I have had a dream twice that disturbs me. Actually, the dream itself is very liberating...it makes me feel so WELL and at peace. The implications of the dream are the disturbing part. I am a woman. I dreamed that I was making love to a man, and somehow, by the end of the dream, I am the man making love to me and now the woman is someone else. The first time I had this dream I was 15 and had never had sex. The second time, I was 27 and married happily. I have never had any waking homosexual feelings, and I rarely have sexual dreams, so I don’t understand where this dream comes from.

--Mary, Age 27, Savannah, GA, USA

Hi Mary -

Your dream actually is fairly common, though I think the key to intepreting it lays in how WELL and at peace it makes you feel.

Often times dreams such as yours are fairly transparent representations of sexual curiosities. It is natural for anyone to imagine what it must be like to be a member of the opposite sex (and making love), just as it is natural to wonder what homosexual sex would be like. But in your dream you actually become a man who is making love to yourself. And this, to me, reflects a bit more than sexual curiosity. I think you are having a healthy experience of coming into contact with the masculine, or “animus,”" side of your personality.

Carl Jung was the first psychoanalyst to popularize the idea that both masculine and feminine characteristics compose an individual’s personality. The goal, said Jung, of a unified personality, is to have these masculine and feminine qualities in balance with each other. Thus the “macho man” of yesteryear can use a bit more sensitivity in his life - just as the “submissive wife” of yesteryear can use a bit more independence and self-assertiveness in hers. Without this balance of qualities, we don’t reach our full potential as personalities. The female’s receptivity needs the male’s assertiveness. The male’s goal-setting needs the female’s nurturing. It’s yin and yang. We are two sides of the same coin. The feeling of wellness and at peace that the dream causes you to experience suggests that you already enjoy a balance of these elements. I think this is the true significance of your dream.

As for the implications of the dream, which - it is significant to note - only occur to you after you have awakened from it, you have said that you are a happily married woman, and that you haven’t had any other dreams or experiences that might suggest that you are sexually curious elsewhere. I agree with you. I do not think sexual curiosity is the symbolic meaning of this dream. The co-mingling of our anima and animus really is much more of a union of sense-abilities, that in turn make us broader, more sensitive, and more able beings. (Two heads are better than one, right?) Congratulations!