?”
“It might be usual, but what if it’s backwards? A dream is a product of what we can call Nightworld. Nightworld operates with its own rules and is populated by any number of bizarre and mysterious figures—alongside, of course, more familiar figures from our daily lives. In fact, it’s the juxtaposition of the familiar and unfamiliar that drives us to the task of interpretation. Is the dream trying to tell us something about the events of the day? Or about the people in the dream? And so we hope to find a table of correspondences that promise to reveal to us the hidden meaning of each piece of furniture in our dream.
“It’s an understandable compulsion! And it certainly goes back to Freud and Jung, who understood dream interpretation to be the task of dragging a dream kicking and screaming out of Nighworld into the bright light of Dayworld and the rational mind. The dream is subjected to analysis and its meaning turned to language understandable by the conscious mind. And with that, lesson learned. The desiccated dream can be forgotten.
“But the dream is a creature of Nightworld. What right do we have to displace it? It’s the same old colonialist attitude, isn’t it? The benighted native is enlightened by his betters.
“What if instead of interpreting the dream, we let the dream interpret us?”
I snorted. “Shit, James. That’s such a psychologist thing to say.”
“But I’m serious,” he insisted. “Instead of carrying the dream into Dayworld, what if we follow the pattern set by the descent of Inanna and leave behind all the symbols of the self as we descend into Underworld? Because, of course, Underworld is another name for Nightworld. The place of the dead, where the shades and the dark gods dwell.
“Encountering the dream there—on its own turf—we find it in company with The Other, beings that both are and are not part of ourselves. And we do this not once, but repeatedly. Underworld is a place of inexhaustible depths. Each visit reveals something new and, in turn, creates something new in us.
“What I’m saying, buddy, is that a dream is a call into the depths. Dreaming is a descent that invites further descents. The purpose of a dream is not to create rational Dayworld knowledge. It is to build up soul in preparation for our final descent, when we join the spirits in Underworld.”
Before I could reply, James’ phone rang and he excused himself. I considered what he had said. I was drawn to it, even if I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do about it.
He returned. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to cut our conversation short. The babysitter is currently vomiting in my bathroom and needs to go home.”
“But what about my dream?,” I protested.
“Oh, I was never going to interpret it for you.”
“Wow. Do you treat your patients this badly?”
“Worse. They pay for the pleasure.” And off he went.
A few minutes later I left with a head full of wine. Walking home in the giddy night air, ruminating over all the Underworld talk, I felt my consciousness pleasantly drifting a little outside my body. I thought about the woman from the dream, young and hale, but with piercing eyes. I passed a park where three moon-drenched girls were dancing around a tree, singing:
She wanders in the night.
Puts beasties all to flight.
She aims with her bow
And mortals below
All quiver at the sight.