Your Parents’, Grandparents’, or a Relative’s Home
VARIATIONS
You probably can remember many dreams that took place
at the home of someone you used to visit in your childhood.
Perhaps it was the home of a grandmother, an aunt, an
uncle, or your neighbor’s home. Perhaps it was your par¬
ents’ home. You may be a child again in the dream, but
more likely you are your current age following adventures
that unfold on the porch, in the kitchen, upstairs in the bed¬
room, or anywhere in and around the house, ^he dreams
can be pleasant or unpleasant, but usually they are simply
curious dreams. You wonder, why was I back there again?
Let’s take a look at how others have answered that ques¬
tion.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID
You can still find psychoanalysts who interpret dreams that
take place in a home you visited in childhood as a regres-
sion to childhood and a desire to return to the mother.
Most people today, however, pay attention to what was
going on in the dream setting and look for a trigger in your
current life that causes you to reexperience certain feelings
that you associate with this home from your past. Most an¬
alysts ask a dreamer what was going on in the childhood
home and what feelings they experienced during the dream.
Then they look to see what current life circumstances might
be triggering these feelings, which might have had their ori¬
gins in childhood.
If you are dreaming of your childhood home, you would
want to focus on the years you lived in that house because
it’s highly probable that the issues the dream is dealing
with had their origin in that particular period of your life.
When dreaming of a particular person’s house, I think it is
useful to be even more specific and to use the questions
under “People in Dreams” to first get a good description of
the person to whom the house belongs. For example, if you
dream of Aunt Matilda’s house, you would want to know
who Aunt Matilda is and what she was like when you
knew her as well as in what period of your life you visited
her home. You would want to have a good description of
Aunt Matilda, to find out if the attitudes and ways of liv¬
ing pictured by Aunt Matilda’s house are relevant in your
life right now. If going to visit your mother-in-law, for ex¬
ample, feels like going back to visit rigid, strict, unloving
Aunt Matilda, you can imagine why you would dredge up
the memory of Aunt Matilda to dream about your rela¬
tionship with your in-laws. If, on the other hand, Aunt
Matilda was a warm, loving person who understood you
when no one else could, she might remind you of your cur¬
rent husband and how good it feels to go home to him, or
you may find that being with your best friend is very much
like being with Aunt Matilda. As you can see, it all de¬
pends on how you answer your own question's.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
1. Describe the house in your dream. What years of your life did you
live in or visit that household?
2. Describe the personality of the person whose house you are
dreaming about.
3. Is there anyone in your life or any part of yourself that is like the
owner of your dream house?
4. Try to remember the major issues going on in your life during the
time you lived in that house or visited it regularly.
5. Describe the action that occurs in the dream. Is there any situation
in your current life that is like the action in the dream and that takes
place when you act or feel like the owner of the house?
6. Is there any situation in your current life that is similar to the issues
that were going on at the time you lived in or visited that house?
7. Describe the major people, actions, and feelings that occur during
this dream and ask yourself, What current life situation could bring
these memories back to life?
8. Does this dream help you identify patterns of behavior learned in
childhood that you are now repeating to your own benefit or
detriment in your adult life?
Discovering New Rooms in a House
In general,
most psychotherapists today consider a house as capable
of representing a dreamer’s lifestyle, marriage, emotional
state, or a particular time in the person’s life indicated by
the period of time in which the dreamer lived in the house.
Regarding the finding of new rooms, most dream analysts
would consider this a likely representation of the dream¬
ers’ discovery of new parts of themselves, new potentials
within their personalities, and/or new areas to explore or
to refurbish that have previously been ignored. I have no¬
ticed that such dreams often signal recent progress on the
part of the dreamer in discovering a fuller sense of life or a
fuller sense of self.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
To find out what your dream of discovering new rooms in a house means, try
asking yourself these questions:
1. Describe the house in your dreams.
2. Does it remind you of any particular house in your life?
3. Describe the new room or rooms you discover.
4. Does this room have a particular purpose?
5. How do you feel about this room?
6. Are you discovering new parts of yourself or of your life that you
would describe as (restate the descriptions of the house and room or
rooms)?