Dream of being alone outside at night and threatened, told at workshop for American Psychological Association (Division 39), 22nd May 2021

I am outside the house where I live. As in waking life, there is the row of houses, a board fence, street, and a row of pine and spruce trees. It is night-time, 2 to 3 am. There are no streetlights or shadows. I am on my own and walk along the fence, the usual walk I do with my dog but my dog isn’t with me. I see two Hispanic men, walking in the same direction as me. They are about 100 feet apart from each other but are together, the one in front is older. I can’t see their faces, they have non-descript brownish or tannish clothing. Their hands are in their pockets, both are looking at the ground and not paying attention to me. Suddenly they are both in front of me, one has his hand over my mouth and I know that I will be assaulted. I wake in panic.   

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As with all our events, Julia Lockheart chose the pages from Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams to paint on while the dream was first being told. The choice of pages was on the basis of the shapes of the paragraphs and text. During the painting process Julia found words by Freud on the pages that were relevant to the dream, and she incorporated them as objet trouvé into the artwork:

I am walking in the street
 
the male    the hand    the female   by the mouth
 
imperatively forced upon
 
the symbol of a man
the dream of a young woman
her fear
 
This use of objet trouvé, a characteristic of dadaism and surrealism, is discussed in our forthcoming article in the International Journal of Dream Research.