A Guide to the World of Dreams by Ole Vedfelt

Author:Ole Vedfelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Big Decision for a Three-Year-Old Boy

Sam is standing at the edge of a forest. A large man wearing a blue cap comes out of the forest. He cleaves Sam from behind with a sword.

Sam was crying when he awoke. The man was unknown. The blue cap looked like a police cap. The forest was dark and eerie.

In many fairytales the forest is the home of magical and dangerous beings, such as the witch in Hansel and Gretel and the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. According to Sam, a policeman was the one who decided what he could or could not do.

In their dreams, as recent systematic research shows, children are much more likely to be victims of aggression than adults – aggression most often committed by men or monsters (Nielsen 2012). Dreams of this intensity must have backstories.

Sam slept well and did not have bad dreams for a long period of time. He lived in safe and secure surroundings. He was an only child with caring parents and he was healthy, smart and well-liked at preschool.

However, one event stood out from Sam’s routines: the day before his dream, he agreed to say a final goodbye to his pacifier that he had still used to comfort himself in certain situations. Sam’s parents had conducted a small ceremony, serving his favorite cake and presenting him with a gift he had wanted a long time.

The psychological function of pacifiers as mothering substitutes is well-known. British child psychiatrist Donald Winnicott calls them transitional objects. They function as internal objects, substituting for mother’s breast and even her whole being, thus aiding children’s development toward greater independence, yet only as a small step down that road (Winnicott 1971).

Calvin Hall and Van de Castle classified “cutting, stabbing of the dreamer’s body” as castration anxiety (Hall and Van de Castle 1965). In psychoanalytical theory, this is especially seen in boys of Sam’s age in connection with the Oedipus Complex. In Erich Neumann’s psychology, an adult man represents a transition from matriarchate to patriarchate – from motherly to a fatherly inner world. In these traditions, transitions are connected to willpower and self-discipline processes within the child, which fits the developmental stage Sam was experiencing.

Stated more simply, Sam agreed to go through a ‘rite of passage’ into a new phase in his life. The effects of this were more ‘violent’ than expected and we can postulate that he felt split by his big decision (Vedfelt 2003).

Understanding the meaning of Sam’s dream came as a great relief to his parents because it did not refer to anything pathological, but rather a normal phenomenon in a child’s development. At the same time, Sam’s dream suggested that a very strong, inner, masculine force was at work. Sam was allowed to hang on to his pacifier a little while longer and gradually surrendered it at his own volition during the subsequent six months.

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