Interpreting dreams in psychotherapy: The Boeing 747 dream

Interpreting dreams in psychotherapy: The Boeing 747 dream

There are many different ways to understand dreams. My method is a mix of traditional and contemporary methods and intuition. Above all, I think that a dream is a communication: it hassomething to say. Here is an example.

The dream narrative: I am flying in a 747. I am sitting in the nose cone of the plane with my girlfriend. I think we're going on vacation. I met the pilot who is a tall, genetically perfect, confident pilot. The plane rolls to the right and dives deep - I don't feel right about it. Through the window at the front of the plane I can see that we are flying over buildings and trees. I hope we make the runway, but we're plowing through dirt, rocks and steel beams. Even though we fly into the ground, the plane maintains its shape but eventually comes to a stop. I push my friend out of the wreckage and push her onto a road with stone flags. I leave her there in the sunshine and tell her to wait while I get the others out. I can see a wall all broken through and the plane went through. The wings are broken off along with the landing gear, although the fuselage is still intact. I see a train taking passengers away by the sea and I realize that we are alone and that no one will necessarily believe that we were on the plane. I return to the plane to pick up my cell phone so I can call my mother.

The dream interpretation: The central motif of this dream is the impossibility of the aircraft's fuselage surviving the crash. Flying itself denotes a mental or intellectual - or even spiritual - activity that gives a clue to the content of the dream. The vehicle in a dream usually represents the ego. The ego is the identity or separate self with which we identify throughout life - our self - and in this dream the ego symbol is the largest, possibly most successful airliner of our time. Either the dreamer is magnifying himself or he has a great purpose in life.

He is sitting at the front of the plane with his girlfriend, who (as he himself confided to me) has merged or mixed up with his anima. The anima for a man is an often challenging guide to inner wholeness. More like Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy. The dreamer is with her, but he mainly saves her, which is curious in itself. What guidance does his anima give him? Well, he travels in the front, as he said, "in the nose cone of the plane", and he noticed that he is going somewhere (on vacation), whereas in dreams he usually observes that he is "coming back". So the anima involves him in the new striving to move towards something.

It is known that we should drive our own vehicle in our dreams. This means that we are responsible for our own lives. Here is a genetically perfect individual, not the dreamer, the driver or the pilot. In other words, his unrealistic pursuit of perfection drives him in his mental or spiritual pursuit (flying a plane) to achieve his goal (on vacation?).

While the body of the aircraft - the fuselage - is intact, it is back to the "wreckage" of the aircraft that he will reunite with the great modern symbol of the umbilical cord - the mobile phone. Inside the plane's body he finds the umbilicus that connects and reconnects him to his mother (the mothership, the Boeing 747, was also known as the "Queen of the Sky").

Since the navel motif ends the dream, we can assume that the message of the dream lies firmly here: examine and explore your early life, your relationship with your mother (in this case the emotional abandonment, personal rejection and betrayal) that created emotional-behavioral patterns that perpetuated your suffering throughout your adult life.

Does leaving the plane intact (“without feeling stress or anxiety” – the dreamer’s words) means escaping the ego, as the dreamer suggested? No, go back to your early life and the insights you find there. In part, of course, this is before the ego was formed. But escaping the plane crash unscathed actually represents something much deeper. This dreamer has not fully engaged with life. If he died today, he would regret not having truly lived (he admitted this when it was presented to him). The torso that retains its shape and remains untouched is the ego-forming of childhood that ensured its survival. It stands for the maxim: Nothing will reach me, nothing will hurt me... again and again.

He has to save his girlfriend from the hull - can he love her? Do you want to be with her to save her from his lack of feeling and emotional investment? The other people are parts of him, aspects of his life. While he is about to save her (from his detachment from life), he sees her going where he went before the crash - on vacation (on the coastal train). The passengers, the other aspects of him, are random and remote. But never as far away as when you leave the dream. His experience of the joy of life is so distant, far-fetched and unattainable. They disappear from the dream, leaving him (and presumably his Anima girlfriend) alone with the uncertainty that his tenure might even be in doubt as to the truth (they might think we weren't even on the flight). Flying is living, but we must be present and committed and engaged: we must be here!

This dreamer cannot enjoy himself under the current circumstances, although he would probably refute it. Because even if he's not engaged, he's always looking over his shoulder for the perfect woman, the perfect holiday treat, the ideal moment. The tall, genetically perfect and confident pilot is his mother's perfect lover, representing the dreamer's ineffectiveness, inferiority and inability to satisfy her - emotionally and through sexual association (the dreamer has confirmed his fantasies about sex with his mother).

One last thing – he pushes and pushes the girl forward. But she sits passively next to him and always accompanies him at the front of the plane on the journey inwards (the dream itself, so to speak). This journey – the inner journey – is a descent; a descent into the deep unconscious to hidden self, to repressed inner emotions and conflicts, where his soul competes with his heart for space, where his mother competes with his innocence. But if these fights or conflicts are allowed to continue, he can never be the winner. In resolving the conflict, gained from deep insights that await him in the inner Word, his freedom can be achieved. And not just his freedom, but also his wholeness.

Are freedom and wholeness the meaning of the holiday motif? His uncertainty is evident at the start of the dream; Like a child or someone who is uninformed, he just thinks “he might be on vacation.” Is “vacation” the enjoyment and engagement with life that he longs for? Or is vacation an unknown spiritual trajectory? Well, it is both Holy Day and All Day, the religious-spiritual occasion as well as the celebration of his desire to be fully himself. But the wings of the plane (the spiritual traveler) are broken off. He missed the train at the moment. And there is food for thought here; because the train cannot deviate from the designated tracks, while wings offer the freedom of the air. So his journey to freedom is held back for the time being, his wings are broken, but he is also denied the limited access that the train grants. He has to wait with his anima and realize that he is already completely himself.

Self-dream analysis may be effective, but the deeper messages of the dream world are unlikely to come unless you work with an experienced and preferably gifted dream practitioner, e.g. B. a therapist, counselor or other inner guide. Such a person should be able to help you effectively and fruitfully monitor your dreams and enter into a lasting relationship with the unconscious, which can be an unexpected treasure of wisdom in your life.

Alternative practitioner psychotherapy

The best place to find alternative practitioners psychotherapy is in our free alternative practitioner directory. To view all alternative psychotherapy practitioners, please click here.