From the author: I talk a lot about working with dreams and dream interpretation. But I rarely give examples of working with complex dreams. Below you will find an example of dream interpretation with an interesting and, in my opinion, unusual plot. I write and talk a lot about working with dreams and their interpretation. I really love this type of work with clients. Dreaming is difficult material to work with; you never know where it will take you. But I feel like this work is unusually productive. Dreams often provide answers to the questions that most concern the client. But they do this in symbolic, metaphorical language. In articles and for students, I often give examples of the interpretation of simple dreams so that the mechanism of working with dreams is clear. But it’s really interesting to work with unusual, complex dreams. I consider such dreams to be dreams with a complex developing plot. Today I want to give an example of working with just such a dream. The client gave permission to publish this part of our work, but some facts of the biography will be changed. A little about my client: 25 years old, married, no children. Freelance artist, works from home. Let's call her Sveta. Since Sveta was initially brought to therapy by recurring nightmares, I advised her to keep a dream diary. Sveta wrote down the dream we were working on as follows: Title: “When the golden wind carried me away” “I dreamed that I was the wife of a merchant from America. This happened during the Civil War. We have four children, two boys and two girls. I am pretty and blooming, like Juliette Binoche. One night some people break into our house, they are armed. I find my husband in the bathroom, he says that we need to leave urgently, these are bad people and they are hunting for us. I ask my sons to wake up my sisters, we lock ourselves in the bathroom, and while the bandits break down the door, we leave through the window. The boys and husband are riding horses, and the girls and I are in a cab. We arrive at a fork where many cabs are going in different directions, thus becoming lost to our pursuers. Arriving at the Indian camp, we change into rags, hide the cab, I stuff rags under my dress to pretend to be pregnant. At this moment I notice that my husband looks like my grandfather. When the bandits drive up to the parking lot, my husband and eldest son and I put on a whole performance, making fun of the unlucky attackers. When they leave, I take out my rags, go to the clearing, and sit down on the grass. My husband and I kiss and say that now no one will find us. The golden wind picks me up and carries me up." The first thing to do with a dream is to highlight the plot lines. There are three of them here: Relationships with husband and family Escape from intruders Internal experiences of the main character (hereinafter referred to as the GG) of sleep We see that in the dream the GG has a strong relationship with her family. They help each other, they are able to act harmoniously, work as a team. This is what helps them escape from the bandits. If at the beginning of the dream the attackers caused feelings of fear and increasing panic in my client and the GG, then we see that this changes as soon as the chase stops. GG is afraid of intruders while she is running from them, but they seem funny to her when she meets them face to face. GG’s internal experiences are mostly positive. From the client’s words, my husband and I can judge that she is happy with herself: with her appearance, with her family, and with her decisions. The fact that she is carried away by the golden wind, according to Svetlana, does not prevent her from staying with her family. Those. the golden wind is more of an internal experience of the main character than an external action. Already from the analysis of the plot lines, we begin to form hypotheses for the interpretation of the dream: an attempt to escape from something frightening, a waste of energy on fear, which can be met face to face (and it will turn out to be even funny), satisfaction with what is happening to the client now. Next, we took the dream text itself and noted in it all the symbols that the client found significant. Here's what we got: “I dreamed that I was a wifemerchant from America. This happened during the Civil War. We have four children, two boys and two girls. I am pretty and blooming, like Juliette Binoche. One night some people break into our house, they are armed. I find my husband in the bathroom, he says that we need to leave urgently, these are bad people and they are hunting for us. I ask my sons to wake up my sisters, we lock ourselves in the bathroom, and while the bandits break down the door, we leave through the window. The boys and husband are riding horses, and the girls and I are in a cab. We arrive at a fork where many cabs are going in different directions, thus becoming lost to our pursuers. Arriving at the Indian camp, we change into rags, hide the cab, I stuff rags under my dress to pretend to be pregnant. At this moment I notice that my husband looks like my grandfather. When the bandits drive up to the parking lot, my husband and eldest son and I put on a whole performance, making fun of the unlucky attackers. When they leave, I take out my rags, go to the clearing, and sit down on the grass. My husband and I kiss and say that now no one will find us. The golden wind picks me up and carries me up." We write down all the important symbols in a column, and for each I ask you to find a client association. Important: do not build chains of associations! For example: Cyprus - island - sea - swimming - relaxation. All associations must be connected with the dream symbol. For example: Cyprus is an island, Cyprus is Aphrodite, Cyprus is delicious fish, etc. What happened with our client. Trader in America, civil war - adventure time, westerns, trips, travel. Flowers like Juliette Binoche - able goodness, harmony with myself and the body, I am a mother and a witch. Family - completeness, harmony, all corners are closed, universal care, seed, grove, a single system, I am part of the whole. Armed bad people, pursuit - danger, destruction of integrity, hunting for integrity, aggression, danger, fear. Leaving at a fork - choosing a different path Indians, rags, performance - roots, return to roots, simplicity, primitiveness, Sabbath, play, naturalness, spontaneity Golden wind, no one will find us - harmony. Some symbols dropped out of working with a client, for example, the husband, who looks like a grandfather, ended up remaining a mystery to us. This suggests that we can continue to work with dreams further. We now compare the symbolism of dreams with what the analysis of plot lines gave us. At this point you can help the client, but it’s still better if he does it himself. This is what happened to Svetlana: “Time and society are trying to take away the state of goodness from me. I feel it in contact with nature, body, family, harmony with myself. But I don't have to give it away. Choose a different path. A return to the roots, simplicity, primitiveness, magic, spontaneity and play." Next, the dream is compared with real life. Svetlana has recently been working as a freelancer, and is very worried about not working in an office like “all normal people.” But it was when she went to work at home that she had more time for her family, significant hobbies (yoga, esotericism, natural cosmetics, studying massage, etc.), taking care of her body, walking in nature, etc. Svetlana felt the desire to become a mother for the first time. But the fear that she was actually a slacker sitting on her husband’s neck haunted her. She periodically looked at job search sites in order to go to the office again. After interpreting the dream, Svetlana decided not to look for a job in the office again, but to continue working from home. It is very important that the interpretation of the dream is accepted by the client. Any dream can be interpreted in very different ways, but it is the client who can accurately say whether the interpretation suits him or not. When the client feels internal agreement with the interpretation of the dream, we can assume that we have found what we were looking for. It is important to note here that it is impossible to completely unravel the meaning of the dream. While keeping a dream diary myself and analyzing the dreams of clients, I noticed that if you return to an already deciphered dream, after some time you can find new meanings in it. This is fine. Any symbolic material has.