Cultural Milieu of Disgust -or- Tedium Vitae in the Family

Misanthropic Moral Fury -or- Shakespearean Black Comedy

Disgust is an emotion that is readily found in dreams past and present. The International Institute for Dream Research (IIDR) dream interpretation, "Hiding from Humanity" discusses dreams of disgust using a Darwinian, as well as other perspectives. Freud's case study of "Dora" published 1905 speaks of "Ida Bauer's" feelings of disgust with the adult world, a cultural world and milieu that resembled Ibsen's "A Doll House" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". Freud diagnosed Dora as suffering from "tedium vitae" with her family life. (Read IIDR interpretation, "Requiem for Ida Bauer") 

In "The Anatomy of Disgust", William Ian Miller tells the reader that the mood and psychological state of "tedium vitae" closely resembles a melancholic's "misanthropic moral fury". For Miller, Shakespeare's tragic character "Hamlet", "is a case in point"; "Disgust with sex and women, with generation, with mutability and transience prompts a black humor, both in the sense of the term and in theirs as the black bile of melancholia." The IIDR article "Black Comedy" allows the reader to view some of these dystopian dreams.   

Below is a dream that a mother has had. Her "middle son" brings the "large fat maggots" to the mother's attention. The father's role in this family drama seems dubious, in that the moment that the mother wants to call her husband, she wakes up. Exactly what the cause of the disgust is all about, is hard to determine, we are only left to imagine and speculate. Here is the dream; 

Thelma, 38 

I was in a room with my husband, my middle son can in to tell me "it is nasty in the house because there's worms in the kitchen", so i followed him into the kitchen in a house we previously lived in and saw large fat white maggots on the floor, falling off the walls, and on the counter. I stepped on a few then got disgusted and went to call my husband but I woke up before i could call him.

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