To go into more details, I may confide to the reader that I have never
enjoyed any form of sport, indoor or outdoors in which I do not play an
important, if not the leading part, or which prevents me from indulging my
own whims. Witnessing some one else's athletic performances bores me to
extinction and games such as cards, checkers or golf which are surrounded
with iron clad regulations appear to me not as a relaxation but as a
useless form of hard work.
Readers may think that these self-revelations are prompted by egotism, but
an analyst should analyse himself as ruthlessly as he analyses others and
egotism happens to be the dominant feature of my attitude to life.
The following dream draws a remarkable picture of uncertainty, indecision
and gloom:
DREAM. "I am standing at the foot of marble stairs. I expect some danger
from the left where a person clothed in authority, with tyrannical
appearance, is approaching. I ask a female figure standing at the top of
the steps, and who seems to be some acquaintance, relative, mother or
sister, for help. I try to run up the steps but cannot. The figure extends
me a helping hand but that hand is so weak, lifeless, that I feel
helpless. I wake up in deep anxiety."
ATTITUDE. We have in this case a "flight to the mother" coupled with fear
of the powerful father. The patient had always suffered from some fear,
fear of examinations as a school child, fear of competition in all life
matters, fear of marriage, fear of decisions. He lived with his mother and
sister and had an affair with a woman considerably older than himself whom
he called "mother" and who called him her "boy."
We shall now see a dreamer wrestling with a sentimental problem, seeking a
solution for it and refusing to accept the solution suggested by an
outsider.
DREAM. "I was in a car with Albert, sitting in my usual seat but the
steering gear had been moved so that I could steer from my seat. I was
very inexperienced and felt anxiety. I was going down a steep city street
and at the bottom, saw a house before which I wished to park; there were
red lanterns and signs, however, which prevented me from stopping there.
I went on and Albert disappeared, then I was in the open country climbing
a hill and a man (A.T.) stood there and I asked him which way to go. The
machinery bothered me, I didn't know what button to push but trusted my
intuition and went all right. Finally I reached a desert stretch where
there was nothing and in great anxiety awoke."
ATTITUDE. The subject in love with a married man, had long hoped that he
would secure a divorce and marry her. She often went motoring with him.
Their affair was not satisfactory, however, and she had often considered
the possibility of a separation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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