Variations recounted at other times: * Mrs. F, rather than wearing red jodhpurs, wears flesh-colored ones, or rides bottomless, or rides topless while wearing red jodhpurs; * Rather than being pursued by a posse, a sole faceless, hooded horseperson is in pursuit, revealed to be a woman when the wind blows the hood back from the pursuer's face, revealing in turn that the hood is lined with flaming red fabric; * The pursuit takes place in a Western desert, or along a dangerous narrow winding path up into hills, or on a dangerous steep descent; * The dream takes place against a sky blood-red from the setting sun with very long shadows cast up the sands, or upon a moonlit rocky landscape at night; * There is someone riding ahead of her, someone she, in turn, is pursuing, someone frightening whom she cannot see except for occasional glimpses from the rear; * She has an orgasm at the moment her own horse breaks apart.
ANALYSIS: Before discussing Mrs. F's associations to this rich lode of dream material, it might be well, in terms of clarification, to anticipate certain questions.
In response to my query "Why do you believe this dream has anything to do with your daughter's disappearance and present whereabouts?" Mrs. F repeated that she'd dreamt it for the first time shortly after Belle's abduction. “Also, it's so mysterious I always assumed there was a connection; after all, finding Belle was the only thing that mattered to me then.” When asked in a follow-up whether she believed dreams contain hidden messages, she replied with a question of her own: “Isn't that what you analysts believe?”
In the ensuing discussion about the nature of dreams, their relevance as internal messages, windows into the unconscious processes of the dreamer as opposed to coded messages from an external source, Mrs. F showed herself fully aware of the difference. But she stated that although she had never thought of herself as particularly superstitious, the crisis of Belle's disappearance had opened her to such paranormal notions as telepathy. “I guess maybe I'm like a terminal cancer patient holding out for some kind of miracle cure. I so need to find Belle if she's still alive that I'll hang on to anything that offers me the slightest hope.”
With this in mind, despite doubts that the actual dream content (as opposed to the emotional crisis state in which the dream was dreamt) had anything to do with Belle, I nevertheless told Mrs. F, in hopes of motivating her to work hard on the interpretation, that her dream, properly interpreted, might convey some message pertaining to Belle, a message from her unconscious that she already knew but hadn't yet been able to face. To this Mrs. F responded with a knowing nod. “If my dream tells me I must give up my search, I'm prepared to accept that. But first I must be convinced.”
Mrs. F's numerous associations to the dream material poured out of her over several sessions in what can only be described as a torrent. The dream's central image – the transformation of the horses from creatures of sinew and blood into brittle, breakable horse statues – reminded her, she said, of the broken agonized horse in Picasso's great painting, "Guernica," which had transfixed her when she'd first seen it in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Every time I'm in New York, I go to see it again. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by it, because the Spanish Civil War context doesn't interest me much. I think it's just that horse, his pain, you know… since I love horses and always have. Yes, that's what kills me – his agony, his pain.”
Since even a cursory look at a reproduction of "Guernica" suggests the twisted broken horse is female^7 (no visible external genitalia), this gender confusion, so reminiscent of Mrs. F's distress when her riding instructor, G, referred to the filly she was riding as ‘him,’ suggested the possibility that much of the dream might be connected to G, perhaps to relations between them that Mrs. F had repressed.
When asked to free-associate to her vision of red jodhpurs, Mrs. F replied immediately that this was her sex. “That's why I'm sometimes bottomless bottomless in the dream,” she said. “For me being bottomless and wearing red jodhpurs (and I've never seen jodhpurs that color) amount to the same thing. And of course riding a horse makes me feel sexy, not just in the dream but in real life too. I adore horses and all that, but I think the reason I still ride is the sexy way it makes me feel.”
After more discussion, I pointed out that red was the only vivid color in her dream. Everything else – hooded men, horses, the terrain – was either muted or black. But not only were her jodhpurs red; in one of the variations, the pursuing posse consisted of a woman wearing a flaming red lined hood and in another variation the sky was blood red. To this Mrs. F responded: “So red must stand for blood. I wonder…,” she said, again associating the dream with something G had said, “… might that be blood from my ‘wound’?”^8
Associating to the concept of a woman's sex as a wound, Mrs. F recounted more about how her mother had conveyed revulsion when warning her of the agonies of menstruation. “She always called it ‘the curse’ and told me it was a punishment for sexual thoughts and acts. Of course, I knew a lot about it already. There was endless talk about it at school. I also remember when I was little and came across her tampons and asked her what they were, she made up some cover story that I knew was phony. That told me there must be something disgusting about those things, and I knew that if Mom thought something was disgusting it either had to do with going to the bathroom or with sex.^9
Was this why she called her dream “a sex dream”?
*7 Many commentators have interpreted the broken horse in the painting as a symbol of the suffering of the Spanish Republic, a feminine entity.
*8 In an earlier session, Mrs. F described a dream in which she saw herself lying on a snow-white sheet covered with hundreds of droplets of blood. Though, in my view not connected to the recurrent dream under discussion, this second dream seemed most curiously to prophesy her own death scene in that she was killed by pellets fired from a shotgun while lying with her lover on a motel room bed.
*9 Again, this is reminiscent of Mrs. F's presenting symptom: “I feel injured in my sex.”
“Yes,” she replied, “and also because I sometime come just at the climax of it. And even when I don't come and am terrified when I wake up, still after dreaming it I almost always feel aroused. Like I said, riding arouses me. I like to have sex that way too – you know, sitting on the man, riding him. That's always been my favorite way of having sex. And of course in the dream I'm on a stallion.”
What about some of the other imagery in the dream, the references to the pursuing men gaining on her ‘flanks’ and of her driving her heels into ‘the flanks’ of her horse.
Yes, she agreed, that imagery too was sexual, as was the riding crop.^10 In fact, she said, she'd recently posed for what she called ‘an art photograph’ in riding attire bowing a riding crop between her hands. “I was bare-breasted in it, too,” she added with a giggle, “just like I am sometimes in the dream.”
At this point, she stated that in her opinion the dream was totally about sex and nothing else. Talking it over with you, I see that. Everything in it is about sex. Everything! The faceless men – often when I have sex with a man I don't see his face. I may be looking at him, staring right into his eyes, but while in the act I don't ‘see’ him at all.”
There was also the matter of the men's horses breaking apart. “Those are their orgasms,” she said. “They lose their seats, topple over. Once they come they're finished. So am I the horses breaking up beneath them? No, I don't think so. I think they are the horses breaking beneath me. I ride them till they break to bits!”
What about the sensation of being part of the posse then the sudden frightening realization that she's the one being pursued?
“Isn't that what sex is like It is for me. Men pursue me all the time. Sometimes I'm out with people when suddenly someone in the group decides to make me his sexual prey. Or I decide to make prey of him.” She laughed. “Actually, more often than not, though they may not know it, it's me who pursues.”