catapult magazine

Since we’re talking about dreams, how about dreams you had as a child? I had some really twisted reoccurring sexual dreams as a pre-pubescent kid involving violence and humiliation to women — this long before I had knowledge of sexual intercourse or the female anatomy. And despite my incredibly sheltered childhood! How do you explain this? Can anybody else relate to this?

Psychosis really develops in the 20s to 40s.

So. Dan. How old are ya?

26 and a half.

Dan, I don’t understand what needed editing in the above message.

Did you delete " … and my real name is Jack the Ripper?" :)

Either Dan was feeling guilty about not being totally honest with the group (his original post was 26) or he felt the need to appear a tad bit older.

What do you say Dan?

mrsanniep, that’s funny but i was genuinely curious if anybody can relate to this.

also, if a child can have such ideas without ever coming into contact with such ideas what does it mean? if it’s not nurture, is it nature?

let’s show some love.

Okay Dan, we’ll have a serious discussion, but please don’t be offended by what I think your dreams might imply about you.

I guess my initial reaction to your revelation was that perhaps you’re a bit of a misogynist and maybe you don’t know it. Which is the worst kind in my mind.

Do you still have these kinds of dreams?

I think that’s a dangerous assertion. Everybody has dreams that they’re ashamed of (whether or not they should be), and there are plenty of different theories of what means what. If you’re going the Freudian route, just because someone has misogynistic dreams doesn’t by any stretch mean he’s a misogynist, closet or otherwise, it’s just the Id playing around. Personally, I think that erotic dreams—which can as easily be violent as sexual—are a healthy release.

During one discussion on such a topic with some guy friends (all of whom are straight—or I suppose pretending to be straight), we all had to admit that we had at some point at least once had a dream about a homosexual encounter. Does that make us all gay? Nope.

I don’t blame you for your initial reaction mrsanniep — I’m a bit of a dope in some of my postings on cino. But this isn’t the kind of childhood memory that one would toss out as a conversation starter on a first date. I’ve been disturbed for a long time about where I might have obtained these ideas. There must be misogynous messages embedded in our culture — mine was a highly conservative evangelical culture that taught a rather 1950ish view of the family with the man as the head of the household. Yet in my family, the talk was not the walk — my mom played a fairly dominant role. Maybe my dreams somehow came out of those contradictory messages about masculinty and femininty.