Max had led a life of action and adventure, in which he was frequently in life-threatening situations, before settling into the world of business. Then his marriage broke down, and he began to consider changing direction into a more humanitarian career. The training course that most attracted him required that he undertake personal counselling, which would be a very new experience for him, discovering his inner world. Then he had this dream:
Dream report: Unknown Presence
I dreamed that I was lying in bed in the bedroom I had had as a child. The door was slightly ajar. I became aware of what seemed to be a presence coming up the stairs – and I felt a powerful fear of something unknown approaching. I woke up sweating, with a sense of utter terror, tightness in my chest and throat, almost tears in my eyes, and feeling totally paralysed.
Wow! I thought, what a nightmare! I went over it in my mind, and to my surprise the physical sense of terror repeated – and then again – though I knew in my head that there was no need to be afraid in reality. So I thought about what to do, if this were happening for real. My philosophy is always to do something, take control of the situation. So I decided I would open the door, and go and see what was there.
I let myself go back to sleep again, and I was back in the bedroom – and the whole sense of terror repeated. This time in my dream I got out of bed, opened the door and went down the stairs to see what was there. At the bottom, I found myself standing on the edge of a stone jetty, looking out at a great black stretch of still water, glimmering faintly, as far as the eye could see. There was no threat there. I felt quite calm, and thought, Oh, of course, with a sense of relief, and the dream dissolved.
When I woke in the morning, I remembered it all, and felt amazed at how I had worked with the nightmare. I have never felt that kind of terror since the nightmares I had as a young child, from about 3 to 5. I used to dream I was staring down a long dark tunnel, and there was an old woman’s head coming closer and closer. Just the head, with straggly grey hair, and a severe whitish face like a mask. I used to wake up screaming. I can’t connect it with any memories of people, or death, or anything that happened. Though I did have severe bouts of pneumonia, and nearly died myself.
When I thought more about the “unknown presence,” I felt reassured that I should undertake the training course. I realised that I had been afraid of what I might find inside me when I started therapy. But when I went “downstairs” to see, there wasn’t anything awful there after all – it was just my own fear. So I went ahead with it, and it has certainly proved right for me.
Max had been an extroverted man of action in the world in the first half of his life. The crisis came when his marriage broke up, and he began to discover his inner world – which had contained such terror in his childhood that the unconscious memory could still re-awaken panic in him more than forty years later. This time however he had learned the necessary courage to confront his fear and resolve it. What he discovers when he goes “downstairs” into his unconscious is a subterranean sea, calm and dark, as if waiting for him. The stone jetty is an old-world place of departure for a sea-voyage – symbolic of the inner journey he was about to undertake.