Often, at breakfast or heading to school, my children relate a strange dream they had that night. Full of personal symbols, dreams are rarely as interesting to others as they seem to the dreamer, particularly when the retelling involves a lot of "Wait, I forgot this part," and starting over. However, I find my children's dreams revealing.
This morning one son told of dreaming he was hot and sweaty, getting up to go to the bathroom. A girl from his class stood (fully clothed, he assured me) in the shower. "What are you doing here?" he exclaimed, opening the glass door. She fell to the floor, dead.
I once took a college course in dream analysis as an easy credit. There are always the archetypal images: falling signifying loss of control; flying as a desire for escape; incongruous nudity as a fear of neglecting something important; transporting to high school, forgetting your locker combination or an upcoming test, indicating anxiety (perhaps that you haven't grown up as much as you'd like, repeating patterns set in the distant past.) None of these, of course, fully explain the business your brain is trying to accomplish that it didn't have time to deal with during the day.
Only the dreamer can understand his dream, free-associating upon awakening, allowing his mind to connect the dots. As a dream guide, I ask my children questions like: "What were you thinking about or doing before you fell asleep?" and "What does that make you think of now?" In general, I avoid practicing psychotherapy without a license, but I can pretend I have one in this alternate dream reality.
The hot and sweaty part was easy, since he awoke with cats splayed over his body. Prior to going to sleep, he spoke with his brother, who he suddenly remembered fell in the shower a day earlier. Despite their sibling animosity, he'd expressed genuine concern that his brother sustained damage on impact. It was a pretty loud clunk. As far as the dead girl, I have my own theories about the ambivalence of awakening puberty.
Common lore once stated that hitting bottom in a falling dream made you instantly die in your sleep. Dreaming, I usually land, although often aware I broke both legs. Apparently peripheral nerves remain deeply slumbering, since I never feel dream pain.
One childhood sleepover friend suffered from sleep paralysis, unable to move for long moments after waking. Never consulting adults, we determined it was harmless, that her body was just lazy about getting up.
As a toddler, the son who described his recent dream version of
Psycho hated to go to sleep. I assured him that he would have good dreams.
"I hate good dreams and bad dreams," he insisted.
"Is that why you don't want to sleep?"
"When I sleep," he said, firmly, "my eyes switch places."
I thought that was an excellent description of how it must feel behind his trembling eyelids during REM sleep, while I watched him dream.