Such delayed clarifications can occur after a short or a long time.
Remember my recent description of how Jake --on the wake of a surge of
self-esteem-- had sent fly a fresh newspaper which fell neatly on a library
counter? He had even summoned the attention of a classmate to the feat he
meant to perform. I wrote that I did not know why I was mentioning a
seemingly insignificant detail, and made an attempt at rationalizing. Well, my explanation was correct, yet it fell far from telling the whole story.
Just two days later (as I traveled with Jake to spend the weekend), in a
flash I understood the connection. Remember when he, as a child, bought a
pound of sugar for his mother and as he was about to lay it on the table, the package escaped his hands and the sugar dispersed on the floor? There
had been a scolding and an acrid observation about his clumsy hands ("Do
you expect to become a surgeon with such hands?!").
Well, it had not been a table he was about to lay the sugar on but a
glass-topped counter in his father's shop. Then, many years later, as he
realized the brilliance of his interpretation of his classmate's doodling, Jake sees another counter and unconsciously annuls the early trauma by
potently implying, "Look at the ability I possess! I am not clumsy!" And from a distance he neatly deposits the newspaper on top of the counter!
Other instances of delayed clarification are the interpretation of the following two dreams that Jake, as he was wont to do, revealed to me. The first one, "I am flying an airplane together with Joe.(We are collaborators in research work.) It is night and very dark; we reach a remote, unknown land. There is an open grave; we look into it, wondering what it means. I know (we both know?) that an important secret is interred, but I can not decipher it."
Jake initially thought that in the area of mind analysis (the flight into a dark and buried place), Joe represented the analyst helping him in his analytic search. Well, quite recently he realized that Joe is pronounced similarly to "yo" in Spanish, meaning "I." "Joe" is thus a reference to himself. The search is for identity.
You see, there is much more in the dream than meets the eye: the far-away
land is indeed a land! I am going to prove it to you right now! O.K., now
listen to the second dream: "I'm holding a bowl of soup containing paste in
the shape of letters, such as is fed to children. The letters form a word. I
know it is important --it gives a clue to a secret."
Again, the idea of a repressed childhood trauma. But, again too --an attempt
to identify (a word)-- a search for identity. Not convinced? Well, there was
actually a third dream which provided the key:
"I think of the words, 'Sven-gun.'"
These two words are a corruption of "Sten-gun," the name of a submachine-
gun that Jake had carried in the war, for self-protection. Once, while attending an injured soldier, he left the weapon on the ground while bandaging the wound. As they were about to abandon the difficult terrain, Jake heard shouts coming from a file of Arabs from Ramlah who were abandoning their homes as refugees. One of them pointed at the gun forgotten on the floor. Ashamedly, Jake recovered it.
The letter t of Sten is changed for a v in 'Sven.' The letter t is masculine --circumcised-- while v is feminine --'vagina' is written with it. Compare it with 'balls,' a clearly masculine letter. Jake's parents abandoned Europe --like refugees. Jake was born after one year in another land; his identity had been injured, had lost its robustness, its masculinity.
Now allow me to ask: Is this dream Jake's exclusive property? Or is it a tragic nightmare shared by the sons of wandering people?
NOTE: Reader, please remember that I am posting the letter received from my friend Jake's wife!