Following My Yellow Brick Road:
The Importance of Dreams and Witches
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.
Dream — A large witch’s cauldron is bubbling away in the midst of my living room. A witch is chasing me around the pot. My father is in the room and trying to help save me.
Sometimes our most powerful and meaningful dreams originate in our childhood.
In awe, I have carefully and lovingly held onto this dream image. I have no idea how old I was at the time, but it is my earliest dream image. It arrived after I watched the Wizard of Oz. I was a young child in the 60’s. As an only child, the imaginary characters I met through television and books became very important to my growing world of wonderment.
The wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz was a bit too much for me, though. Traumatized by the dream, I remember running past dark rooms, fearing some creature would jump out to capture me.
As an adult, I reflect upon the Wizard of Ozagain and again. Like many good stories, it suggests many complex conflicts and messages.
As a child, I grew up with too many images of male saviors and male heroes. Too often, the distressed princess was rescued and swept off her feet by a handsome prince. Thankfully my young grandchildren now have many more nuanced heroes and heroines in their lives (e.g., Frozen Two). There are now many more strong female saviors.
In the Wizard of Oz of my childhood, I was able to identify with Dorothy as heroine. Dorothy, an orphan, was treated as a silly little girl. She suffered a calamity with the twister and was left down and out and lost. All she wanted was to return home. Yet, with this suffering and longing, she was initiated into a true journey of individuation along the yellow brick home. Dorothy began her journey convinced a male wizard was to be her savior. Instead, she found the wizard to be a simple man and a sham and discovered. She then her own strength and power to find her way home.
I suspect as a young girl; I needed this story of a female heroine. And I needed to witness the power we all possess inside. Dorothy’s story bespoke of the lifetime journey we all must partake of in order to build an internal sense of Home and Self.
As a Jungian analyst, I highly value dream work and the power of the unconscious. I take my own dreams seriously, writing them down, following the images, and attempting to meet my own shadowy depths of the unconscious. Likewise, I welcome and attend to the dreams of my family, friends, and both my child and adult patients. I honor the wide variety of the dreams.
With children, I am even more careful. I wish to impart to them an awe and respect for dreams at an early age. This respect and attention to our nighttime journeys bring wisdom and blessing to our lives. Too often, when confronted by nightmares of children, adults try to make everything better. They insist again and again that there is no such thing as monsters or witches. Yet, this is not true. Dream monsters and witches and bad guys are symbolic characters that give voice and images to the frightening aspects of the world. Sometimes the monsters are outside of us, as evil leaders and thieves and bullies. And sometimes, the monsters give voice to our inner shadowy side that can be powerful and even more scary to us than the outer bullies.
I have treasured and contemplated my wicked witch dream for over fifty years. I grew up at a time of an in-between world. The patriarchal world was still quite strong, with men too often being in charge and more valued. There was the world of men and “girls.” And the female secretaries still were expected to prepare the coffee at the office. Over the years, this was to slowly change and I found myself increasingly drawn to feminist values for both men and women; values that freed people to be themselves and to develop beyond stereotypes.
I now contemplate an additional layer to this dream. The wicked witch, an archetypal symbol of the Great and Terrible Mother, was out to capture and destroy me. I thought I needed my father to rescue me. I was definitely a father’s daughter and often, my father’s world seemed more interesting and intriguing than that of my stay-at-home mother.
Yet, little girls don’t need fathers to protect them against witches. It is more important for them to fight the witch and discover their own inner power. My dream psyche knew this. My father could not protect me. He was truly powerless. And with this, I was cast out of the Garden of Eden into a seemingly cold, cruel world. Yet, it was also a world full of fantasy and beauty. The Yellow Brick Road of Oz brought Dorothy adventure and friendship and partnership. And it brought her leadership and strength.
Several years ago, while on a trip to Prague, I bought a wonderful witch to hang on my wall in my psychotherapy clinic. I had no idea at the time of the purchase, but later found out she has a battery and cackles in a very evil manner. One must hit her to cackle. I cannot tell you how much joy she had brought to my office. Many children I have seen love to hit her again and again. And the adults too, are sometimes captivated.
We need witches. We need heroines and heroes. And most of all, each of us needs to follow our yellow brick road of challenge, transformation, and individuation.
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst and a free-lance writer. She is a member of the Israel Institute for Jungian Psychology and the International Association for Jungian Psychology. She can be reached at rbzeiger@yahoo.com.
Robin has begun to create a series on dream work through Medium.com. Please join her as she adds to the collection. Next in the series, One Dream at a Time, Using our Dreams to Set our Goals.
