I had a dream last night. It was strange, quasi-futuristic and played like a heavily scratched dvd. I shot John McCain with a phaser from Star Trek. He was leading a platoon of troops to capture some staged cell of terrorists, and I was, for some strange reason in that platoon. At some point, the rest of the platoon left, leaving only myself and the Senator, in the dream, I was drunk and thought, "Well, now's as good a time as any!" and pulled out the weapon and fired. As the dream was a fantasy, I made myself invisible and escaped. I called an Uncle of mine, a man who's helped me out of many a mess and said, "I know you can't get me out of this one, but what do I do?" he told me to go to Barnes Hospital and gave me a suite number and a time. I agreed. I showed up, an overweight, cheery black nurse took my information and informed me, "The Doctor will be with you shortly." A few minutes later, the door opened, Barack Obama appeared, in a Doctor's white coat. He told me, "A lot of people don't know this, but I'm also a medical doctor." He informed me that Senator McCain was not dead, and proceeded to not only show me his medical chart, but explain what each page meant. I was thrilled, he told me, "Your odds aren't bad. McCain will use you as a weapon against me, but if it saves your life, it will be worth it." -- I asked him, "Since you seem to have an answer for everything else, I've been really depressed for the last year. Can you help me?" he told me, "I think I can. It's a simple operation, you'll need to be under general anesthesia." I agreed, and in the dream still, woke up a few hours later. Dr. (sic) Obama informed me the procedure was a complete success and that Sen. McCain had died, but was an organ donor and some of his organs were transplanted to me! Not only that but during the period in which I'd been in a coma, he'd won the Presidency! I was happy and it felt stable, then I woke up!
I took this dream to my psychoanalyst this morning, a little background to the past week or two would help.
After the last year of intensive (3-4 times a week) psychoanalysis, I broke down after hearing some traumatic news of a former intimate. I felt awful, daily hours long crying sessions, crying in bed, on the highway, on the couch, everywhere and anywhere. I felt my life had nowhere to go, so I reached out and asked the aforementioned Uncle to see if he knew anyone who could get a second opinion for me. He called a friend who referred me to a renowned psychiatrist, a man who's been featured on NPR, a man who's book I bought right after hearing his name, the blurbs on the back of the thing were written by chairs of Psychiatry departments of the most famous institutions in the country. I was excited. "Maybe" I thought, "This guy can fix me!" -- the guy's website stated flatly, "Not accepting new patients" I wrote the family friend (the editor of a prominent local magazine), "Will he see me?" she wrote back, "I'll email him and ask!" he agreed. I think it made my analyst insecure. It was strange for me too, now I have a Psychiatrist and a Psychoanalyst!
The analyst wanted to interpret the above dream with the new Doctor being represented by Obama and he as McCain, my kicking him to the side or "killing him" a rebuke of the last years of psychoanalysis, I tried to tell him my interpretation of the dream, he interrupted me and said, "You shoot me down and let him in, knowing you'll shoot him down in good time!" I finally got a word in and said, "I interpret the dream in a more positive way! I look at it as a representation of the internal struggle between hope and fear. McCain represents all the things I despise about the person I used to be, arrogant, quick to judge, finger constantly on the trigger, paranoid. By killing him, I strike down that old self and it leaves me with a new larger problem (in life, of wondering what on earth I am if not all these things) of being the man who shot John McCain. Obama represents the calmer, cooler, more reflective side of me that's developed over the last years, kernels of which I had in younger days, but which were quickly overriden by insecurity and fear which led to all kinds of lashing out and desperation.
I sympathize with McCain, I know what it's like to want something so badly you'll abandon your very self to get it, but that itself is a root, the very fact that someone can want something so badly that they are driven to desperation means that they need it for another reason, a reason that speaks more to their experience in life than the thing they desire.
Dr. C (the new Shrink) laughed at my description of attempting to analyze the dream with teh analyst. "Psychoanalysis is a bit rigid." he said. He talked about Freud's defensiveness as a symptom of his anxiety disorder and how the rampant criticism of psychoanalysis forced Freud into an unhealthy way of dealing with his anxiety, incorporating a defensiveness and a paranoia that he said, "he didn't really practice, but which has become orthodoxy." Not disagreeing with the Freudian notion that there are fantastic jewels to be mined in our dreams, he instead interpreted it a different way, that casting off McCain (through the symbolic murder) was a way of telling myself that I need to let go of the past in order to look to the future. His suggestion: volunteer for the Obama campaign. He said it would allow me to meet likeminded people, get me out of the apartment, surround me with people who were focused and excited and above all, "You're likely to win and if nothing else, it feels good to be on the winning side of anything. That's something you've sorely been missing, for whatever reason."
I did. Details of that later.
I took this dream to my psychoanalyst this morning, a little background to the past week or two would help.
After the last year of intensive (3-4 times a week) psychoanalysis, I broke down after hearing some traumatic news of a former intimate. I felt awful, daily hours long crying sessions, crying in bed, on the highway, on the couch, everywhere and anywhere. I felt my life had nowhere to go, so I reached out and asked the aforementioned Uncle to see if he knew anyone who could get a second opinion for me. He called a friend who referred me to a renowned psychiatrist, a man who's been featured on NPR, a man who's book I bought right after hearing his name, the blurbs on the back of the thing were written by chairs of Psychiatry departments of the most famous institutions in the country. I was excited. "Maybe" I thought, "This guy can fix me!" -- the guy's website stated flatly, "Not accepting new patients" I wrote the family friend (the editor of a prominent local magazine), "Will he see me?" she wrote back, "I'll email him and ask!" he agreed. I think it made my analyst insecure. It was strange for me too, now I have a Psychiatrist and a Psychoanalyst!
The analyst wanted to interpret the above dream with the new Doctor being represented by Obama and he as McCain, my kicking him to the side or "killing him" a rebuke of the last years of psychoanalysis, I tried to tell him my interpretation of the dream, he interrupted me and said, "You shoot me down and let him in, knowing you'll shoot him down in good time!" I finally got a word in and said, "I interpret the dream in a more positive way! I look at it as a representation of the internal struggle between hope and fear. McCain represents all the things I despise about the person I used to be, arrogant, quick to judge, finger constantly on the trigger, paranoid. By killing him, I strike down that old self and it leaves me with a new larger problem (in life, of wondering what on earth I am if not all these things) of being the man who shot John McCain. Obama represents the calmer, cooler, more reflective side of me that's developed over the last years, kernels of which I had in younger days, but which were quickly overriden by insecurity and fear which led to all kinds of lashing out and desperation.
I sympathize with McCain, I know what it's like to want something so badly you'll abandon your very self to get it, but that itself is a root, the very fact that someone can want something so badly that they are driven to desperation means that they need it for another reason, a reason that speaks more to their experience in life than the thing they desire.
Dr. C (the new Shrink) laughed at my description of attempting to analyze the dream with teh analyst. "Psychoanalysis is a bit rigid." he said. He talked about Freud's defensiveness as a symptom of his anxiety disorder and how the rampant criticism of psychoanalysis forced Freud into an unhealthy way of dealing with his anxiety, incorporating a defensiveness and a paranoia that he said, "he didn't really practice, but which has become orthodoxy." Not disagreeing with the Freudian notion that there are fantastic jewels to be mined in our dreams, he instead interpreted it a different way, that casting off McCain (through the symbolic murder) was a way of telling myself that I need to let go of the past in order to look to the future. His suggestion: volunteer for the Obama campaign. He said it would allow me to meet likeminded people, get me out of the apartment, surround me with people who were focused and excited and above all, "You're likely to win and if nothing else, it feels good to be on the winning side of anything. That's something you've sorely been missing, for whatever reason."
I did. Details of that later.
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