A SEXUAL REFLECTION

I jolt awake from a vivid nightmare. I reach for paper to write it down. As I do, lying on my bed, early morning, notice there's a round mirror across the room reflecting an oval slice of me naked, isolated, from underneath. I see a scrotum, frustrum, and penis, all a strange gray-purple-rose color, wrinkled as a brain, the whole thing looking vaguely diamond-shaped and quite unlike genitalia, in fact quite unlike anything human at all. An alien growth of some sort... animal, plant? I think of books like MY BODY, MY SELF saying "examine yourself in the mirror!" next to photos of women looking in total shock at the unexpected intricacy of what had always been an undifferentiated "down there."

Well, looked at from underneath and isolated like this, male genitals are just as weird as women's--and kind of similar.

I get back to writing my dream. It was a long one--I had good recall for once. Rare lately. That's significant. For a long time I thought the length of my dreams was mainly a function of my interest, how many details I recorded. But I see now it's not so. Some puffing up or sketchiness of a dream-account can happen, but the variation is no more than 10-25%. I write what I recall, pretty fairly and concisely. So just counting the words IS a pretty fair estimate of how vivid and how complex the dream-events were. Short records mean my memories are being censored, since I don't stop dreaming of course. And there have been only two kinds of nights lately: thousand-word epics or nothing, very little in between.

This MEANS something!

Then I wake up again. That was a dream too.

MEANINGS

• Weird genitalia: Today my hypnotherapist put me in a trance, and asked "What are all these transsexual dreams about--how does Chris get along with female parts?" I said, or someone said, "A female body is normal for Chris; Chris struggles to identify with a MALE body." The dream confirms it: I see my penis as an alien growth! But it's partly unfamiliar perspective: I'd have equal difficulty with female reality--ANYONE raised on gender myths will find their true sexuality confusing.
• Viewed from "under" (= trance and dreams) the sexes look oddly similar: BOTH look complex and alien, hard to accept as "me".
• Mirror = this therapist's feedback is reliable, she's not trying to make me conform to some role. Male therapists earlier in my life DID give me bad feedback, due to misogyny and Freudian blinders. So I'm wary of therapists now.
• Dream booms and busts = a real pattern in my past. I'd get heavy messages followed by time to digest them. But now I have low recall, even blanks every few nights. CHRONIC dreamnesia! My dreams have teased me about charting my dreams-recall, comparing it to a stockbroker charting his investments. This is a sharp change--a dream reluctantly conceding that the statistics do reveal a truth--and suggesting I need to struggle for recall of those censored dreams.

SCHUMANN'S NIGHTMARE

Anyway--back to the nightmare I woke up from, that I tried to write down when the mirror distracted me. I bet you forgot all about that--cocks and pussies are so much more fascinating. But I didn't forget. Of course I wrote the dream down, so I have an advantage...

So. The nightmare.

The protagonist was the composer Schumann... I heard he was a rather happy guy, and so he stayed a second-string composer. Not enough sturm und drang und angst... he wrote "The Unfinished Symphony." Does Schumann symbolize unfinished creativity? Wait--am I confusing him with Schubert?

Well whatever he symbolizes, I'm him--Schumannbert.

So, something goes wrong, and I, Schumann went to see what it was... and I was convinced up till the last moment that it was a VIRUS killing people. Just a health problem. We can fix it with herbs and vitamins. And then, below the villa, amid the vines and bricks and grapes and all, he/I reached the cliff into the void, and the monster leapt out of hiding. Not a virus at all! A huge, intelligent, malevolent being. With sharp teeth. The monster pounces...

...and I wake in panic.

WAKING NOTES

In the dream, I knew that the whole drama was written by Kate Wilhelm, it was a novel titled "Margaret and I." (A real novel, of course, but why did I connect it with THIS?) Oh! hypnosis! In Kate Wilhelm's book, a man uses hypnosis to exploit Margaret, both sexually and professionally. And her unconscious LETS him, because it's curious and wants to try sex without responsibility. But even her unconscious feels trapped after a while, as if there's an unconscious under the unconscious. Yet... the secrets uncovered still lead Margaret to (relative) liberation. Not a simple situation! But then, minds aren't. At least Margaret's.

Clearly the dream must be comparing this to the hypnotherapy I've been trying. Yet my therapist isn't exploitive; she's the first shrink I've really trusted. Is the dream saying the monster who makes me ill is essentially a second hypnotist, an internalized abuser? Or is the monster my memory of the shitty shrinks and counselors I had earlier in life?

...and I wake AGAIN.

All THAT analysis was a dream too!

WAKING NOTES FOR REAL THIS TIME

• Schumann's cliff-edge = I felt dizzy in hypnosis today. The hostile part wouldn't speak, just made me sick and dizzy whenever Silky or the Tiger (two friendly voices that spoke up under hypnosis) bared secrets to the therapist.
• MARGARET AND I is a novel by Kate Wilhem narrated by Margaret's unconscious mind--who has total recall and great intelligence but only spotty influence over Margaret's actions. So the dream may be from the viewpoint of my unconscious, looking at my conscious persona (Schumann, who leaves projects unfinished) and at the fierce part making me sick--a "hypertrophied superego," as they say. A topdog with teeth....
• I'm still reluctant to write down the dream(s), OR the analysis in the dream, OR this post-dream analysis. My mind's like molasses, keeps oozing off or just sitting there. After a long struggle, I write these notes comparing Margaret's complex, layered mind to mine...

  And wake up AGAIN.

WAKING NOTES FOR REAL THIS TIME. REALLY.

The paper is blank. All of it was dreaming. I have to write all this out again... before I forget. If you found this one hard going, think how I feel!

Over and over... dreams in dreams about dreams.

A 2020 FOOTNOTE

Why'd I fear & mistrust therapists? The shrink my parents made me see as a child, William Ayres, was convicted of multiple felony counts of abusing his patients; he died in prison. When I said bad, I meant BAD.

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