My friend Bob and I were walking together between classes last week when he happened to mention a nighmare of the night before. Since my English class is using dream material for writing purposes, my curiosity was immediately aroused. It took little coaxing on my part to get him to tell me about it.
In his dream, Bob was continually annoyed by a small hairy creature with sharp claws. This little animal lived in the cellar of Bob's home. The creature would come up out of the cellar and attached itself firmly between Bob's shoulder blades. In this spot the animal was just out of his reach. Bob tried by various methods to remove this little ball of fur but it would only laugh and dig its claws deeper into the skin. Bob went to his family and friends for help when he found that he could not get rid of the creature by himself. Much to his surprise and dismay, they could not see or feel anything on his back. When he insisted that something was there, they told him that he must be out of his mind. Through all of this the little animal continued laughing and piercing its claws deeper and deeper.
The more I thought about Bob's dream the more it intrigued me. The pieces seemed to fall into place as I pondered them. I could see a common thread of significance between all the parts of his dream. The small hairy animal, I thought, might represent the burdens of the first week of a college freshman. And these burdens, like the small animal, could not be removed from their place of refuge. The claws kept digging deeper into the skin just as the pressures of college might penetrate deeply into the mind. The part of the dream in which no one else could see the animal on Bob's back suggests that subjective suffering cannot be shared. Also, the fact that the creature lived in the cellar suggests that the Bob's problems came from his unconscious mind, a place where his conscious mind could not reach and where no one else could see.
Considering all these factors, I came to the conclusion that Bob's innermost self was telling him through this dream that others usually cannot grasp the reality of someone else's mental suffering.
— Dudley McGarity
© Copyright 2002 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.