Thread: Emily Parker

It’s great that you wrote a detailed description of your dream and provided background information because these two things always help in providing a more accurate interpretation.

Just to start off by saying that dreams perform psychologically something like the body does physically. That is, dreams are usually trying to balance out an attitude or general outlook etc. etc. that could possibly become harmful to the individual if persisted in. This is something like physical symptoms alerting a person to the need to attend to some kind of bodily problem.

So it’s likely that your dream is trying to outline an inner situation which is related to the unfortunate disruption of your college studies and is doing so in order to provide some clues about how to move forward effectively at this time.

For example, going to college can often be an especially tumultuous and challenging time which was the case this time in that it unhappily caused some anxiety and depression.

The problem is that we often understandably pull back from future challenges after such occurrences and this might be mirrored by the nature of the Hogwarts-type school in your dream.

For instance, it’s “old world”, has a kind of known traditional heritage, and possibly echoes pleasant memories from your younger years when you watched or read about Harry Potter’s various adventures.

Also, everything is laid back and pleasant most of the time, perhaps suggesting that, like we all do, you might unconsciously prefer a kind of “magical solution” through “wizardry” of the problems you’re currently facing.

After setting the scene, at first a pleasant development in the plot occurs when you’re assigned to work with the beautiful Emily Parker on a project.

The fact that the project isn’t in effect about learning anything “new” (i.e. you’re supposed to research the school’s rich past culture) could possibly be emphasizing the idea that you’d prefer in some way to “just stay in the past” as opposed to readily wanting to take on new adventures.

If so, then Emily’s beauty and personality could represent how “attractive” any such attitude is to you at this time.

But things start to change when you arrive at location number 4 which is an old dark basement lab down some stairs and you suddenly become extremely scared.

The number “4” in dreams is almost always related to the idea of making all of the potentials that a person has actually real in the outside world through diligent work over a lifetime.

In this context, the unused laboratory in the basement suggests the idea of alchemists who labored away at transforming base metals into gold.

Through very diligent work over many years, the renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung clearly demonstrated that the goal of the alchemists was not to create actual physical gold but instead, they were working to develop the innate potential of their own unique individuality which was also symbolized by the Philosopher’s Stone.

The alchemists were in effect automatically projecting their unconscious minds onto the chemical changes that they were witnessing.

This process is indeed very scary because one’s wholeness as an individual is involved and this includes many darker aspects of the personality.

For example, for every good trait, like kindness, intelligence, dedication etc. etc., there’s another less pleasant one like cruelty, stupidity, laziness etc. etc.

The ego’s role is to learn how to stand firm amidst all of this chaos until it’s gradually brought under some reasonable control through experience and learning from one’s mistakes.

Your great care in describing the dream’s contents probably bore some extra special fruit in the detail you mentioned that the school’s greenhouse is located beside the dark stairs leading to the lab.

A greenhouse is of course an enclosure where plants are able to be tended to in all types of weather.

The color green in dreams is often connected with some aspect of how the dreamer deals with practical reality as conveyed by the five senses.

This likely originated in the fact that our pre-human ancestors lived in the green jungle which in essence was "outer reality" and this concept was possibly adopted by the psyche as a convenient color symbol to use in dreams.

So the dream could possibly be hinting that your experiences with certain outer realities might tend to be too “sheltered” and a little “artificial” although many good “growth products” have indeed been produced.

At this point in your dream, Emily’s nature suddenly changes and she pushes you back, saying she’ll go down into the dark lab instead of you and she disappears.

In the dreams of a guy, the image of a girl usually symbolizes parts of his nature about which he isn’t as confident and assured.

For example, Emily might symbolize a certain part of yourself which isn’t really all that comfortable around certain aspects of practical reality, that is, things related to the five senses.

In addition, she could represent a lack of development in handling values and emotions.

Again, the image of her being beautiful probably means that you could prefer to incorrectly believe that you’re quite fine in these areas of your life when this isn’t really the case.

The fact that she “comes and goes” like a “ghost” tends to support this idea that when it’s a matter of emotions and practical reality, while you sometimes handle these OKAY, this ability probably tends to “come and go” unexpectedly depending on the circumstances.

Similarly, a ghost in dreams usually symbolizes that some part of the dreamer’s overall personality is not actively “alive” in a three-dimensional way in everyday life.

So it’s as if this unadapted part of your life “disappears” into the unconscious (the dark lab) instead of you, the ego, getting up the courage to tackle the effects of any such situation of needing more work on your feelings and practicality skills for example.

The result of this lack of “working in the lab yourself” probably appears in the next scene where, although Emily is missing, you and everybody else are relaxed, joking around and not taking anything seriously.

In addition, you’re totally infatuated with the missing Emily, again suggesting that you understandably tend to prefer this mostly unconscious state where things will kind of “take care of themselves”.

The danger is apparently that any such unconscious state could become worse over time (e.g. it’s getting dark out soon).

Another important climax occurs when Drew suddenly remembers where Emily is which somehow causes her to return as if from the sky in a lawn chair.

You can try thinking back to see what comes to mind about Drew even though he wasn’t a friend of yours because a certain trait of character which he had might come to mind and which could possibly be useful in keeping the Emily within more up front although she’ll probably still tend to “come and go” mysteriously.

The dream shows Emily as a kind of “Nature Girl”, probably meaning that she needs a bit of “civilizing” although not too much in order to retain her helpful instinctive guidance and allure.

Her reappearance causes you to be afraid, likely pointing to the idea that what she represents becomes a problem when it’s conscious to you.

This idea is reinforced by the discussion about where she was found, i.e. on the porch of the library.

The library is a place where the results of experience and research are gathered and made available to draw on as required.

But the only way to get to the library is by way of the abandoned basement where the difficult “experiments” have to be carried out in order to gain more and more understanding over time.

Again, you feel scared and overwhelmed, just wanting to get in touch with Emily again but you can’t.

Perhaps the dream is trying to show that by regularly standing up to and fighting back against any feelings of anxiety each time that they appear will help to put you on a better footing with “Emily” now and in the future, allowing for a good relationship with an outer girl as well.

Otherwise, it looks like you could unfortunately slip back even further into a kind of child-like (i.e. “elementary school”-like) attitude which wouldn’t be helpful in strongly moving forward and working at your probably impressive potentials as a person.

This situation could sadly leave you with a feeling of too much loss overall (e.g. you can’t get back in touch with Emily).

Anyway, without knowing very much about you, this way of looking at your dream might not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.

If by chance you tend to be mostly a quiet inward-looking person, you might like the book “The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World” by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D.

You may also like the book “Meeting the Shadow”, edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams. It covers the concept of the earthy, emotional and instinctive side of human nature that we may often not feel very comfortable with, and covers how to deal with it in detail. It's easy to read, being composed of many short articles by various authors inside and outside the psychological community.

And a good introductory book to the ideas of Carl Jung is “Man and his Symbols” which he edited and to which he contributed the long first chapter which contains a lot about how dreams work.

In any case, please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this particular way of looking at your dream.