Dream of finding monkey in toilet who then rips face off an aggressive man, told at the Dream Research Institute, Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, London, 6th July 2024

I have gone to a music festival with a girl I know, who is skinny and has a shaved head. It is nighttime and the event is now over, the stages and shops are closing down. There are lots of people from the local village there, they are dressed older than we are, with brown and black clothes. I am trying to find a toilet in the village. We find public toilets which have a urinal and a separate toilet cubicle next to it, with a green plastic door. There is an old lightbulb, and dark texture on the ceiling. I see a baby monkey on top of the toilet. The monkey looks creepy, covered in slime and blood, and is maybe new-born. My friend though says the monkey is cute and scared, and that other people might hurt it, and so she holds the monkey in her arms. We go with the monkey into the street, which is lit by streetlights. Outside there are two men and other villagers, who look like monkeys or evil spirits, with red eyes. We walk out of the village and see a man peeing onto a bush. He is messy, slightly bald, and maybe homeless. He calls out aggressively at my friend. The monkey is irritated at this, gets down from my friend’s arms, and rips the skin off the head of the man and places the face onto his own face. The monkey says, ‘I look like you, now.’

 
Julia chose pages 364 and 365 of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (Wordsworth Editions) so that when turned by 90 degrees the top page (p.365) had three paragraphs and a footnote so as to hold the festival, girl friend, toilet, and urinal, respectively. The bottom page (p.364) had two large paragraphs, one on which to paint the villagers with peeing man, and one for the monkey peeling off the man’s face. The first part of the artwork that Julia composed and painted was the festival tent, striped red and white, with the red over the printed lines of the page, and with stars above for the night sky made from painting around all the o letters in that section. Near the very end of the group discussion the dreamer mentioned that he comes from a communitarian culture, whereas his partner is from the US and is part of that individualistic culture. He said that they both learn and take on aspects of each other’s values as a result. In talking about the painting after the event an attendee pointed out that the stripes of the festival tent and the stars are like the US flag! As these features were painted at the beginning of the process it was a poignant synchronicity that the dreamer only spoke of his American partner at the end of the event!       
 
Julia also highlighted the found poem:
 
I have dreamed
far more
into
retaining the
interpretation
of dreams. –
the forgetting
the amnesia of
applying my
value