I have shared postings on Dreams and Consciousness, in a tucked away folder on my site, but it isn't a "blog" and doesn't allow questions and other's thoughts... so I thought to try posting it here to see what it stirs up.
Question about Identity in Dreams
For those who don't know me, I have maintained a Dream Journal, for "3+? decades" and have used this dialogue as a growth experience and knowledge training opportunity, seeing patterns in rapid evolution, sifting out the repeated motifs, noting the 'unusual," as I sit here, listening to a video stream on NPR from Robert Louis Stevenson and his encounters with "the little people," who helped him in his writings. The question that was posed included the puzzle, who is the 'creator' of dreams. If I claim them to be of my own creation(?), how do I become surprised, or alarmed and frightened. James Hollis (Depth Psychology author/analyst) shares the thought of a multiplicity of "selves" only a fraction of which we have any volitional relationship. Are we directing our attention to the Self, the Objective Psyche as suggested by Robert Waggoner.
I have been doing DreamWork with others for more than two decades, and recently had an unusual experience, and I toss it into the stream to see if it floats, and who may pick it up.
I had a dream the other night, only part of which I will include here.
"I am in college with similar age related peers, in a lecture hall, engaging in the lecture, seated in rows of seats, 3 or 4 seats in from the walkway in the middle. I feel to be here appropriately, and am not surprised as the lecturer walks up the aisle, turns to look down my row, and directs a question to me 'directly' using a name (Walter), which while reasonably common, is not my name. But in the dream, my dream ego (the point of view of the one who experiences a dream) is immediately solid with the identity, feels like the lecturer is addressing me with an expectation that I should respond."
Only upon waking do I question the curiosity of being a differently named and identified person, which, from within the dream, seemed correct.
I have had many dreams in which I have been a women, animals, disembodied points of view within a scene, a third party observer watching myself, but in each of these cases I did not experience myself as personified by a different specifically named entity, but as myself inhabiting another identity. I currently only have two immediate associations to the personal name, which I will pursue for my own edification, but the question is directed to the aspect of identification being so distinctly other.
I have not "bumped" into similar dream reports by individuals I have worked with, nor in the body of literature I have read, thus the curiosity.
