Real-Life Communication
Your client is Jack Somnor, who is at the moment going into great
detail about a weird dream he had last night. He tells you he was in a secret
place underground where children played with boxes of macaroni. They were
kicking them around like soccer balls and throwing them back and forth like
baseballs.
Suddenly, in the dream, Somnor walked up to a little girl
and gave her a tube of golden toothpaste with the words, "Here's what I should
have given you before you were even born." Somnor's dream ended with Queen
Elizabeth flying down from the clouds to join him in the forest for a glass
of Kool-Aid.
Somnor's request is simple -- you are to make sense of
his otherwise senseless dream. Apparently, the dream has loomed large on his
conscience since he dreamed it. He was wondering if there was more than met
the eye with the imagery.
"Communicating dreams from dreamer to therapist
leads us sometimes to the so-called 'pregnant void,' a more mystical expression
of pure chaos," says Anne Klein, a licensed dream therapist from Colorado.
"In dream therapy, communication skills are central, critical and absolutely
required at many levels."
Your job is to take Somnor's dream and write
a short report on it, analyzing as many of the details of the dream as possible.
Here are your thoughts on certain key items in the dream:
- Dream took place in a secret place = Somnor's hiding some part of his
emotions from the world
- Children playing with macaroni = there are less fortunate people in Somnor's
life whom he is not helping, but merely watching
- Somnor giving little girl golden toothpaste = affirmation of his sense
of duty to the less fortunate, of the fact that he should be more giving to
the poor
- Queen Elizabeth = symbol of riches, opulence
- Kool-Aid in the forest = his fun-loving side is hidden in the forest;
forest represents a shield, a barrier, a wall between his inner child and
his adult money-making persona
Take these facts and prepare a full dream report for Somnor. You
should be able to do it in three paragraphs. Good luck!