Hi everyone! I hope the snow that’s been twirling down from the sky this week has made it easier for everyone to sleep (and dream). This week we are going to be examining my friend David’s dream. I have paraphrased and rephrased what David told me about his dream, enhancing details that I feel are important to the analysis and leaving out irrelevant details.
Onto the dream!
Partial Blindness
David had a dream that his eyes weren’t working properly. His surroundings were dark, the blackness encroaching on his comfort. It wasn’t dark enough that he couldn’t vaguely see what was going on, but it was dark enough that he couldn’t read and distinguish details. He was it his high school’s basement volunteering to move boxes, but his lack of vision made the job incredibly difficult.
Some new teachers came downstairs and he introduced himself to them, unable to see them. He watched their blurry faces as they spoke. The new chemistry teacher said that she had just mixed some new chemicals and wanted to show the staff after school let out. David went upstairs and said hi to his old teachers. He was asked to sign himself in on a sign-in sheet at the front desk but he couldn’t see the paper because of his partial blindness.
He became increasingly frustrated trying to sign the sheet of paper. That’s when he woke up.
The Analysis
David’s dream evokes all-too-familiar feelings in the dream world: helplessness, loss, and frustration. He struggles to navigate the world with his new eye ailment, unfamiliar with the darkness.
Interestingly, The new sensation in David’s eyes parallels the new teachers in his old high school. His eyes, old organs to his body, are experiencing a new phenomenon, partial blindness. His old high school is filled with new teachers who are beginning to replace the old teachers that linger in the halls of the school. His partial blindness acts as a metaphor for his movement into the future.
As he gets older, more and more of his life is replaced with new things that he is not used to or does not know how to navigate. He has graduated high school and he has no power to stop the effects of time on the school he once went to; time filters out the old teachers he once loved and brings in new teachers that “mix new chemicals.” He also has no power to stop the effects of time on his life more broadly. The boxes also symbolize the future. Objects are packed away and moved to new locations, pushing forward into new lives. This dream, then, is a dream of anxiety about the onward march into the future.
David’s frustration over being unable to sign in on the sign-in sheet is also emblematic of anxiety about the future. To sign in to a high school sign-in sheet means you are welcome in the building. In the dream, David wants to be welcome in the high school, and perhaps wants to go backwards in time and relive the nostalgia of high school. That the dream made David physically incapable of signing in indicates that David was subconsciously aware that he is unable to move backwards against the future. This is the beginning of acceptance of what is to come.
Moving away from the more figurative interpretations, it is worth noting that my friend David wears glasses. It is possible that David may have been having literal vision problems in his waking life, the anxiety of which spilled over into his dreaming life. I know that if I had glasses and my vision started to worsen, I might develop a subconscious or partially conscious fear of going blind that manifests itself in my dreams. The fear of losing our senses awakens a very primal fear in humans, and that doesn’t go away when we’re sleeping.
Overall, David’s dream is about anxiety about the future and more literally anxiety about losing his sense of vision. Stay loose and dream lucid!