To gain further appreciation for this dream function, I will turn to a brief essay offered by Marie Bonaparte (1993), a noted psychoanalyst. Bonaparte offers a case study of a ranger called Wolhuter, who worked in the Kruger National Park of Africa. Wolhuter was seriously wounded by a lion in this park and was only saved after climbing up a tree. He later had several dreams in which he is once again attacked by lion. In each case, he awakens “to find that it is only a dream, for which I am terribly thankful.” (Bonaparte, 1993, p. 70).
Bonaparte (Bonaparte, 1993, pp. 10- 12) comments on Wolhuter’s dreams:
“So, Wolhuter, the triumphant lion killer, celebrated throughout South Africa for his pluck in one of the most dangerous situations to which a hunter could find himself, appears in his dream life without force against the same mighty wild beast of prey. . . On walking from his dreams he is enormously relieved. . . We may assume that in his own capacities, the recurrent dream came to reassure him . . . “See,” it says, “it is only a dream that you missed the lion! In reality you killed it, “ a feeling of satisfaction. . . Excepting catastrophes that permit no choice, one may argue that the ability to be active, under circumstances that paralyzed others with fear, points to a particularly strong and relatively healthy personality which is less overwhelmed by painful realities, and has less need to adopt neurotic compromises than do most others.”
This dream would seem to contradict the role of successfully meeting the challenge associated with a traumatic event (in this case, the attack of a lion). Yet, Marie Bonaparte views Walhuter’s dreams as quite adaptive. Perhaps there are actually three ways in which our dreams can be engaged to address a trauma. First, as Bonaparte suggested, a dream can fail to successfully address a trauma but can serve as a source of relief when we wake up. I find that this often occurs in my dreams about the extensive traveling I did for many years. While I never confronted a beast of prey, I have found myself stranded in some strange land without a place to spend the night. This scenario now often plays out in my dreams. Like Walhuter, I am relieved when I wake up and find that I am safely at home and not “on the road.” I am thankful that I am now retired and primarily “house-bound”!
Second, as Bonaparte also suggested, we can fail to successfully address the trauma in our dream, but upon waking us realize that we have actually (in the real world) been successful and can appreciate and even celebrate our success. For me, this second type of “success” is often manifest in dreams I have about challenging conditions associated with my teaching in Asian countries. While I loved working with the mature students from Taiwan, Thailand, and China, I did find that sometimes there were major challenges associated with relying on a translator, who doesn’t arrive on time, or fighting against the jetlag associated with the first couple of days teaching halfway around the world from my home in Maine.
