Doctor or Lover?
Dreamed by Norma before 1994, as told by Gayle Delaney
Norma had been abused by her older brother when she was a little girl. As a woman in her mid-thirties she was shopping for a therapist to work through her feelings about her abuse when she interviewed a male therapist to whom she felt an immediate and strong attraction.
In her initial interview, the therapist seemed very experienced in treating abuse survivors and appeared to merit his high recommendation by others in the field. Norma was glad at last to have found a therapist who both understood her feelings and who seemed to have a method for treating her. However, she was concerned about her attraction to him. Before she made up her mind whether or not to choose him as her therapist, Norma incubated a dream about the matter. She dreamt:
...The doctor was on the sofa in my apartment. I was going to sleep at the same time, but in my bed. Suddenly there was only my bed and the doctor was in it. I said, "Oh no. This means we are sleeping together in the same bed. We can't... and not only that but what if your wife comes back... this will look very bad."In our interview Norma described the dream doctor as very attractive and noncoercive. He seemed genuinely interested in knowing the truth about her preference to see him as a doctor or as a lover. He implied that she had to make a choice and that he could not combine the two roles. Norma became aware of just how strong her attraction to the doctor was and that she really wanted him as a lover.He said, "It's not like that. She won't be coming back." He came closer to me and asked if I wanted to see him as a doctor or as a lover. I would have lied and said as a doctor, but he put two fingers on the pulse of my neck to see if what I was about to say would be the truth. My pulse shot way up and I knew I wanted to make love.
We suddenly looked at each other full of love and I knew that my prayers for a wonderful lover had been answered. He pulled himself on top of me, entered me, and I felt so completely free to have what I really wanted. I noticed that his nipples turned very small and dark and his penis was very small, but we didn't care because we were so in love.
Her dream work made it clear to her that she did not want to enter into therapy about sexual abuse and boundary issues with a man who even innocently elicited in her such intense sexual desires. Yes, these feelings could be seen as grist for the mill, but she decided that she had enough difficult material to work through and that she did not want to make the process any more difficult than necessary.
The fact that her dream led her to notice that the doctor had a dark, diseased nipple and a very small penis told her that there would be trouble in paradise if she cared to look more closely. Norma decided to look for another therapist...
SOURCE: Sexual Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1994 ed) pp.178-9
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites