ABSTRACT
Despite the many developments which have occurred in psychoanalytic thought since the age of Freud, dreams continue to engage the various psychoanalytic approaches. The dream’s unique language, which often invites primary, sensual and visual scenes, improves the contact with multifaceted layers of the human psyche. Deciphering an idiomatic expression hidden behind a concrete event in the dream helps to touch upon the dream’s location on the border between the somatic and metaphorical aspects of the human psyche. This chapter presents a case description, in which the dreamer was resting with her husband on their double bed. Under the bed some troubled waters were stirring. The therapist was called to address the gap between the image of the couple resting comfortably on their bed, above the surface, and the dreamer’s discomfort, caused by the strange stirring under the bed, below the surface. Communicating the realization of the idiomatic expression “below the surface” helped the dreamer to find the words needed to access the non-verbal areas of primary experiences. The association to the fairy tale The Three Feathers helped examining the idiom “Below the surface” in a broader context.
