Intensive dream work, which reveals the interior workings of the psyche, is guaranteed to change your view of reality. One of the stranger cases I encountered in decades of professional work echoed a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer which told of the Yiddish concept of the dibbuk.
One definition of a dibbuk is a soul who, at death, attaches to another person as a living host rather than leave this plane of existence. In Singer’s story, the deceased person’s soul jumped into the body of another family member and began to act through them, influencing their thoughts and actions. The present case seems quite similar.
The dreamer, a woman in her sixties, came for psychological assistance, reporting a major decline in energy, health and the clarity of her thoughts. I asked when this change began and the client said it dated from about six months earlier.
“What happened around that time?” I inquired. The client said her mother, a strong willed woman in her nineties, had died about then: “Maybe I am just depressed about her loss, but it seems more than that,” she said. I asked her to record her dreams and she brought the following dream to the next session:
“I am sitting in my car which is standing still in the middle lane of a freeway. There are cars whizzing by me on both sides but I am not moving. Concerned that I should not be standing still here, I search around and see in the rear-view mirror my mother is in a car right behind me! I get out and discover that her car is attached to mine. I look right at her and she looks very embarrassed and pulls her car into the right lane and speeds off.”
The client said her mother did not believe in an afterlife and had been very fearful of dying. The dreamer’s “current car” that was inappropriately stopped included her life and health which had been stopped in their tracks. The image of the mother’s vehicle being attached to her was not unlike the dibbuk. Had the mother’s spirit found a way to attach itself to her daughter rather than make the crossing at death? Is that what was draining her life resources and confusing her thoughts.
I asked the woman what the mother’s attached vehicle suggested to her. She said, “I bet she never left, I think she’s still with me, somehow.” The dream suggested that taking a hard look at the mother would be sufficient to encourage her to depart under her own power. The mother’s embarrassment suggests she is doing something she does not feel is justified and that she will correct the situation once confronted. I was hoping so, since my doctorates in psychology and social work did not cover exorcism!
Using the gestalt technique of addressing an invisible other, the dreamer confronted the mother directly: she said this was her body and her life and that the mother’s attachment was not right, that it was clearly harmful to the daughter. She said that she wanted the best for the mother and that the dream showed a clear path for the mother to follow and that she had the power to go there on her own.
The dream showed that both people were being impeded by their connection and were stagnating due to this “inappropriate attachment.” A “freeway” is a path without stop lights, one that is meant for continuous movement and flow, life energies. The “freeway” may also suggest the “free will” of the daughter who should be allowed to go on her way. This “imaginary” conversation with the mother seemed to be sufficient, for within a few weeks the client reported feeling a great deal better physically, and emotionally; she said her thought processes had begun to clear from the day of the session.
Whether the “attachment” that was broken was entirely in the mind of the daughter, or actually involved the mother as “post-departum” house guest, you can decide for yourself. Whichever it was, the dream guidance resolved the problem. As Jung once said, “Death ends a life, but not necessarily a relationship.”