I did most of my growing up in a medium-sized (currently 170,000 people) conservative, church-backed town. My parents are still married, and I have one brother two years younger than I. My family is middle class and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
When I was young, I was very shy. I think this is because from K-6th grade, I attended five different schools. Just when I would make friends, the school boundaries would change or my mother did not like the school I was attending. In addition to feeling like I was always the new kid at school, my father drank a lot, which led to my parents fighting a lot, which was sometimes physically violent. I was not allowed to have friends over because my father grew pot in the back yard. I think that this combination of factors created a sense of abandonment for me, and it became difficult for me to open up to people because I was afraid they were going to leave, I was going to leave, or they were going to be monsters.
My brother and I were never very close. I was a much better student than he was, and he was constantly reminded of this by my parents. I think he started to resent me, and consequently did not want to be anything like me. We fought a lot growing up. I think it was because we were both angry and confused about what was going on with my parents. We did not know how to talk about it since no one in the family talked about my father’s drinking, and no one was allowed to show feelings.
To escape from the reality of my home life, I threw myself into school and extracurricular activities. I was rarely at home, and when I was home, my father and I fought constantly. He was always telling me how stupid I was and how I would never amount to anything. He also had a habit of promising me things and taking them back if I disappointed him in any way. Since I never drank, smoked, used drugs, broke curfew, or snuck out (as a way to avoid confrontation), the only thing we argued about was household chores and me not have “respect” for him. He had promised me that he would pay for college if I did well and got into a good school. I did everything he said, and when it came time to make the first university payment, he told me, “No. I’ve changed my mind. You have not been nice enough. I am not paying for your schooling.” Then he walked away. This was quite a shock for me.
Two weeks later, I joined the military reserves, and three weeks alter I left home. I did this as a way to get out of the house and to show my father that I did not need him. I was 17 and very bitter, but glad to be out of the house. I finished boot camp and went to my specialized training. I fell in love, and I thought I had put my past behind me. After my schooling, I was back at my parents’ house and going to the junior college, and my new true love was in another state. He arranged to be transferred to near my hometown, and a few months later, I saw him. It seemed like everything was different. I think this was because I was living at my parents’ house. He told me I was not the same person he had fallen in love with, and I needed to get out of that house so that I could be myself again. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I moved out anyway. He wanted me to move in with him, but I did not feel ready for that. From that point on, we began to grow apart.
Once I was out of the house for a while, I began to feel like something was not right. I started going to church to see if that would help me to feel better. I did this for about a year and did feel a little better about myself. Then I was called to active duty in another state. I started dating someone who was emotionally unavailable to me, but I did not understand that at the time. After a few weeks of working at my military job, I had some problems with a few of my co-workers. Shortly after this, I was transferred to work in the Alcohol Rehabilitation Department (ARD).
I was extremely angry that I was moved to ARD without my consent and that I was going to be around a bunch of drunks. I secretly hated them all because I saw a part of my father in all of them. I had problems with a few of the residents, and the rest of the staff decided that I needed to go through the treatment program. They said that although I did not drink, I had all of the behaviors of an alcoholic. They called me an adult child of an alcoholic (ACA), and put me through three weeks of treatment. Part way through the treatment, the counselors told me I had all the signs and symptoms of being a sexual abuse survivor. This was news to me. I started going to groups for sexual abuse survivors and had some dreams that were very scary and felt very real. I started making a lot of changes in my life, and the person that I was dating started to cheat on me. When I found out, it almost destroyed me. I stopped seeing him, although he swore to me that he loved only me. I finished the treatment program and continued to go to meetings for adult children of alcoholics.
When I was released from active duty, I knew I could not live at my parents’, so I moved out a week after I got home. I started going to ACA meetings, working, going to school, and went back to church. I went to church for a few months, and things started feeling really weird. I felt like the ministers and the archbishop were trying to tell me what to do, and I did not like it. I decided organized religion was not for me, and I stopped going to church. I decided to stick with my own spirituality and practice meditation. My father and I were still arguing. I was no longer playing by the family rules because I was talking about the problem and I was discovering my feelings. He could not deal with this, and could not hear what I had to say. My mother thought I had become “rude.” In fact, I was honest.
I was almost done with my general education work at the junior college, so I reapplied to a university. I knew I desperately wanted to go, but I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. I remembered the ACA promise that if I followed the steps and did my work, fear of economic insecurity would leave me. So I concentrated on working the steps and tried to turn all of my financial concerns over to my higher power. I was accepted, and I received a big scholarship. When September came, I packed my bags and headed to the campus.
This felt like a new beginning to me. I was going to be many hours away from my parents, and I was starting over. I was living with a friend of mine and two of her friends. At first, we all got along great. Then I started seeing the boyfriend mentioned in my dream series, and my three housemates and I began to have problems. My boyfriend was also in a 12-step program, and I had a lot of new friends that were also in the program. About one month before the second semester, both my grandmother (the only family member I could be honest with that validated my feelings and did not try to fix me) and my great grandmother died. My boyfriend helped me through this time, and we grew closer. The closer we got, the more problems I had with my housemates.
When I wrote my dream series, I was in a relationship that was less than six months old and going great. I was doing well in school, having lots of problems with my housemates, not having a relationship with my parents by choice, and still attending ACA meetings.
Note from G. William Domhoff:
As you no doubt noticed, the depth of the pressures and tensions experienced by the dreamer is not revealed in the dream series. Instead, her dreams tend to reflect her current situation and concerns. The dreams express her positive relationship with her boyfriend and her tension with one of her housemates. They also express her concern with independence and punctuality.
In dreams where her parents or brother appear, there is a portrayal of the negative feelings she expresses in her Autobiographical Sketch, but the depth of those negative feelings is not readily discerned. It may be that this dreamer ha been able to overcome her past experiences.
The positive direction she seems to see her life taking may be expressed in two “spotlight dreams” that seem to be metaphoric in nature, dreams 018 and 028. In both dreams she is back in her hometown, and in both of them she is leaving the past behind.
In the first one, she declares that “there is life beyond this town” in the face of the fact that the people in the town are going to judge whether she can become an adult or not. In the second one, she does not have time for a high school friend who belatedly declares a romantic interest in her. She says that’s “too bad” and that it’s “too late” because “I was on a mission and did not have time to deal with this.
Literally and metaphorically, this dreamer has found that there is life beyond her hometown (and family) and that she has a mission. We know from her statement that she won a scholarship and was doing well in school. Indeed, she was an outstanding student with excellent focus and equally fine interpersonal skills. She may have to revisit past issues some day, but for now she is moving on.
What theoretical implications might be drawn from this series? For us, it shows that dreams express a person’s (1) “conceptions” of self and others, and (2) main “current concerns.” The conceptions expressed are “continuous” with the person’s waking conceptions.
If we had more dreams from this person, as we did for the studies of “Lucile” and “George Weldon” that are summarized in our Interesting Findings section, then we also would see that a person’s dreams are generally “consistent” over time, even years and decades.