This week, we’re looking at a waking dream about a
potential, romantic encounter in the workplace. A young man was powerfully
drawn to a co-worker during a business meeting. (As a reminder, a waking dream
is a startling or unsettling experience that happens when the person witnessing
it is wide awake.)
Isolating the
symbols
It’s now time to begin the process of dream interpretation.
As you read the waking dream below, pretend that you are hearing someone tell
you the dream orally and that you are taking shorthand. Decide what you
consider to be the important words or phrases.
One day, I had a
casual business meeting with a coworker about a project we were both involved
with. We’ve had occasion to interact on
our jobs for a couple of years, and we work well together. There has never been
more than a friendly association. But suddenly, during this meeting, I began to
feel an attraction that had never been there before. It was so intense, it made
my participation in the meeting really difficult. I doubt if the feelings were
returned. At the end of the meeting I felt confused and fairly overwhelmed. I
couldn’t get her off my mind. I began to fantasize all kinds of
things—including erotic ones that made me ashamed since I am happily married.
Mostly, I didn’t know what to do about any of this, and I felt completely
overwhelmed about my own ambivalence. Part of me very much wanted all this to
stop. Another part of me seemed to be reveling in the fantasy.
The dream symbols
Compare your list with the one that the dreamer and I came
up with while working together. He made almost all of the decisions, and what
follows is his list of symbols:
One day; casual
business meeting; coworker; project; interact on our job; a couple of years;
work well together; only friendly; feel new attraction; intense; difficult to
participate; feelings not returned; felt confused and overwhelmed; couldn’t get
her off my mind; fantasized; erotic fantasies; ashamed; happily married; didn’t
know what to do; overwhelmed; ambivalent; wanted it to stop; reveling in the
fantasy.
I suspect your list looks similar to the one above. You
might have emphasized one or two symbols a bit differently, or worded things in
an alternate way, but I would guess that, essentially, your list looks like the
dreamer’s.
The next step
Now it’s time to “translate” these symbols into their
metaphoric meanings. Dreams—whether they are waking dreams or sleeping dreams—speak
in the language of metaphor, and it is up to us to decipher that language. It
means thinking beyond the literal definition of the word or phrase. It means
asking questions like, “What might the phrase ‘casual business meeting’ imply
in a more general sense?” A casual business meeting might suggest informality
while attending to affairs, or it might imply insincerity. It might suggest
inattentiveness.
On Friday, the dreamer will tell us what these symbols mean
to him.
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