Everything from dad’s car, to the cars they drove years ago, to the car they dreamed of driving as a teenager. Sometimes the autos are dream-inventions, blends of styles, or models from a particular year. All these specifics are vital to an accurate interpretation. I’ll never forget one student’s “Root beer – colored Cadillac” dream. Some car dreams shine because of the company they keep and the feelings they evoke!
Then there is the pivotal question of who is driving whose car. Is the dreamer in control of his or another’s car, or is she a passenger with someone else at the controls? How is the driver managing her task? Is he or she careless, sleepy, distracted, anxious, inebriated, skilled, reckless, or out of control?
OBVIOUSLY, any respectable interpretation depends upon the answers to these interview questions, and no two dreams about “cars” can mean the exactly same thing! So much depends upon the context of the dreamer’s life at the moment of the dream, and all the details that are clues to the specific “meanings of the images and the dream as a dramatic whole.
So let’s get started with a sample Interview:
A CAR IN TROUBLE
Since the dream is told of a man who dreamt:
Charles dreamt that he was driving his wife’s car at night when the tail lights went out. He tried to fix it on the side of the road, but just couldn’t find the problem. FINALLY!, he discovered that if he fiddled under the hood with this and with that, then kept on fiddling, finally, after a lot of fuss, the tail lights lit up again to his great relief.
Our Interview went like this:
Interviewer: Pretend I come from another planet. What is wrong with having the tail lights go out on a car?
Charles: It is very dangerous. Someone could easily rear-end you. Bad crash.
I: What was it like to try to fix the problem?
C: It was very difficult and it took a long time. It was not what I wanted to be doing, but it was necessary.
I: So, you are driving your wife’s car whose tail lights have gone out, you risk being rear-ended. For a while you can’t find the cause of the problem, but discover that you can fix it only by doing something you would rather not do. It all takes a long time. Have I got this right? (Recapitulation)
C: That’s it.
I: So, Charles, is there anything, any part of yourself, or anyone in your life that is like your wife’s car, whose tail lights have gone out, you risk being rear-ended, and can fix it only by doing something you would rather not do, and it all takes a long time? (Bridge question incorporating the recapitulation at the end)
C: Now that you put it that way (common response upon hearing a 2nd recapitulation) I am reminded of an old medical school professor’s story about sex between men and women. He said that,
“Men are like Jaguars, turn the key and Varroom! they are off. Women, however, are more like Model T’s. Before you can get them going, you have to set the clutch, turn the crank, set the clutch again, and run the crank some more, and it takes quite a while. But then, at a certain point, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!”
Dreamt by a man who really did not like foreplay, but who understood, for the first time at age 40, that it was necessary to prevent his wife’s car from being rear-ended. Note the transparency of the interview method and the freedom of the dreamer to follow his own word’s leads to unexpected metaphoric interpretations of his own.
What kinds of cars have you dreamt about?