The prestigious Economic and Social Research Council included and funded us to be part of their 2019 Festival of Social Science. For this we were hosted at three venues, the Freud Museum London, RSA, and Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. The Freud Museum dreams and paintings are shown here, the other venues are below.


   

I am on a dark moonlit country lane. I am with a man, we are holding each other and kissing. I feel happy and excited as this is new, but I also feel something is wrong. A large car drives past with a woman driving, it is his wife. He turns around, with his back to the road, pretending to urinate. He says ‘she hasn’t seen you,’ then pushes me and tells me to walk away. I walk down the dark road and the car follows me. I see a public toilet and go in the women’s side. It is cold, horrible, with a concrete floor. I go into a cubicle and can hear her footsteps, but think she must think I am only here to use the toilet. It appears that she has gone but then I hear she is in the cubicle next to me. Suddenly there is a knock on the metal cubicle door, I open it and she is there with a smartly dressed bouncer. He is smoking and stubs out his cigarette on me. I am in pain and wake up.






  

In my dream I wake up. I am hovering three feet above my own body, looking down on it. My friend Kiran is hovering next to me. My body looks like a shamanic representation of a body, a rather primitive drawing. It is entirely colored in a deep green blue. I am surprised, I find myself wondering at the speed of this transformation. Next moment I am standing at the top of The Meadows in Edinburgh, looking down the lovely greens. I am holding hands with Kiran, on my left. It is a bright day. Now I find myself in a large receiving hall in a castle. The room is rather bare of decoration. A large wooden table dominates the room. At the head of the table a man is sitting, it is obvious that he is the king. I am waiting on him, bringing something to drink. He looks rather tired and melancholy and I worry for his wellness. A guest arrives, it is a young man in his thirties, with pale skin and ginger hair. I walk over to the shelves on the wall and take one of the whiskey jars that fill the shelves. I think it is the jar from the area he is coming from. It is grey stoneware and has a small violet flower on it, like heather or lavender. I pour them both a cup. I am invisible in their service. Now I find myself in the shrubbery on the edge of the castle terrain and the surrounding woods. I am on a mission to fetch something from the outbuildings, which I can see ahead of me through the leaves. I have some time so I have decided to take the longer, scenic route through the woods. I am following a deer trail. Sunlight flickers through the leaves. There are small birds flying around and squirrels. I feel relaxed and happy. I am enjoying the beauty and quiet. All of a sudden I hear a small noise in front of me and I look down the path. I see a misty sprite attacking a young boy and girl who are walking down the path, hand in hand. It looks like a dragon made of water and it hovers above the ground making figures of 8 around the children. The boy has a red sweater and blue trousers, the girl’s clothes are yellow ochre. They crumble down to the ground. I am shocked, and at the same time I realize I cannot tell anyone, as they will think I did it and they will hang me. I am in no position to speak. I walk out of the woods.
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I am responding to interview requests for marketing roles I have applied for. I am cancelling each one on the phone at short notice as I think I am not competent for each post. I was walking away from each one of them as I knew I would later lose each job if I was given it. I walk away and am next in a junkyard, which is dirty and dark, with lots of litter, surrounded by a torn wire fence with a wire gate. There is a full open tin of biscuits at the wire gate. I grab some but am stopped from getting more by a green snake sliding along the fence, protecting the tin. I am petrified, the snake is sliding [/ pacing] up and down, partially upright, on the other side of the fence, just outside the gate, staring at me. On the other side of the fence there are shrubs. I run away and am then in the family home, but it is a junkyard house, very messy, with brown linoleum, an old brown sofa and old worn furniture. There is clothes and rubbish on the floor. Even my normally tidy bedroom is messy because my sister has intentionally thrown about my clothes, so it now looks like a squat, with my basic clothes, some blues and reds, looking like rags. In the living room there is my sister, with short, curly, dark brown hair, khaki trousers and pink and red scarf, my mum, my dad, with black hair and navy blue jacket, and my other two sisters with dark longer hair. I am upset that no-one cares about the mess in my room, even though they are listening to me, and I cause a scene.

It is the morning with a red sky. I am in the school library and see at the edge of my vision a brilliant white shape, like a wolf. I can see it if I don’t directly look at it. As the day goes on I go into the school corridor, and then outside in the school courtyard, and the wolf gets darker, becoming grey. All this time I interact with others in the school, some of whom are school friends and some non-school friends, some talking, but all without movement. I am then in a field at night, very dark, with outlined, slightly swaying trees, and the wolf is now black. I hear a sharp intake of breath and feel like on a roller coaster, and I wake up.

I am in a railway siding at night. An elderly woman is there, squatting down, and she calls to me. I think she is my grandmother. I get scared and jump into the air and fly high above the earth. I realise that I am flying and feel exuberant and then travel to famous landmarks. I land on top of the Eiffel Tower, and the Pyramids, and see Mount Fuji. Then as I keep flying I suddenly see that a tree is flying with me, using its branches to fly. It looks kindly at me and I feel a sense of companionship with it when I suddenly notice that it has worms in its branches which start to eat the branches and then its body. They then notice me and reach out towards me to try to grab and eat me.  I fly away from the tree as fast as I can but can feel the worms still chasing me, though I don’t look back. Just then the sun starts to rise and I start to fall towards the earth and just before I crash down I wake up.

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I am watching the Glastonbury festival, and am surprised to see on the main stage my boss, who, despite her age, is dancing and doing acrobatics while singing. She is wearing a lion suit, which covers all of her body except for her face, which I can see. My work colleagues are at the front of the audience, all wearing their blue uniforms, and they greatly enjoy the performance; they were expecting to see her. For me it is like watching it on a television, I am not there and can see shots of it from different directions.

Dream from childhood of witches near our home at night, and in morning in school bus watching shop explode

I am driving on a motorway or American freeway, with lots of lanes. All is grey. My daughter is in the passenger seat on the left. There is a grey bridge ahead and under it the road is blocked by some cars. I stop before getting to them and get out of my car, going round to the passenger side. There is a group of young men, who are from Swansea. One man sprays petrol on my car, and strikes a match to set fire to it. I try to stop him, saying he will kill my daughter. They say they are doing this as she wouldn’t go out with one of them, or be friends.

I am on the slope of a hillside looking down on trees. I see some water on the right and walk towards it and realise it is a brightly shining railway line. Walking down the slope I see lots of people and they ask questions to me out loud. People are looking at me for my reaction, it is a challenge that will be on a TV programme. I have to choose if it is to be this challenge in the woodland. I see my friend Jayne, a friend from when I was three, and consult her on the decision. I say that ‘at last I get to work with you on this, we will work here,’ and I accept the challenge. I then run back up the bank, and to stop myself falling backwards I grip the bottom of a small white window frame. Through it I can see a steep drop and at the bottom another railway line. I am then lying in bed in what feels like my brother’s old bedroom. I put a triangle of pillows behind me, making a V-shape, so I can lie back upright. On the wall there is a large incomplete illustration in pencil of two women. I want to draw them, copying it, and am concentrating on doing the details of the arm and hands.