Whodunnit? You dunnit...
We all like a Whodunnit – well at least my mum does – but what if you dream you dunnit? According to Psychotherapist Philippa Perry, who led the Dream Workshop at the School of Life recently, you’re the best judge of your dreams – not those one size fits all dream dictionaries.
Philippa, looking like a kind of futuristic fusion of Pierrot and Hitchcock’s fave costume designer, Edith Head, presented us with a variety of ways to interpret our nightly forays into the land of nod. With the aid of her almost saucer-sized, fluorescent framed glasses (like magic wizard specs!) she took us on a sneaky peek of our psyches; urging us to roll up our sleeves, participate in our dreams and role play.
Role playing, for me, is the sort of thing nightmares are made of. But there were some only too willing to treat the audience to a re-enactment of the recurring riddles which haunt them in the wee hours. One woman’s nocturnal race against the clock to catch a plane, saw her play herself, the person hanging on the telephone, and the piles of paper she was stuffing willy nilly into her suitcase. Weirdly it was the piles of paper which had the most to say – notably she was taking the rubbish and leaving the good bits behind.
Lay down comic...
New perspectives are what Philippa is all about – this is where the magic glasses come in I reckon. Indeed her new book Couch Fiction – A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into one man’s sessions with his therapist. In using the medium of the graphic novel – illustrated by Junko Graat – we are also treated to a deity’s eye view of the minds of both the characters; this, along with strategically placed footnotes goes some way to de-mystifying the psychotherapeutic process.
As the wife of Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry, famed for his darkly plotted pots and Baby Jane frocks, it’s a given that Philippa would have a singular view of the world. But having witnessed a guy decipher his own body-buried-under-the-bush whodunnit it became clear we all express ourselves in weird and wonderful ways. And it seems that dreams are a way of communicating with ourselves, like personalised bedtime stories packaged by our own psyches.
“You don’t need help with interpretation now,” says Pat, the therapist in Couch Fiction, to James, the man-on-the-couch, who replies: “Ooo I do! I would never have got to vaginas without you.” And I have to say, I echo those sentiments. Philippa’s whistlestop Dream Workshop has led me to take a different view of my dreams; almost like I’ve been given my own pair of virtual magic specs – very illuminating!
Although I’m not sure I want to find out why my dad turned up looking like George Clooney other night…
Adventuress Undressed 