Conrad: We're decreasing the avoidance. What changes?
Susan: The representation comes closer?
Conrad: and?
Susan: We try to escape it?
Susan: Flee from it?
Conrad: ultimately, what was the dream message saying about addiction? who was addicted?
Susan: She was.
Conrad: right!
Conrad: So, with increasingly lesser levels of avoidance...
Conrad: ...the representation comes closer...
Conrad: the "person" playing the part becomes more known...
Conrad: in that case, ultimately, it would have been her; but that was too threatening.
Susan: It becomes us?
Conrad: sure.
Conrad: So, who are the anonymous men getting shot surrogates for?
Susan: Me?
Conrad: no.
Conrad: when you see them running around like rats, not able to get away, what do you do?
Susan: In the dream, I tried to protect them.
Conrad: who else did you try to protect?
Susan: My boyfriend.
Conrad: so who are the anonymous men surrogates for?
Susan: How can they be surrogates for him, though, if he's already represented?
Conrad: Well, it's like this:
Conrad: The dream is the result of the point-of-view part talking with some other part.
Conrad: ok?
Susan: Okay.
Conrad: And it's the point-of-view part's version of the conversation.
Conrad: Imagine Amy is talking to Betty, and we can "evesdrop" on Amy's daydreaming.
Conrad: We don't get the conversation, or the topic, but we get her daydreaming and we try to reverse engineer the rest.
Conrad: So, when Betty says, "Amy, honey, your boss is kinda a jerk."
Conrad: Amy hears, "Amy, you've got to quit your job!" and thinks of being homeless.
Conrad: ok?
Susan: Okay.
Susan: So it doesn't make a difference that he's merely one of the many men scurrying around?
Conrad: But the thing is that, although Amy can avoid parts of the message -- the intrapsychic equivalent of plugging her ears and saying, "Nahnahnah I'm not listening" -- Betty can still *influence* what's going on.
Conrad: So it's a symbolic tug-of-war; a shoving match.
Conrad: The garbage-woman had a message which was very threatening about your boyfriend (Joe?); and the point-of-view part successfully deflected it, but it got through anyway; as hostility to men.
Susan: Ah, I see. That makes sense now.
Susan: And yes, it's Joe.
Susan: It confused me that he was represented as one of the crowd and that the rest of the crowd were simultaneously surrogates for him.
Susan: But that makes sense now.
Susan: This was really a fascinating conversation.