Jane, a housewife with four children, is also a professional pianist who is so overcome with anxiety before performances that her subsequent success is barely worth the strain she endures. Her dreams reflect a deep conflict; in one typical frustration dream she is in church, the minister calls the hymn number, she tries to play but can't, and the congregation sings without her. In another, her children run around making a noise so that her playing cannot be heard; and in yet another, she is playing in a restaurant only to discover that her music is being distorted by the amplifying system. Complaining to the manager, who says it can't be helped, she returns to the piano to find that the back leg has fallen off.

When we first worked with Jane we suspected the presence of a "domestic topdog" derived from her mother, nagging her that any woman worthy of the name would devote herself totally to the family, but many hours of work spread over a long period of time failed to resolve the conflict. Despite the fact that Jane told topdog to get lost time and again, the dreams continued and her anxiety attacks about her playing and life in general became worse.

The clue came in a dream in which a black man brought a crippled girl to me to be healed, and Jane was very concerned about whether or not I could do so. She helped me put a robe over the brace on the child's leg but never discovered whether healing took place or not. When Jane gave the child a voice, she said, "I'm a crippled child, and you can't expect a crippled child to play the piano."

We then realized that the secret saboteur was not a nagging domestic topdog but a crippled underdog who was quite determined not to perform under duress. We also realized that unless Jane resolved the conflict soon, this underdog would not hesitate to cripple her in waking life as well in order to get his own way.

Further work revealed that both parents had encouraged her to be their "big, strong girl," and her mother in particular had insisted that she develop her talents and play the piano--perfectly, of course, just as she insisted that Jane perform perfectly at everything she undertook in life generally. Both parents were delighted when Jane became a success, as. this raised them socially, and although Jane enjoyed it too, underdog was secretly furious at being forced beyond his pace and used as a status symbol for the glory of the parents. He quickly sabotaged Jane's career by leading her into marriage at an early age and producing four children in quick succession, so that for many years she was too busy to perform. When they started growing up, however, the mother within started nagging that Jane should play again--perfectly, of course--despite the difficulties of coping with a large family.

Jane did play publicly from time to time, at enormous cost to herself, but the voice of approval from this inner topdog made her feel so good that she pressed on with the good work of "self-improvement." Eventually, she became so unhappy, bitchy, and ill that she sought therapeutic help.

Her problem, briefly stated, was the old familiar bogey of perfectionism--not only in her playing, but in everything she did. Her whole life was geared to please mama, irrespective of what the inner Jane wanted. She had bought the catastrophic expectation that to be imperfect in anything she did automatically dubbed her a failure and a nonentity...

...the cost [is] psychological suicide--the murder of the child within who asked only to be itself and develop its talents and attributes in its own way, at its own pace, without force or strain. Jane has the catastrophic expectation that if she accepts this child as part of herself, she will automatically become a failure, a do-nothing housewife, and as she wrote in a letter to me, "I still can't believe that either you or I would be happy with a do-nothing, non-playing Jane." I pointed out that she had already been forced into a pretty do-nothing situation by constant anxiety, depression, and illness and was neither a good player nor good housewife at the moment.

She was, in every sense of the word, at impasse.

Getting through the impasse means taking a risk of losing one's precious self-image and disappointing the parents within (and maybe the real parents too) who expect total perfection. The amazing thing, of course, is that once through the impasse, you find you have lost nothing at all--in fact, you find yourself.

Jane is still working through to this point, and in one of her dreams she found herself watching a small, dark-skinned girl playing the piano with unusual gift and ease and was amazed at her ability. But the child was plain and homely, almost black (a sure indication of a shadow figure), and Jane thought she would not have much chance as an adult performer unless she became much prettier and more sophisticated.

The child is Jane's own--that part of herself she locked away in childhood because it made mistakes and did not live up to topdog's expectations of perfection. The more Jane strove toward a bright and beautiful false self, the more crippled the dark child became, with the result that Jane could play only with difficulty and anxiety--for after all, you can't expect an imprisoned crippled child to play the piano.

The resolution lies in defying topdog and bringing out the small dark child, accepting it as part of the self with all its childish imperfections, and allowing it to grow to maturity in its own special way.

--Ann Faraday--

SOURCE: The Dream Game, Ann Faraday, Harper & Row, 1976 ed.; pp 222-26. Untitled; 'Piano-Playing Jane' added to aid searches.