That day, I saw her at school and I nearly jumped when I first saw her. I half expected her to have some kind of harmful weapon in her hand. I saw her many more times that day, and each time I saw her, I made a conscious effort to keep my distance. Deep down I was scared of her. To this day I can’t look at her without thinking about one of the scariest dreams I ever had. I had never given thought to the power of a dream.

Understanding why it is that certain dreams affect me more than others is the dilemma. In her essay “Semblance” Suzanne Langer says that dreams mostly do not contain images. “Dr

When I first saw the painting “Epiphany” by the Italian Giotto di Bondone, my mind took me back to that Catholic Church where I spent that scary day of my six-year-old life. The painting depicts the birth of Christ in all its realism. Though there are angels that fly atop the painting gloriously, the people that surround Christ looked pained as if they had just been suffering. I had never seen the birth of Christ in this way. It was as if the birth of Chirst brought an end to suffering, and everyone in the manger knew what kind of affect Jesus would have on the people of Jerusalem. These pained looks mimicked my pained looks as a child inside that Catholic Church. I didn’t understand why I was there or what was going on. I couldn’t understand why I felt so strange entering the Church, but even stranger when I left. Now every time I look at something that is religiously affiliated, I can’t help thinking about my first experience in the Catholic Church.

I’ll admit that if my ex-girlfriend was not equipped with loaded weapons, my dream would not be nearly as scary. On the same token, if I was running from some random person, the dream would probably not have stayed with me as long. It is these two elements combined with strong and accurate depictions of images that are presented on the movie screen that is our soul.

Writer James Hillman says that it is the worst dreams that stay with you the longest. Hillman says in his essay entitled “The Poetic Basis of Mind” that, “…the most distressing images in dreams and fantasies, those we shy from for their disgusting distortion and perversion, are precisely the ones that break the allegorical frame of what we know about this person or that, this trait of ourselves or that. The ‘worst’ images are thus the best, for they are the ones that restore a figure of its pristine power as a numinous person at work in the soul.” (45) The picture, at this point, was beginning to become clearer. Hillman argues that our perception of objects can be changed in dreams, particularly the “worst” images because we will remember those the most, and they have

Some topics in this essay:
Sigmund Freud, Basis Mind”, Catholic Church, , Hymnals Bible, Church Strangely, Martin Hoy, Suzanne Langer, James Hillman, Italian Giotto, catholic church, bad dreams, bad dream, affect feelings dream, personal experience, pained looks, vivid memory, birth christ, giotto di, one’s outlook, sigmund freud, dreams sigmund freud,