My New Passport
Dreamed 1972/8/21 by Gayle Delaney
INTRODUCTION This long piece shows Gayle Delaney's dreamwork technique in detail, with all its hesitancies and warts, as she incubates a dream deliberately, then slowly figures out its message. Skim if you have to, but read the beginning and end at least--for the dream, though undramatic, really was life-transforming... once interpreted. And acted on. --Chris Wayan August 21, 1972
Day Notes. A peaceful, quiet day. Wrote a letter to Lynn [my oldest and best friend]. I am sick of being a second-class friend to her. Whenever she has a boyfriend, she drops everything and treats me as a second-class citizen. She seems to drop everything she's doing when she has the alternative of being with even a mediocre male. Walked in the park by Zurich Lake. Read Rossi's book Dreams and the Growth of Personality. It is great. It started me thinking of the shy child who has been showing up in my dreams lately. I have lost some of my self-confidence lately. When in my life have I felt most confident? When I was skating every day, training for competitions. It's been five years since I've done any serious skating. Rossi writes that new growth in the personality seems to manifest itself first in dreams, in the form of new and unusual dream images. Discussion. I need and want some new awareness, some new growth in my personality to break through old habits of perception and reaction to the world. I know there is within me more creative energy than I am using, but how to let it out? |
How can I release and express my deepest, most energetic creativity?
Dream: I had sent some photos to Philadelphia so that the passport people could choose the appropriate one when making up my new passport. I received my new passport in the mail and opened it to examine it. Instead of just one picture, the first four pages were filled with color pictures of myself ice-skating. Fabulous pictures I seemed to be seeing for the first time. I thought: "I didn't know I was that good after so long away from serious skating. Could I be that good?"
Many pictures were vivid action shots. In one particularly my body was just right, perfect balance and form. It was exciting to see. In another picture I was about forty-five. I reached into it and examined the muscle tone of my leg. I was amazed that it was good enough for exhibition skating at that age. But this is a passport, and four pages of myself is really excessive and far too intimate and revealing. On the last page of pictures, I find my actual (present) passport picture. It is in the usual black-and-white, pleasant, calm, standard. While this should be the only picture in the passport, it was just one, an insignificantly placed one, among many. "But this can't be," thought I. "It looks as if I'm trying to show off. Why did the passport makers do it? What shall I do?"
Then Lynn tells me she just received her passport with one page or so of extra pictures. Her father, a lawyer, had chemically steamed off the extra pictures. He
did it very carefully so the police would not detect his tampering with the document. "My father will do it to your passport if you like," said Lynn. At first I was relieved. Then I hesitated, not wanting to tamper with my passport, for it is written on the passport itself that any alterations discovered will result in the revocation of the passport.
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Commentary. I awake, thinking, "Is this my true identity expressed through skating? Did the passport people not make a mistake? Do they know better than I what is my true identity?" The warning printed on the passport application kept running through my head, "Passport photos must show a good likeness of the applicant, or they will not be accepted."
Fully awake, I realize the impossibility of it all. I've not skated seriously for too long. I've lost too much time. I'm already twenty-three years old. Even if I were to give it another try, give up school for ice-skating, where would I find a partner? There are so few men to choose from in ice-dancing. As in the dream, I'd like to believe it possible that I could have a career in exhibition and movie ice-skating, but I cannot. The dream was so vivid, and seemed so real in a literal sense, that it is hard to see behind the metaphor. The literal-objective interpretation can't be right, so I'll try a dream interview to get to the bottom of this. Setting. It is time for a new passport (identity). I've given the passport people a variety of self-images from which to choose the one showing the truest likeness of my identity. The passport I receive is new. The dream is surely dealing with my incubation request for new awareness of myself, and perhaps with a way to express it. What is a passport? My favorite document. It shows one's identity and permits free access to the world. Free movement. Horrible to lose it or have it revoked. You can't see the world without it. |
The black-and-white photo? The same as the one I have in my present passport. It's a good one, but it is standard. It represents my conscious self-image as a bright graduate student in psychology. It's not very exciting. My dream producer seems to be of the opinion that this is indeed a part of my identity, but not the most important part by any means.
The photos showed me at different ages ranging from twenty-five or so to forty-five. I was terribly pleased to see them but did not dare let myself believe they represented my true identity. Yet the photos were undeniably of me; I could even touch my future self-images as if they were three-dimensional and real.
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Why can't I accept the passport people's choice? First, it seems impossible that I could become a really good skater again. Second, I'm afraid the photos are too ostentatious, revealing, and intimate.
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Who is Lynn's father, and what is he like? I like him a lot. He's sort of old world, a hard-working lawyer. He encourages Lynn to keep her nose to the academic grindstone. He likes to take car trips with Lynn. I'd rather fly. In fact, when I have traveled with my father it has always been by plane. Lynn's father, and her following in his footsteps, must represent my more conservative, cautious, security-conscious
attitudes, which are capable of defacing my passport or true identity if I let them. I think Lynn has allowed these attitudes and a lack of belief in her talents to restrict the most
exciting aspects of her identity.
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What does that skater represent? It seems reasonable to think that she stands for the flamboyant, risk-taking, courageous, and adventuresome part of me. Yet the sensation of skating is so real, even now, that it is hard not to take her as a literal, objective representation of my future. The fact that every one of the pictures, except for the black-and-white one, show me ice-skating and not doing something else, is very interesting. It would seem to suggest that the dream is dealing with my objective professional identity rather than with a subjective metaphor for my whole identity, as that would have had to include several different representations of the other aspects of my personal identity.
Perhaps I am being like Lynn now, but becoming a professional ice-skater does seem to be out of the question. Therefore, I shall interpret the dream to mean that I need to recognize, accept, and actualize the symbolic ice-skater within me--if I dare. This dream was a harbinger of such good news on the objective level that I was tempted to place it in the category of a wish-fulfillment dream. Yet as usually happens in the course of a dream interview, it soon became clear that on the subjective level the meaning of the dream was more profound than that. Unhappily, I found both the objective interpretation (that I would skate professionally) and the subjective interpretation (that I was rejecting my flamboyant self) threatening to my current self-image and to my current professional and romantic involvements. |
LATER
Even after rny dream interview, I decided to ignore the dream. Finally, of course, waking and dream events conspired to convince me to take the message of this dream seriously. About a year after the dream, I began to express more and more of the symbolic skater within. Two years after the dream I put my skates on again and went to a local skating club session. There, miracle of miracles, I met Bob Castle, a spectacular gold-medalist ice-dancer who just happened to be looking for a partner! Male ice-dancers are rare, but ones with gold medals and no partner are harder to find than water in the desert. Since Bob and I have been skating together, we have been to ice rinks in Sun Valley and Europe, and my skating is better and more fun than ever before. I never would have believed this possible in 1972. I have not turned professional, but who knows? Even that might be in the cards for me, though I still doubt it. Be that as it may, the quality of my life has improved markedly. Much more of the skater within has moved into every area of my life, and I have recaptured that sense of adventure, the longing for which had prompted me to incubate the passport dream. |
EDITOR'S NOTE
Observe how, when she finally resumes skating, an unlikely partner appears, one who she never thought she'd merit. This synchronicity goes far beyond conventional insight therapy or even dreamwork as a practical guide to action. It's shamanism--the art of attracting what you need by mysterious means.
Note that Gayle still can't fully believe she deserves such a partner--yet he still manifested. Stage magic demands perfection; real magic does not.
SOURCE: Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1996 ed) p.189-95
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