Patterns in dreams correspond to patterns in your conscious life, or else - occasionally - a dream may present a pattern for you to follow in your life instead of old patterns. For example, a man may relate in dreams to very feminine women. This may represent an established pattern in his waking life, in which case he is being asked to reassess that pattern. Perhaps he is attracted only to very feminine women because he is projecting on to women his own repressed femininity and needs to
integrate his anima. On the other hand, a dream of relating to a woman in a very bold and assertive manner may be the unconscious way of telling a man he needs to display his masculinity’ more.
See also Sex.
An antagonistic or belligerent relationship in a dream probablv indicates a need to be reconciled with the other, whether the other is another person or another part of yourself.
In the dream do you control, or want to control, the relationship? Perhaps the dream is a descriptive one, simply describing how, in fact, you do behave; in which case, your unconscious is probably asking you to review your situation. Perhaps you need to learn to let go, and trust people more. On the other hand, the dream may be a prescriptive one, telling you what you ought to be doing: perhaps you have been too weak and unassertive in the past. Do you tend to be, in your dreams, a mere observer, watching other people relate? Well, it is a good thing to observe, whether what you are observing is external relationships or internal relations between parts of yourself. But the process of self- discovery may be accelerated if you resolve to participate more in future dreams. Try it. Relating with your shadow may be much more revealing than just looking at it.
(2) There may be impersonal or spatio-temporal relationships between dream items or between one episode of a dream and the next. For example, an earlier dream episode may symbolize whatever is the cause of what is symbolized in the following dream episode. (But do not assume that this causal relationship always exists between different parts of a dream.)
If a person is taller than you (in a dream), this may mean that you see that person as superior to yourself.
If the person in the dream represents some part of your psyche, the meaning would then be that your conscious ego tends to submit to this other psychic component.