32 people attended.

Hosts: Eliat Aram, Carlos Remote-Breton, Franca Fubini, Patricia Kummel

Dream 1: Classical concert: beautiful symphony in a beautiful open theater.  I am in line to buy tickets. I want to buy tickets in the balcony.  Ticket taker is protected from COVID by screens.  Three women are pressing from behind.  I say “You should be socially distant.” Either they didn’t listen or didn’t understand.  They were speaking a foreign language.  I was getting angry as they pushed at my back. I said, “I want to speak with the manager.”

  • Shackleton’s journey to Antarctica.  Ice froze the ship in place – couldn’t reach Antarctica nor come back.  Extreme forces to be managed; in his case, the outcome was death.  
  • Starts with freedom then uncertainty.  People get scared and look for authority to help us
  • The only camera that is on  in this matrix is from one of the hosts/managers

Dream 2: In kitchen with 2 friends.  Cooking together.  I’m happy – I like this woman.  We start flirting – she laughs at me, it’s physical: cooking, busy, talking.  The guy who’s there started to hug this woman and she smiled at him.  I feel jealous, disappointed.  Then she smiled at me too.  I’m curious about a possible threesome.  Very sexual, aroused and excited.

  • Pursuit of Love show about 2 women who have been friends since childhood.  The series charts the life of the first woman, who has a hectic social life.  It ends when she dies in childbirth.  Her friend is also pregnant at the same time and she takes both kids to raise.  The pursuit of love leads to death.
  • 3 squirrels out my window are going crazy.  Pursuit ends in death but maybe play first.I was being shown around a big new resort by the very proud manager.  In the middle of the resort was a pool or pond with lumps of concrete.  They look like lumps of sewage.  The manager says, “Look what we excavated – this relic is the centerpiece of this resort.” I thought, why? It’s ugly, not interesting.  I felt completely out of step.
  • Shawshank Redemption film where they wade through sewage on the way to freedom
  • Das Boot film takes place in WWII – they come up through a manhole cover

Dream 3: At the last SDM I talked about a dream in a cafeteria where someone had a spoon and was tasting everything. This dream is connected.  I was in an area with many cafes.  I see the same person come around the corner.  I see the spoon as he shepherds a child walking near the traffic to safety.

  • Tunnels = bombing of Gaza.  Tunnels must be destroyed
  • I heard “man hole” – why is it called “man hole”?
  • Macho man in that region

Dream 4: I dreamt I was murdering someone.  I had the feeling of having done the act.  Waking, I realize what I’ve done.  Was it an attack or self defense? It was murder by stabbing.

  • Is it murder or self defense in the Middle East? 
  • I couldn’t sleep so I read the news on my phone.  It was a story about a 6th grade girl shooting at a school.  The teacher told the students to run and not look back.  She went up to the girl (some heard that another child went to the girl).  I don’t know if it was the shooter.  She took the gun and hugged and hugged until the police came.  No one died; 3 people were injured.

Dream 5: I’d gone to meet my ex-mother-in-law.  We were in her kitchen; we hug and talk.  I’ve been wearing socks. As I’m leaving, I see one sock is wet – so wet that I am leaving puddles of water on the floor.  I must clean it up.  My son comes running and apologizes for something.  He hits himself on the neck 2x.  The 2d time, a piece breaks off in his neck.  I’m holding his neck; as his mother, I want to help him. The MD comes and says “Let me do it”.  I take my hand off and the gash isn’t bleeding.

  • We didn’t wear shoes in the house; we wore sox in winter

Dream 6: I had a dream about my in-laws.  I was showing memorabilia to my in-laws, who are on a railing outside, listening diligently. I bring them to the kitchen.  My partner has put out 2 new cloths.  My daughter’s math books are on one.  There were more books.  One was my memories as a child, as if I had self-published it.  They didn’t know what to say.

Dream 7:Lonely – small children trying to get inside my childhood home – “demonic figures” – lots of lonely dreams – alone with threads – not so different from violence.

  • My association to wet sox is the photo of the left wing politician who died 2 days ago.  It’s a famous photo of him after a clash with the police.  He was sitting with one wet sock trying to dry it.  Shows the frustration with the protest, and the innocence of him trying to dry the sock.
  • I keep returning to images of tunnels.  We are experiencing an insect event that occurs once every 17 years.  Their life above the ground is very short.  They are buried 2-3 meters down and tunnel their way up.  They are small, brown, fecal looking and they shed their skin and emerge to become adults and mate.  The females make slits in trees, lay their eggs and the adults die.  The eggs hatch, tunnel down and stay for 17 years.  I talked to an artist who was creating an art project connecting the 17 years to the end of the pandemic and he was upset that birds only eat the insects’ faces. I was surprised that he was upset with the violence of nature.
  • You said “insect event” and I wrote “incest event”.  Things go underground and how violence gets perpetrated
  • They are called cicadas. They have big eyes and make the loudest noise.  Is that why just the head is eaten?
  • I think of my garden in Calcutta.  It is overgrown with jasmine.  At night I smelled the jasmine.  I put jasmine oil on my mother’s hands to recall the garden.
  • Calcutta makes me think of the pandemic in India
  • I’m struck by the 3d dream.  I think of the triangle in the dream where the man was jealous.  This morning I picked flowers – just 2. But they didn’t look right so I picked a 3d.
  • I participated in a Zoom activity at my church about the Holy Trinity and the celebration of Pentecost – The Holy Spirit coming.  Jesus had to die – there needs to be death.

Dream 8: I had a dream and woke up feeling tenderly touched.  An unknown stranger came and picked me up.  I was surprised to feel supported and that level of trust.  It must be how it feels to be picked up by a father I’ve never known.  It was beautiful.

  • The long spoons make me think of Hell.  No one has their own spoon in Hell. You can eat from the other person’s spoon but not your own.  What is happening with humans?  The number 3 represents stability but not in sex.  Is it 2 for 1, 1 for 2?  The question of who are we as human beings?  What is going to happen with us as humans?
  • Calcutta…. Singapore is modeled around Calcutta
  • Tous pour tous…
  • One for all, all for one: 3 Musketeers
  • People used to sweep the floor with brushes of grass.  They’d be very quiet and you wouldn’t notice.  You sweep the surface but terrible things surface.  Still people do that.  There’s a feeling of desperation and disgust that it’s still like this.  People queue up to buy oxygen to breathe.  Contrast the progress of the great number of vaccines and horrendous humanity levels.
  • The binary of situations: Gaza and Israelis
  • The dream of being held – you need a 3d person
  • The last matrix was about the binary.  A tunnel is neither above nor below – it’s a space between.  What might it mean for us?
  • Tunnels, vagnias, birth canal: 2 babies and 2 mothers and 1 mother dies.  Love has loss implicit in it.  The reality of vaginas in many bodies and the symbol of mystery to some bodies of birth.
  • Israel – is it life worth living? Transformation – it seems like our world is  made of glass.  Something broke the glass and something is coming forward
  • The tail end of the boundary – mention earlier of the absent father and fondness.  My association is to the cruel side of a boundary running through.
  • Birth canal, conversation about vaginas made me think that the time of separation when the umbilical cord is cut is the first moment of grief.  Every child cries out then; where does that go? Does it come out as war? There are reasons to cry.
  • I recall holding the umbilical cord in my hand.  I can’t describe the sensation but I can feel it in my palm.
  • The 6th grade girl shooting and another girl came and held and hugged her.  What does it feel like to be held after a long time of not being held? A holding environment in organizations exists so people can feel safe.  It’s a strong transit time at the moment
  • The sweepers make me think of unexpressed grief pouring into the Ganges at the moment

Dream Reflections Dialogue

  • 3s, tunnels, 3d space, war, grief – is unexpressed grief looking for a way out? To be birthed?  The 3d space isn’t easy or comfortable, but it is the spirit.  Process of love leads to bed.  
  • Benevolent father being held, the 6 year old girl with a gun.  Where were her parents?  How’d she get the gun? Benevolence of being held.
  • 1st dream: the presence of a manager – need for a manager to regulate after the pandemic.  Strong presence of the male figure.
  • Who is going to manage this?
  • Trios: love, life and death.  When you are lucky, you are born from love, live and then die.
  • This was a terrifying matrix: what will happen when it ends?  We’ll kill ourselves.  It’s no accident that the Palestine/Israel conflict follows the opening up from the pandemic.
  • Cicadas are there, embedded a long time.  A mature person would hold grief with one hand and gratitude with the other and be stretched between.  One woman dies and the other cares for both children. 
  • No simple joy now; joy is not easy – you can’t escape – the world of glass is now broken.
  • What is not is connected to death.  The pursuit of love is death.  I refuse to accept that sentence.
  • Will elections divide the country?  The country is already divided.  It is broken.  Classifying things as before the pandemic and after is still dealing with the binary.  Resistance is the threesome.
  • I’m disappointed the first dreamer didn’t get to the concert.  Is the struggle to keep music alive?  Where is the music in these times?
  • I’m acutely aware of those who don’t speak: the underground is present in the matrix but not visible.
  • George Harrison: As my guitar gently weeps.  The floor needs (s)weeping.
  • Cicadas sing – a call, a song.  Then the head is bitten off.  They leave a scent behind, though.

Themes

End of COVID the amount of emotion that has been stored inside because of the pandemic – will it be destructive or will someone step up and hug? The terrifying vision of killing each other associated with the conflict between  Israel and Palestine.  2 girls in the younger generation to save us vs. the manager/loving father.  Who will we trust to carry us forward? The need for guidance

Cycles of Life –  cicadas and their 17 yr cycle – maybe the pandemic is just an episode in the cycle of history.  It’s not the first and won’t be the last.  We kept cycling back to earlier dreams and associations throughout the matrix.  It helps to look back.  3 is a basic building block of life: father, mother, child

Extremes vs. Balance – Polarities were accentuated in recent months: polarities of government (Trump/Biden, Modi in India, the comment about elections and an already broken system), birth and death.

Who will guide us? – Tunneling our way out – we can’t do it alone – we need a manager or a child or a loving father.  Vaginas but not whole women (perhaps women as a resource but not a leader?)  Children will save the world but we were children too.  When we come out of the tunnel, what will we find? Will we hug each other or bite faces off.

Listen to other voices/sounds – Cicadas, squirrels, guitar, bombs, symphony, “foreign” languages, shattered glass

Hypothesis: the matrix highlighted concern and deep anxiety about the end of Covid (unlikely) and the easing out of lockdown. The need to face the unknown and to learn what to do next. Between taking responsibility and the need to look up to  a loving father or a manager. Are there any other viable models: female, children, girls, animals; part objects like vaginas and birth canals? 

A way of life, habits, assumptions have been profoundly shaken, identities have been challenged and concerns focus on what will emerge from the underground tunnels of the psyche. The theme of death is very present suggesting to look at the essential basis of existence: the life giving 3s versus the 2s of polarization and conflicts. The violence of suppressing so many basic human needs during the past 15 months may find the voice of war and of killing each other, like Israelis and Palestinians. Other voices, perhaps foreign, have not yet the strength to be discerned.

 

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About Juliet Scott

I am the TIHR Archive Curator and artist-in-residence. I lead this truly exciting and groundbreaking project with its ethos of collaborative archival practice and its possibilities for bringing the unique and innovative social science approach of The Tavistock Institute to a renewed and wider audience. I am a current TIHR practitioner and teach organisational consultancy and change in the UK and further afield. Last year this took me to Argentina where I also travelled discovering the unique volcanic landscape of Payunia. More than anything I like to walk with friends and family, I have an allotment in Walworth, South East London where I am famous for my year round BBQs. It is very special place.

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Events and engagement, Reflections and Practice