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Dream Reactions: Testing Your Limits

 

dream simulated reality

Star Trek fans will recognize the Holodeck, where characters create simulated environments … like dreams

Your dream is a simulation to test your reactions and learn how you really feel and what makes you tick

Dreams tell you so much about yourself. Like nightly therapy sessions in a simulated environment where you can explore your desires, test yourself, and find out through your reactions how you really feel and what you are really made of. Every so often a dream like the following one comes along and takes this idea to the extreme. It was recently recently submitted at Reddit Dreams and is about cruelly cutting down a horse:

I had a lucid dream in which I slashed down a horse with a sword. Before the slash, I already know it’s a dream and that my actions can be anything [doesn’t matter what you do in a dream, right?], but I don’t understand why I’m so cruel towards it. Afterwards, I want to find a doctor for the horse or treat it in some way. I feel horrible and want to help it even though I KNOW it’s a dream. [In the dream] I was a knight with a big castle and thought I was all powerful with impunity, then I felt so pathetic and regretful over what I have done.

reddit dreams

Reddit Dreams

The dreamer and I begin interpreting the dream by discussing the symbolism of the horse. I mention an example of a dream where a man watches a horse drown in a pond and does nothing to help it. The horse symbolizes the dreamer. He is a “work horse” who can plow through a long list of things to do. But sometimes the load gets to be too much, and instead of asking for help he just takes the entire burden onto himself. His reaction of watching the horse drown symbolizes his inability to ask for help when you needs it. Instead, he drowns in work.

But that idea falls flat with the dreamer. Instead, he says this:

In Crime and Punishment, there was a dream of a horse beaten to death by its owner and bystanders while a child tries to save it. This is referenced as a news article in the Brothers Karamazov. But that’s not it. Perhaps that’s where the animal [in my dream] came from, but I don’t think I relate to the struggles of the horse.

Sounds weird, but if I was all-powerful, I’d want to be cruel/tyrannical. If there is no God, then everything is permitted. That’s why I cut down the horse on purpose. And yet, I can’t face my own cruelty … so I desperately want to save it afterwards.

author J.M. DeBord

I’m RadOwl, your teacher.

What a twist! The dream is a simulation to show the man what he’s really made of. On the one hand, he has thoughts about being cruel and tyrannical if there are no consequences or constraints. On the other hand, he sees in the dream how he would react to his own actions if he actually carried through with his dark impulses. The dream is a simulation to test how he really feels. And what he learns about himself is he would not be so cruel if he was all-powerful.

dream themes in literatureDigging deeper into this dream’s literary themes

Cliff’s Notes say the following about the scene with the horse in Crime and Punishment referenced by the dreamer. The main character has a strong drink and falls asleep in a park. Then:

He dreams that he is back in his childhood, seven years old, and as he is walking with his father, he sees a drunken peasant trying to make his old horse pull a heavy wagon full of people. When the crowd laughs at him and the ridiculous spectacle, the peasant gets angry and begins beating the old, feeble horse. He beats so ferociously that others join in the “fun.” Finally they begin to use crowbars and iron shafts. The old horse at first tries to resist, but soon it falls down dead. The boy in the dream, feeling great compassion for the stricken and dead mare, throws his arms around the beast and kisses it. All through the dream the peasant owner is screaming that the mare was his and he had a right to do whatever he wanted to with her.

literary themes in dreamsUpon awakening from the dream, Raskolnikov renounces that “accursed dream of mine” and wonders in horror: “Is it possible that I really shall take an axe and strike her on the head, smash open her skull … God, is it possible?” He then “…renounces this accursed fantasy of mine” because he will never summon up enough resolution to do it.

When Raskolnikov goes to sleep in the park, Dostoevsky lets us know that “A sick man’s dreams are often extraordinarily distinct and vivid and extremely life-like. A scene may be composed of the most unnatural and incongruous elements, but the setting and the presentation are so plausible, the details so subtle, so unexpected, so artistically in harmony with the whole picture, that the dreamer could not invent them for himself in his waking state. Such morbid dreams always make a strong impression on the dreamer’s already disturbed and excited nerves, and are remembered for a long time.”

Thus, Dostoevsky is announcing to the reader that Raskolnikov’s dream now and later will have special meaning to him and thus all the dreams are symbolic in one way or another.

dream reactions crime and punishment

Find out for yourself if Raskolnikov follows through on killing the lady. It’s a wonderfully twisted bit of storytelling. One of the morals of the story is about how people live with the consequences of their own actions, even when cruelty is self-justified or dished out without legal consequence. Doesn’t that sound like the dream we analyze here?

The person who had the first dream finds out from his reaction after cutting down the horse that justifications don’t mean a thing when faced with the harm he commits with his own hand and seeing an innocent creature die. He even KNOWS it’s a dream and still feels terrible about what he did.

His reaction says everything.

Dreams are fantastic opportunities to test your limits, to project out your thoughts and feelings into realistic simulations. You can find out a lot about yourself through your reactions to the scenarios presented by your dreams. The dreamer finds out that if he was allowed to be as cruel as he wanted to be, he still has a conscience. Perhaps the dream allows him to test himself in a simulation so he won’t find out the hard way that, in the psyche, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

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