Dark Lord Battle
Dreamed 1970 or '71? by Gayle Delaney
I was once in therapy with a kind but not highly skilled therapist. At the time, I was just beginning my journey of self-discovery and did not know how to distinguish a good analyst from a mediocre one. I had had my doubts about this analyst's abilities and about his attitudes toward women and psychological explorers under the age of forty. I felt he was not taking me or my desire to know my inner self very seriously. I never told him of my critical thoughts, and unfortunately he never fished for them or encouraged me to share them.
My dream producer knew better than I that it is crucial that the analysand inform the therapist of judgmental reactions, as these can so easily allow the client to disqualify important insights the therapist may offer. Then again, feelings that the therapist is not very good or appropriate for a given analysand may be quite accurate.
Later, in the following dream, I received interesting feedback on my analysis. My analyst was cast in the role of "The Professor":
I have long been on a journey to confront the Dark Lord. My company and I have rested at many simple shelters, inns, and what is now left of us rests--waits in the house of the Light Lord.The mere sharing of this dream with my analyst led me to tell him what I thought of his therapeutic style and how I felt that he was just lounging about "barefoot" in the analysis. Discussing honestly my reactions to him allowed for more openness in our work together. My analyst assured me that he was keeping his "action" shoes on and was ready to assist me in my confrontation with my unconscious (Dark Lord). His assurance was defensive and not convincing, however, and after a few more sessions I changed analysts.I am in my room when I receive the strong premonition that I must take the blue confrontation handbook (like a collection of Edgar Cayce readings) and the Cayce book of Revelations, also bound in blue. With these in hand, I knock on the door of an oldish professor, the only one to accompany me on this next and last part of my journey. I tell him to come with me into the blue room. I know my time has come; I am scared but prepared. I wait for a sign, half expecting a bomb to drop in another part of the house to signal the commencement of battle. As I wait, I look at the Revelations book and wonder how this will help in the battle--not obvious, yet surely vital.
The Professor, meanwhile, has taken off his blue tennis shoes. I say, "Put your shoes back on! He is coming any minute. We will have to be on our toes and move fast." He does so. Just then the Dark Lord knocks at the door downstairs. The Light Lord goes to the door. The Dark Lord asks if I will come with him (be under his power). The Light Lord answers with a long "Noooo." This is the moment I must go to battle with the Dark Lord.
The second analyst helped me to recognize much more of my own power and responsibility in my journey of self-development. He reminded me of what the "Dark Lord Battle" dream had suggested--that vital to my excursions into the unconscious would be my willingness to prepare and arm myself with self-study (represented by the blue Cayce do-it-yourself books), which would reveal to me a great deal of my inner life.
The feedback dreams I spontaneously recalled and incubated on my work with this second analyst were very positive.
SOURCE: Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1981 ed) p.187. Date is a guess, but by 1973-4 she'd had "several" years of therapy.
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