Interpreting the Dream in Psychotherapy: The Dream of the Boeing 747

There are many different ways to understand dreams. My method is a mixture of traditional and contemporary methods, and intuition. More than anything I keep in mind that a dream is a communication: it has something to say. Here is an example.

The narration of the dream: I am flying in a 747. I am sitting in the front of the plane with my girlfriend. I think we’re going on vacation. I met the pilot who is a confident, tall, genetically perfect pilot. The plane lurches to the right and falls low; I don’t feel good about this. Through the window at the front of the plane I can see that we are brushing against buildings and trees. I hope we get to the track, but we go through dirt, stones and steel beams. Although we are flying towards the ground, the plane maintains its shape, but eventually stops. I push my girlfriend forward out of the rubble of hers and onto a path of stone slabs. He leaves her there in the sun and tells her to wait while I get the others out. I can see a wall all broken that the plane has gone through. The wings have broken off along with the landing gear, although the fuselage is still intact. I see what looks like a train by the sea taking passengers away and I realize that we are alone and no one will necessarily believe that we were on the plane. I go back to the plane to get my cell phone to call my mother.

Interpretation of the dream: The central reason for this dream is the impossibility of the plane’s fuselage surviving the crash. Flying itself denotes a mental or intellectual, or even spiritual, activity that provides 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 that we identify with throughout life, our self, and in this dream the symbol of the ego is the largest and possibly most successful airliner of our time. So, either the dreamer aggrandizes himself or has a magnificent life purpose.

He is at the front of the plane with his girlfriend who is (as he himself confided to me) merged or confused with his anima. The anima for a man is a guide, often challenging, towards inner fulfillment. Something like Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The dreamer is with her but mainly saves her, which is curious in itself. What guidance does his anima give you? Well, he travels to the front, as he said, “in the nose of the plane”, and realizes that he is going somewhere (on vacation), whereas usually in his dreams he watches that he “comes back”. So the anima is engaging him in the new quest to go towards something.

It is well known that we must drive our own vehicle in our dreams. This denotes that we are in charge of our own lives. Here, although a genetically perfect individual, not the dreamer, is the driver or pilot. In other words, his unrealistic aspirations for perfection are driving him in his mental or spiritual quest goal (the plane flying) to achieve his goal (on vacation?).

Although the body of the plane, the fuselage, is intact, it returns to the “wreckage” of the plane to be reunited with the great modern symbol of the umbilical cord: the mobile phone. In the body of the plane she will find the navel that connects him and unites him again with his mother (the mother ship, the Boeing 747, was also known as “the Queen of the Skies”).

Since the umbilical motif ends the dream, we can safely assume that the dream’s message is solidly here: Review and explore your early life, your relationship with your mother (in this case, the emotional abandonment, personal rejection, and betrayal) that has created emotional. -patterns of behavior that have perpetuated their suffering throughout their adult lives.

Leaving the plane unscathed (“not feeling stress or fear” – the dreamer’s words) symbolizes escaping from the ego, as the dreamer suggested? No, go back to his early life and the insights he will find there. In part this is before the ego was formed, of course. But the uninjured escape from the plane crash actually represents something much deeper. This dreamer has not fully committed to life. If he were to die today, he would regret not really living (he admitted that when it was brought up). The fuselage that keeps its shape and remains unaffected is the formation of the infant ego that has ensured its survival. It represents the maxim: Nothing will affect me, nothing will hurt me… ever again.

From the fuselage he must rescue his girlfriend. Will he be able to love her? do you want to be with her? save her from her lack of feeling and emotional commitment? Other people are parts of him, aspects of his life. As he goes to rescue them (from disassociation from his life), he sees them going where he was headed before the accident: on vacation (on the train by the sea). The passengers, the other aspects of him are incidental and remote. But never as remote as at the exit of his dream. His experience of enjoying life is remote, unlikely, and out of reach. They disappear from the dream leaving him (and presumably his anima-girlfriend) alone with the uncertainty that even his permanence in the truth may be doubted (they may think we weren’t even on the flight). Flying is living, but we must be present and involved and committed: we must be here!

This dreamer is not amused, nor ever will be, under the present circumstances, although he would probably refute it. Because even when he’s not engaged, he’s always looking over his shoulder for the perfect woman, the perfect holiday enjoyment, the perfect moment. The tall, genetically perfect and confident pilot is his mother’s perfect lover who represents the dreamer’s ineffectiveness, inferiority and inability to satisfy her, emotionally and by sexual association (the dreamer has confirmed fantasies he has about sex with his mother ).

One last thing: push and push the girl forward. But it is she passively sitting next to her who always accompanies him at the front of the plane on the inner journey (in a sense, the dream itself). This journey, the inner journey, is a descent; a descent into the deep unconscious to the hidden selves, to the repressed internal emotions and conflicts where her soul lives for a place with her heart, where her mother competes with her innocence. But if these fights or conflicts are allowed to continue, he can never be the winner. It is in the resolution of the conflict drawn from the deep intuitions that await him in the inner word that he can achieve freedom from it. And not only his freedom but also his totality.

Are freedom and fulfillment the meaning of the holiday motif? His uncertainty is evident at the beginning of the dream; like a child or someone who is not informed just thinks “maybe he’s going on vacation”. Is “vacation” the enjoyment and commitment to life that he longs for? Or are vacations an unknown spiritual path? Well, it is both: holy day and full day, the religio-spiritual occasion as well as the celebration of his desire to be fully himself. But the wings of the plane (the spiritual traveler) have broken. For now he has missed the boat. And here is food for thought; because the train cannot deviate from the tracks that are indicated to it, while the wings offer the freedom of the air. So, for now, his journey to freedom is halted, his wings broken, but he is also denied the restricted access the train provides. He must wait with his anima and realize that he is already fully himself.

Analysis of one’s own dreams can be effective, but the deeper messages of the dream world are unlikely to come through unless you work with an experienced and preferably gifted dream practitioner, for example a therapist, counselor or other inner guide. . Such a person should be able to help him effectively and fruitfully monitor his dreams and enter into an ongoing relationship with the unconscious that can be an unexpected treasure trove of wisdom in his life.