Driving in Cars: Two Clients’ Dreams and How They Helped Us

Some of my Clients think that dreams are nonsensical rubbish and that their own dreams make no sense.  When asked about them, these Clients might dismiss them with the wave of a hand, saying, “Oh, it was stupid and I don’t remember a lot of it.” Or “I don’t have dreams.”  I, on the other hand, adore dreams.  I think that everyone has them and that everyone can be trained to remember them.  I think that they are beautiful, mysterious, and often amusing works of art.  Most of all, I think that they are a message from the self to itself.  Don’t you want to know what your inner self is trying to tell you?

Where do Dreams come from?

Many theorists believe that dreams come from a part of the mind that Freud called the Unconscious.  It is the part of you that you may not know much about.  That’s why it’s called the Unconscious – because you are not conscious of it.  Your Unconscious may contain repressed or forgotten memories, fears, unresolved questions and issues, instincts, a symbolic language that is personal to you, symbols that you share with all humanity (at least according to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell), and other information that you acquired during your life’s journey.  Some researchers believe that the Conscious, or knowing, part of the brain occupies only 10% of the brain and that 90% of our brain is unconscious.  Others write that only someone like Einstein used 10% of his brain and the rest of us use half that.  Most cognitive researchers agree, however, that the Unconscious is a vast, primarily unmapped and uncharted area of the psyche.

Why are psychodynamic therapists interested in the Unconscious?

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on revealing the hidden content of a Client’s psyche.  It seeks answers to questions like these: “Why do I keep doing this?”  “Why do I feel this way?”  “Why do my relationships end in disaster?”  “Why can’t I ever make good friends?”

It is the primary task of psychodynamic therapy to make what is unconscious conscious so that Clients can know themselves.  Self-knowledge makes self-change much easier.  If I know why I am doing something that I don’t want to do, it will be easier for me to give up that particular thought pattern or behavior.  Naturally, knowing oneself is not all that is involved in change; but it is a very good start.

Gallons of Ink, Pounds of Paper

So much has been written about dreams since Freud’s landmark work of 1901.  If you are interested in them, you will not have to go far to expand on this interest.  Rather than rewrite what has already been written about dreams, I would like to write about two Clients who were trained to look at their dreams and whose dreams revealed their progress in therapy.

A Warning

The dream belongs to only one person.  It belongs to the dreamer.  It is not the right of the therapist or of any other person to assign meaning to someone else’s dream.  The therapist may ask questions.  He or she may ask if it is possible that the dream means this or that; but it is disrespectful to comment on another’s dream without first having their permission to do so.

Driving in Cars

Many dream theorists believe that ‘driving a car’ is dream language for ‘leading one’s life’.  It is as though the car is the person and the ride is the approach the person is taking to his or her life.  Some questions I might ask if you had a driving dream are: What kind of car is it?  Where are you going in the dream?  How fast are you driving?  Are you driving safely?  Are you lost?  I think you know why I would ask those questions.

When you have a driving dream, your Unconscious is trying to tell you how it feels about your current process.  Remember, the Unconscious does not think – only the brain thinks.  The Unconscious speaks in pictures and word symbols.  The following examples will illustrate what we can learn from driving dreams.

Phil Drives the Car

Background: Phil grew up in a small town with a flamboyant, often un-medicated, Bipolar mother and a stressed and violent father.  A sensitive and gifted artist, a gay child in a neighborhood of roughnecks, Phil grew up in fear in an environment that offered little safety.  A great part of his early childhood was spent hiding.  Once, in a department store, his mother was behaving in a unpredictable manner; and Phil hid in the middle of a large rack of women’s clothing.  On another occasion, he was awakened by his sister at 2:00 am and told to “run”.  The six year old boy ran up the street in the black darkness to his grandmother’s house.

In early therapy, Phil’s dreams were often about being in cars driven by someone else, going in directions in which he did not want to go.  In the dreams, which were always dreams of danger, he was being driven into the very heart of the danger by someone he feared and distrusted, including ominous strangers, petty criminals, and street thugs.  Phil’s dreams in early therapy told us that, after that dangerous childhood, he still did not feel able to lead his life.  He felt at the mercy of others and headed toward danger.  He drank alcohol to calm his distress.

In a recent breakthrough, Phil opened session by recounting a dream in which he was driving his own car.  He was in the driver’s seat.  He was going where he intended, and he felt like the Master of the Road.  Phil’s dream told him that he is changing in a very good way.

Waiting for the Crash: Edward’s Dream and What It Taught Him

Background:  Edward grew up in one of the city’s most wealthy, influential, and socially prominent families.  Like his grandfather, his father was a famous doctor who placed high value on talent, hard work, and material wealth.  A success at many endeavors, he drove himself and his sons relentlessly.  Edward’s mother died when my Client was only ten, leaving him vulnerable to his father’s coldness and his enforced and grandiose expectations. 

During a difficult and unsupported childhood, Edward began to view his family’s name and fortune as his only attributes.  He failed out of two schools and was sent by his stern father to a reformatory.  Discouraged, he felt like a “loser”.  Thereafter, he counted on his looks, family money, and social status to sustain him.  He began to replace his lost confidence and self-esteem with increasingly heavy doses of cocaine.  He calmed his anxiety with pot. 

Throughout his therapy, Edward has looked backward… back to the time before he began to fail, back to the time when people looked up to him simply because he was the son of a famous father and because he was handsome and wore beautiful clothes.  As he continually looked backward, he put his present and future on hold.  Here is Edward’s dream:

I am driving on an open highway in a car, a huge Cadillac like the kind that my grandmother drove back during the sixties…  gigantic, white, with a big, wide front seat with a high, high back.  I reach into the back seat with one hand to find something and somehow I fall over the high back into the back seat.  I am scrambling, but I can’t get back up and into the front seat.  Meanwhile, the car is speeding forward, and any minute it is going to crash.

Edward and I discussed the idea that Edward’s dream was about his life and how he is living it.  As a therapist I said that I was happy that he was driving the car.  This made me feel that he is leading his own life as opposed to being “driven” by someone else like Phil was for so long.  The meaning of reaching into the back seat was obvious to both of us, since Edward is continually looking behind him in life, back to the past.  Fear of the crash seemed to both of us to be a warning from Edward’s unconscious to Edward.  Stop looking back, his dream was saying.  Stay focused in the present, and you will create the future that you desire.

Remember Your Dreams

Your dreams are a key to your unconscious.  Dreams told Phil and Edward what the problem was.  Dreams told them that they were getting better and gaining insight.  I hope that you will value your dreams.  If you don’t remember them, affirm before going to sleep that you are interested.  Keep a tape recorder by your bed and if you wake up with a dream, say a couple of words about it into the recorder.  Then, the next day, using the tape to jog your memory, write down every single thing that you remember about the dream.  Many dream experts believe that what you write about the dream, even things that you are unsure of and are just guessing about, are as important as the dream itself.  If you prove to yourself that you value your dreams, your Unconscious can use them to send messages to you.

[Note: none of my Clients are ever identified by their real names.]