Treating dubious pl dreams as a clinical case - analysis

[Owl]

In my thread about the Beginner´s guide I talk about how past life dreams have to be dissected to separate memory from fantasy. I tend however to disregard a lot of dreams that could mean something maybe because there are no validations or I can find no information. However, maybe I´m too rigid in my system. I thought it would be a good idea to share a dream I had this morning and that I just disregarded because I couldn´t find anything significant about it. Maybe some of you would have different insights and different approaches. It would be interesting to hear opinions.

This is the dream:

I looked like I look in this life. I was going to take a class in some sort of basement. I was walking down the stairs and I find a wallet, I pick it up. The wallet is made of leather and of a brown-reddish color. The leather has some kind of design, like squares. I open it up and it´s not only a wallet but also some sort of really old document (identity document). Looks like those Argentine ones from the 50`s. I see a name "Albert Erich" and I see the name of the town he was born "Günzburg". In the wallet there are three dolars. I want to find this person to give him his wallet back and talk about the town. I know I´m looking for an old man, but I can never find him (I have the impression that he was a Nazi and that he would be friendly).I picture I will see him in the class, but I wake up before going into the classroom.

I had the dream between 5 and 6 in the morning, I had put my alarm for 5 but I turned it off and crashed again, also, I was laying on my back when I woke up. Is this relevant? well, most of the times when I have Pl dreams is between that time and I´m almost always laying on my back (which is not how I usually sleep, actually, I can´t fall asleep like that). I immediatly thought it was at least an "interesting" dream, but I didn´t feel too weird, and the dream didn´t feel deep or dense. As for some background on my way of remembering, I usually remember through dreams and they tend to be the informational type, where you "just know" something.

I start to think then where I could have heard that name before. I remember I looked up in a forum yesterday the name "Erich" because I was trying to find a thread about Erich Fromm. So I look it up again to see if maybe "Albert Erich" was one of the results, but no. That makes me wonder if looking for "Erich" just acted like a trigger for something. I also check a few files with lists of names that I have been consulting in the previous week to see if there is a name like that, but nothing. I look up the name online, but the only thing I find is something from a videogame that I was not exposed to nor knew about.

About the town, I knew of it´s existence before dreaming that, it´s in Bayern, Germany. So there´s nothing to validate there.

Lacking information and validations, I disregard the dream.

If you ask me about my feelings, I felt that maybe it was somebody I knew, but nothing else. However, until proven the contrary, I cannot treat it like a memory nor consider it true since it could just be fantasy.

How would you have treated a case like this? would you have disregarded it as well? Would you have had a different approach?
Thanks

 

[Totoro]

But on the contrary though, it could also be a "signal" that perhaps you need to go back and look at something you overlooked more closely.


That's happened to me on more than one occasion where I've heard (or seen) something in a dream that brought me back to it in real life again. Most of the time it turned out to be a highly significant thing as far as my past lives are concerned.


It is tricky though. I don't think you can rule it out by a Freudian analysis. But you also have to assume that something you've seen in real life may have incorporated itself into a dream. So I think in the end, it's the resulting analysis and validation process that will show it's anything significant or just a dead end.


So I mean that anything that seems significant enough to you as a clue is worth checking out, even though it may not lead anywhere.

 

[usetawuz]

I wouldn't toss it out, but rather document what I could, log the date and time and simply keep it in my notebook. It may provide a small piece of a greater puzzle. Of course, it could be nothing, but only time will tell. However the detail you describe is pretty indicative to me of a past life vignette.

 

[Owl]

But on the contrary though, it could also be a "signal" that perhaps you need to go back and look at something you overlooked more closely.

In the dream? or in life and the dream would be some sort of metaphor since I was "Looking for someone I couldn´t find"?. The last I find unlikely, if it was a symbolic dream I think it would have been simpler and I would dream of losing my cellphone or not being able to find a person I consciously know.


As for something I might overlooked in the dream, there are actually three things that I was thinking after I posted this that could be important.


1º I actually THOUGHT in the dream "This looks like something from the 50´s".


2º I got interested in the whole issue when I found out he was from Günzburg, I got happy, I actually thought "Does it really say that?!" and then I looked there was also a stamp next to the written part that also said Günzburg. THAT´s why I got interested in him, at first I´m not sure if I was even thinking of giving him his wallet back... lol


3º In the dream, when it was about to end, there was an old man who was asking me for help to close a door, I thought to ask him if his name was Albert, but then I saw that he signed an assistance paper and his name was Gonzalez, and I was dissapointed. However, keeping in mind this, and the the document looked like from the 50´s, I wonder if this Albert person was in Argentina. What wouldn´t really fit though is that the document looked old.

So I mean that anything that seems significant enough to you as a clue is worth checking out, even though it may not lead anywhere.

I wouldn't toss it out, but rather document what I could, log the date and time and simply keep it in my notebook. It may provide a small piece of a greater puzzle. Of course, it could be nothing, but only time will tell. However the detail you describe is pretty indicative to me of a past life vignette.

Well, I´m not totally ruling it out, maybe if tomorrow a lot of information appears about this guy I will say "Oh" and include this into my list of memories. However, without any validation I can´t really claim it is indeed a memory and that´s somehow what I was

 

[helz_belz]

Like Totoro and usetawuz said, I wouldn’t disregard it just yet. Keep it as an open or working case, in the background. There is a lot in the dream that sounds quite specific, like the name and the location. OK, so you knew the location before, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a useful point of validation later on. It may be that in time the person/name you were looking for, crop up somewhere else (probably when you’re not looking for it!), and the place may act as a secondary point of reference if and when that was to occur. So whilst this dream probably isn’t a clear-cut PL memory dream, there is enough there to put to one side and come back to as and when, a bit like finding a book or journal article you’ve been looking for but aren’t ready to read yet because the essay isn’t quite due.

 

[BriarRose]

Just a question - did Nazis who came to Argentina after the war use their own names, or take Spanish surnames?

 

[argonne1918]

Just a question - did Nazis who came to Argentina after the war use their own names, or take Spanish surnames?

From what I have read they kept their own names. And it wasn't just Nazis. It began in 1919 after WWI. That's why many Nazi's went there after WWII. There was already an ex-patriot community there to support them. The phone books in Argentina and Uruguay and/or Paraguay are full of German names but the people only speak Spanish. Did you know the Graf Zeppelin airship had service from Frankfort to Buenas Aries in the 1930's?

 

[Owl]

Just a question - did Nazis who came to Argentina after the war use their own names, or take Spanish surnames?

That´s a good question. Most of them either kept their own names or had fake names. If they had citizenship or any kind of Argentine paper their first name would be changed to the Spanish version of it. And thinking about it in those terms... then it wouldn´t make sense if his papers were Argentine and it said "Albert". HOWEVER... if there was a stamp that said Günzburg then it wouldn´t make any sense in the first place that the papers were Argentine at all, because where would the Argentine goverment even get something like that?, so I guess that hypothesis should be discarded.


I also wonder if "Albert Erich" are just first and second names and I´m missing the last name. It wouldn´t be too weird I guess since they were placed together and in documents they tend to be placed in different spaces.

 

[BriarRose]

I also wonder if "Albert Erich" are just first and second names and I'm missing the last name. It wouldn't be too weird, I guess, since they were placed together and in documents they tend to be placed in different spaces.

That's what I was thinking, but decided to wait and see if you would explore the possibility.

 

[Cryscat]

How about researching Günzburg and seeing what you can find? I know its the capital of the district of Günzburg in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany.