WHAT IS MY DREAM TRYING TO TELL ME?

WHAT IS MY DREAM TRYING TO TELL ME?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 2006


Freud made a point about "slips of tongue" showing the subconscious coming through at the most inopportune times. He also made a point that dreams often are the subconscious trying to get some kind of response from the conscious mind, or else the buried self, trying to tell the conscious mind to "get real." In any case, I had this dream I will share with you now.

I am driving along in my car listening to "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, when the actor Jon Voight, whom I have been told I resembled at an earlier age, is interviewing the author of a new book, which has created a national sensation.

The book is called GROW UP PEOPLE! GET REAL SOCIETY! It is written by a physician named Dr. Sven Swisher (which sounds strangely like "Dr. Jim Fisher" out of Voight's mouth), who lost his wife the past year, and in bitterness and anger penned this book.

Dr. Swisher did so by first interviewing friends, acquaintances and strangers in New York City, where he lives on Park Avenue off of Central Park.

Voight informs the listeners that the book is "Number Six" on the New York Times bestseller list, and that Swisher has received a main selection of the Book of the Month Club with a check for $250,000, a check from The Reader's Digest for a condensed version of the book for $50,000, and the book is in its third printing having sold more than 100,000 hard bound copies to date.

The book described is hauntingly similar to my WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE? The more I hear of the book in the interview the more my heart sinks.

I arrive home and my phone is buzzing, which I never answer, with fourteen messages of congratulations on my "new success." I have forty-eight email messages of the same character. All of this makes me sink deep into my chair in a catatonic state of depression. Finally, I get the gumption to erase all the messages, and wait for Beautiful Betty to come home. When she does, I say, "Honey, I'm not going to write anymore?"

She looks at me, hangs up her coat, takes off her watch and earrings and says, "If I believe that, the sky would be black with flying pigs."

Then I tell her the dream. She listens and says nothing.

"Well?" I asked finally.

"Well, what?" she replies now slipping out of her clothes and getting into her leisure jump suit. We are now in the bedroom and I'm sitting on the bed watching her for reaction.

"Well, what do you think?"

She smiles now. "Somewhere in that question is, what do you want me to think?"

"Well?"

"Well, nothing. The world won't come to an end if you don't write. And you don't have to be Freud to know that. What you think your dream is telling you it is not telling you at all."

"Pardon me, my dear, but I didn't know you had a doctorate in psychology. I thought you were a bean counter."

Obviously, not offended, she replies, "Exactly, that is a bean counter analysis. You asked for it. That's it!"

"But you're not concerned if I don't write anymore?"

She doesn't answer. "Well?" I insist.

"My dear puzzled husband, you've got issues." I squirm. She continues. "You're a novelist who is trying to save the world from itself, and the world is not interested in being saved. It is interested in being entertained. I'm sure your namesake.."

"He's not my namesake. His name is Sven Swisher, Dr. Sven Swisher."

"Whatever. Now can I finish my thought before I forget it?"

"Of course, I'm a good listener."

She shakes her head in disbelief. "What I was going to say is that without reading this new book I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it is about 98 percent entertainment and 2 percent punishing criticism of its readers. Your book is the exact reverse of this."

I ponder this a moment, then answer, "I think you're right, but why am I like that?"

"Only God and that little gremlin in you know the answer. Write or don't write, do what you're always telling us to do, choose. Now, let me go. I've got to make dinner."

With that she taps me on the cheek, and leaves me sitting on the bed Buddha style, a little boy in an old man's body, wondering why she has all the wisdom in this household.

Be always well,
Jim

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Dr. Fisher is an organizational/industrial psychologist who continues to write despite his gremlins.