Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 411

If you are fighting an unknown enemy in your dream, this may represent a struggle with the shadow side of your nature and the unwelcome aspects of your personality. For example, there might be a battle between your moral code and your sexual desire, or between your intellect and your emotional needs. Conflict can also occur between your personal drives and social, political and economic drives. The fight may also represent a battle between yourself and another person, and your conscious and unconscious needs. If the enemy is someone you know, perhaps you have unsuspected feelings of animosity towards them. A fight between a younger and an older person in your dream may suggest a rivalry between the dreamer and authority.

A fight between people of the same age may represent the struggle for recognition or sibling rivalry. Similar interpretations can be applied to any kind of struggle in your dream. Such fights usually depict a fight for freedom, independence or the truth. Your unconscious may also be urging you to work out why there is a conflict, and may be suggesting that there is a more subtle way of dealing with it than with fists. According to Freudians, the struggle depicts the battle between your father or mother for the attention of the other parent.

Idioms: fight it out; fight like cats and dogs; looking for a fight. See also BAD DEEDS.

Forbidden desires

Desires that are forbidden in waking life can be repressed by our unconscious, and when this happens, a conflict ensues between the conscious mind and the unconscious drives that are striving for expression. According to Freud and other dream analysts, we can use our dreams to safely explore this conflict and allow forbidden desires a mode of expression. For example, you may have a dream in which your sister falls ill if you have had an argument with her in waking life; if you are attracted to someone who is married, you may have a dream about having an affair with them.

Dreams can also express the conflict between what you ought to do and what you want to do so; for example, you may have a dream where you tell your boss exactly what you think of them. Other conflicts can center on thinking versus feeling, or rationalization versus intuition, and your dreams can be used to develop and resolve this conflict (see ARCHETYPES). For example, if you are a scientist you may have a dream that you fall passionately in love with a stranger. Your unconscious is urging you to develop the intuitive, impulsive, unexplored and underdeveloped aspect of your nature.