Dream of moving to a house in the countryside, and seeing personal papers, wolf and creative people, told at the Freud Museum London, on 3rd November 2024.

Dream of ceramic artist Abigail Schama, one of the artists in the Freud Museum exhibition Women and Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists.  

We have bought a quite ordinary house in the Somerset countryside to move into. It has an unremarkable garden with three outhouses in it. Two of them are empty greenhouses, at right angles to each other, the third is wooden and painted pink. I thought I could use the garden for raku firing but see that the greenhouses are in the way. At the back of the garden there is a public pathway with a further lawn beyond it which we had agreed to buy. I don't know what we bought it for, or what to do with it, as it is as unremarkable as the garden. On the lawn a wolf is sitting. Behind the lawn there is a grand National Trust property and a beach. At the beach someone has found a treasure chest while beachcombing or mudlarking with old papers inside, personal items, maybe letters, and I start reading them. I am excited to find out about someone from the past who has written them. But a young woman with a black bob and yellow coat says that they are hers, which is disappointing to me as I had wanted to delve into a stranger’s old possessions. In the next door house there are bohemian neighbours, one of them is a long-haired man; they play music and I wish I could join them but they are oblivious to me. I know that the previous owner of our new house made mediocre pottery and I think that she's trying to copy me, even though she is not interested in my work. I also know that I am having to clear out my old house. I am then given a lift to the local town which is next to the lawn. It is a charming, bustling, medieval market town with cobblestone streets. I'm sitting on the high wall of a bridge. My guide jumps down and I want to follow her but it is perilously high. I then slide down and onto some wooden rubbish bins which break my fall. There are two schoolgirls in brown uniforms with capes and berets; maybe it is their end of term. I go into a large haberdashery shop that has banks of sewing machines. There are two women working there who are eating cheese sandwiches. I ask them to teach me how to use a sewing machine because it would be a good way to meet other creative people. But they say they do not teach sewing and they scoff and say ‘not’.

Details of this Freud Museum Dream Salon are here.  The Salon was held during the museum's Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists exhibition, which Abigail Schama is part of. In the discussion we explored with Abigail how the dream may be related to her being at the museum and to being part of the exhibition. This included reference to the old house, to the wolf (paintings of the dream of the Freud's patient the Wolf Man are on the first floor landing of the museum), to old personal papers (many are on show in the museum and exhibition) and to interactions with creative people.   

The event was funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, as part of the UK Festival of Social Science 2024.