The Young and the Restless -or- Melodramatic Love, Belgian Style

Belgian Existential Imagination -or- The Sorrows of Young Jim

Jim's dreams (below) feature quite the existential imagination...his thoughts, feelings and desires...all this from a fourteen year old. In reality, the dreams mimic what in literature and music could be labeled as; "The Young and the Restless". Johann Wolfgang von Goethe basically invented the melodramatic genre, called "Sturm und Drang" (Storm and Stress). "The Sorrows of Young Werther", is the archetypal expression of this romantic movement in literature and music. Jim's first dream about his "madly in love" interest, is about the contemplation of suicide, the second about rape and nakedness, the third is evidently about casual sex, the fourth is key to uncovering a developmental "narcissistic" disorder? In that, it begs the question what is she (and he) starving for? Is it love?

The fifth dream, her moving away and laughing, has the Marquis de Sade's fingerprints spread all over the words. Recently, I asked a fellow psychologist a question, that I usually reserve for therapy only, "Who has more power in a relationship, the person who loves more, or the person that loves less?" The sixth dream is a sign of the times, Freud's sexual revolution has triumphed, devoid of any Jungian "anima" to inject cosmic mythological meaning, sex has become an existentially meaningless act. The fact that he sees himself in a dark corner sneering, attests to psychological dissociation.  

Jim's final dream, is not about Freud, or Goethe, or de Sade, it is about the Jungian melodramatic archetypal imagination, where both lovers can poetically commiserate and cry, show true affection, hugging and intimacy, empathetic consolation, and hum an "aesthetic" (beautiful) song of the "true love" of star crossed lovers. Which would you prefer as a poetic epitaph, "Last Tango in Paris", or an "Affair to Remember"?

Jim, 14 Belgian

For the past 9 months, I have been madly in love with a girl. 

And the dreams I have of her are never moving dreams, just an image. Some of them include: 

  1. Her on the floor with a slit wrist
  2. Her on the floor naked and raped
  3. Her having sex with people I don't get along with
  4. Her dying of an eating disorder
  5. Her moving away and laughing at me
  6. Her having sex with me

In all of these dreams, even if i'm in it, there's always me in a dark corner, sneering.

One night I had a dream about her that was so realistic and such a fantasy at the same time:

We were sitting on a mountain at night, both in our under-garments, and then the stars began to weep. She looked up and began to weep as well, so I caught one of the stars' tears and placed it in her hand. She stopped crying, and we began to hold each other and the stars stopped weeping. She began humming a song so beautiful... I don't know a name for it, but I can almost hear it now, just in my head.

Further reading interest;

Marie Peel, "Seeing to the Heart: English and Imagination in the Junior School".

 

 

All material Copyright 2006 International Institute for Dream Research. All rights reserved.