I
I dreamed last night that I was drowning a baby in a rushing gutter. I was very sorry to do it but I had been given my instructions – the baby or myself – and I had made my choice.
It was a compliant, yet resilient baby. It understood it was to be drowned and it did not struggle. Yet its organism was so vital that after minutes and minutes of being held under the torrent it would not die.
This baby was myself. She died at last by converting herself into a beautiful antique doll. The gutter had the form of the website in Cupertino which runs one of the courses I am teaching.
I placed the doll on my shelf. I enjoyed looking at her and holding one-sided conversations with her. She was very kind and did not even resent me for having killed her. She forgave me and stayed with me. It was as though she were watching over me.
It was a pleasant resolution but I would so very much have preferred to keep the live child. I would much rather retain integrity and self-respect than dream of drowning babies.
II
During Reeducation it was worse, however. I did not get to drown babies; I had to nail them to the wall and allow them to die like that. After each Reeducative session I would dream that, with very great regret, I was nailing yet another small version of myself to the wall, “for my own good.”
I soon filled the study, and then the hall. It was scary to walk into these rooms, especially at night.
Reeducation believed that these dreams were veiled memories of things which had in fact happened in the distant past. My friends believed that therapy was hard, and that to doubt or resist it was to subvert improvement.
I, on the other hand, believe that in these dreams of killing babies which resemble myself, I am telling myself that I am allowing my whiteman superego to repress me, now. I believe they mean I should disobey orders and save the child.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Babies huh? I have never dreamed of them, weirdly enough. Sounds more likely they represent your creativity (creative projects) rather than actual versions of yourself. Perhaps you should write novels rather than academic texts? There is a certain sense in which writing an academic text is like murdering a baby. You know, who gets to read it? Somebody who is already dead and embalmed as part of the establishment. Seriously.
Creativity / creative projects, yes, especially in this recent dream, but also self-determination, in relation to the earlier one.
Writing novels rather than academic texts, yes, and journalism. This a friend said many years ago – actually he said “in addition to.” I realized over the summer that … yes.
Unless of course one can write and sell academic texts which are actually meaningful. Only a few of my published ones are … and I have unpublished ones which are, but are unpublishable for that reason.
What I said to a colleague who was as upset as I am now over this course was that his error was in wanting to put his creativity *there,* and he should put it into his own work instead … and teach the course in more or less the way you recommended to me on an earlier thread.
I need to take that advice myself. The problem I am having is with the current textbook … but it would be a political problem to change it … arrgh I want out of the course, it is the simplest solution!
Mike was telling me about a radical psychology professor, from his past, who used to award all his students As just for turning up. Maybe you could try to that strategy. (It would be a way of affirming to yourself that the way education is set up now produces arbitrary results, and yet you would also stand the chance of positively encouraging your students to feel.. .positive.)
Whenever I have an intense dream I try to ask myself if the images in the dream represent a wish that I need to pay attention to or if the images are representative of an anxiety or a fear that I need to explore. For me, it’s usually one or the other and sometimes a combination of both.
Melissa – oh yes! I find the same. The other thing I like to do is consider that each of the characters are aspects of me, and re-imagine the dream from the point of view of one of the characters who do not seem to be ‘me’ in the dream. From the baby’s point of view, for instance – if I place myself as the baby, I get a whole different view of what is important and what sort of attitude I want to bring to the world.
Scratchy – that is a smart idea. I do it on quizzes … but this is a smart idea: show up and show that you are engaged.
In this particular course one could also give a standardized exam at the beginning and the end and grade on improvement … but that has other problems.
Some really radical grading scheme would be useful, since in this course the reason the students are blocked is that they are so used to being punished for small mistakes that they have no personal reaction left except resentment.
I love your ideas about honoring the perspectives of all of the characters in the dream sequence without assigning preference or privilege to any one character. It changes everything in terms of the relationship between the empowerer and the empowered characters. This reconceptualization of power resonates with my postmodernist professional practice.
May I also adopt this tradition?
Certainly! I got it from a Jungian dream analyst! 🙂