The Memory of a Dream
[Record 1]
My twelfth year of professional practice as a therapist has begun. In clinical psychology, it is not particularly unusual for the accounts given by clients to exhibit strange similarities from time to time. There are numerous established frameworks that can explain such phenomena, including cultural backgrounds, social stress, and unconscious imitation. However, the cases I have encountered over the past several months seem far too consistent for any of these existing explanations to adequately account for them.
Multiple clients, despite having no prior acquaintance with one another, have described remarkably similar dreams. The content is simple, yet its symbolic intensity is extraordinarily high: the self drifting through outer space, a fading sense of bodily awareness, and the sensation of being enveloped in light. These experiences alone could be explained as forms of depersonalization or dissociative symptoms. The problem lies in what follows. Specifically, the subjective experience of sensing the presence of gods.
It is possible to interpret this as the emergence of archetypal images in the Jungian sense, or as the reconstruction of religious symbols within dreams. Yet a common feature of the clients' accounts is the simultaneous presence of awe and relief. This suggests that these are not merely wish-fulfillment dreams, but may involve contact with a deeper structure of the unconscious.
[Record 2]
A male client in his thirties came to see me today. Despite this being our first interview, he began speaking about the dream almost as soon as he sat down. He described himself in the dream as being freed from gravity, the boundaries of his body becoming indistinct, and his perception of space no longer relying on vision but on what he called an "awareness of the whole."
This description seems closer to an expanded state of consciousness, or an experience of the kind explored in transpersonal psychology, than to ordinary visual imagery.
What particularly interested me was his statement that, in this state, "the distinction between good and evil is understood intuitively." The beings he perceived as gods had no specific physical forms or language, yet he recognized them as embodiments of overwhelming order and harmony. By contrast, the "malice" that approached him afterward had no visible form, but he described it as unmistakably alien and invasive.
This brings to mind the Freudian opposition between the death drive, or Thanatos, and the life drive, or Eros. However, the client's account operates at a more abstract level. It may be more appropriate to understand it as a collision between opposing archetypes within the collective unconscious.
[Record 3]
The number of reports describing similar dreams has now reached eleven. There are no conspicuous commonalities in age, gender, occupation, or cultural background. The only shared feature is that the structure of the dreams and the progression of emotions are almost identical. I can no longer regard this degree of consistency as falling within the range of coincidence.
Ordinarily, dreams are products of the personal unconscious, and their contents are closely connected to individual experiences, repression, and desires. In these cases, however, individual characteristics are strikingly absent. Instead, the dreams possess a structure resembling a template shared from an external source. The term "template" is not a clinical term in this context, but a metaphor. Even so, it comes close to describing the phenomenon itself.
I have also considered the possibility of mild collective suggestion or unconscious influence mediated by the media, but I have been unable to identify any relevant sources of information. The clients have also stated that they have rarely, if ever, shared these dreams with other people.
[Record 4]
I cannot rule out the possibility that my own cognitive biases are at work. By continuing to receive similar reports, I may be unconsciously emphasizing commonalities while overlooking differences. To guard against this, I have examined the verbatim transcripts and conducted a content analysis. Even so, the degree of consistency remains at an abnormal level.
If this is a psychological phenomenon, its mechanism cannot be fully explained by conventional theories. Perhaps I need to consider the possibility that dreams serve as a medium connecting the individual to some domain that extends beyond the personal unconscious.
Naturally, such a hypothesis currently lacks scientific evidence. Nevertheless, in clinical practice, it is not appropriate to immediately dismiss cases that cannot be explained. Rather, continuing to document the phenomena themselves with care may eventually contribute to the development of a theory capable of explaining them.
[Record 5]
Today, after my sessions, I experienced an intense sense of exhaustion. It felt less like physical fatigue and more like depletion caused by cognitive strain. The accounts of several clients seem to be overlapping within my mind, gradually merging into a single image. This could be considered a form of countertransference, but the nature of the experience differs from ordinary emotional reactions.
Tonight, while organizing my records at home, I experienced a strange sensation for just an instant. It was as though the silence in the room had warped slightly. I could detect no visual change, yet I had the illusion that the density of the space itself had shifted. It is highly likely that this was a perceptual distortion caused by fatigue, but the sense of unease it left behind is difficult to ignore.
[Record 6]
Based on my observations thus far, I would like to record a hypothesis. It remains strictly provisional, and its verifiability is low.
If dreams connect not to the individual's personal unconscious but to a broader psychological field, a kind of collective mental space, then it is not theoretically impossible for multiple individuals to share the same imagery. In such a case, dreams would not be merely internal phenomena, but the result of interactions with an external structure.
If opposing elements such as "light" and "malice" can be observed within that space, they may be psychological symbols while simultaneously reflecting the existence of some underlying structure that is real in its own right.
This hypothesis falls outside the framework of contemporary psychology. Nevertheless, as a description of the phenomenon, it offers the greatest degree of consistency.
[Record 7]
My sleep quality has deteriorated over the past several days. It takes me longer to fall asleep, and I wake up more frequently during the night. The consecutive sessions and the unusual nature of these cases could account for the stress, but they do not fully explain the persistent sense that something is wrong.
I retain almost no memory of the dreams themselves. Yet immediately after waking, I am left with the certainty that I have seen something. This can be explained as a fragmentation of dream recall, but it is accompanied by another impression: that I am being made to forget deliberately.
[Record 8]
Something a client said during today's session has been troubling me.
"I think you'll see it eventually, too, Doctor."
There was absolute certainty in the way the words were spoken. It did not sound like a prediction, but rather like a statement of an established fact. I showed no particular reaction at the time and responded as I normally would, but inwardly, I felt a strong sense of unease.
It could be interpreted as a form of transference, but the emotional undertones were far too faint for that explanation to be entirely convincing. Instead, the remark seemed closer to a report made by an observer to the very subject being observed.
[Record 9]
I have decided to retire early tonight. I will leave the organization of my records until tomorrow.
—
I had the same dream.
The Memory of a Dream — The End