THE DREAM - I remember feeling extremely guilty throughout the dream. At one point an old friend was there - called Pete Hide. I was also looking into my neighbours garden and someone - I think it was me - dropped this spider onto a horse and the horse was bitten. Somehow this mutant creature was created. It was like two creatures in one. It was like it was condemned to live. It was so ghastly that it could never live a normal life. I seemed to push the creature down this cliff. I seemingly wanted to kill it.

GUESSWORK The dreamer was feeling guilty in real life because his father had told him he should have made more of his life. He felt he had wasted his abilities. But the dreamer also felt as if he had huge problems in life caused by disabilities. He felt that he stood out because of bad marks on his face and body. He sometimes felt like a freak.

The "Guesswork" stage of interpreting a dream involves spotting issues likely to cause dreams. For help with this click here

ASSOCIATIONS AND SYMBOLIC MEANINGS
1. HIDE. The dreamer had a tendency to hide and was very shy. A person in his dream called Peter Hide was probably a word play on his own tendency to hide away.
2. FREAK: The dream featured a creature that was described as a freak. The previous night the dreamer had been thinking of his own disabilities and particularly birth marks on his face which had always made him feel like a freak. He felt that he stood out for this reason.
3. CONDEMNED TO LIVE: The dreamer had often felt that his life had not been worth living. He felt he stood out because of terrible birth marks on his face. He felt that in many ways people with disabilities like this did not have a life worth living. So a dream where creature is condemned to live could easily be linked to that. The fact that the dreamer was thinking about his own disabilities in a very negative way the night before is a strong clue to the dream being about this.
4. NEIGHBOUR FROM CHILDHOOD: Dreams seem often to use symbols in random ways - why would a neighbour from childhood appear in a dream? Sometimes I think that neighbours from childhood or childhood homes could suggest that you are thinking about something that has been going on all your life. You could be thinking about a problem which has been ever present in your life. In this case the dream could be about the dreamers disabilities which have been ever present. This could be the minds way of saying "I have had this trouble all my life."

DREAM ANALYSIS In guesswork the dream was linked to the dreamers conversation with his father the night before. It seems to deal with the following themes
- feeling guilty
- Feeling like a freak
- A life that is not worth living

If you weave together the different themes then you find that the dream could easily capture this following feeling - "My father was making me feel guilty about me wasting my abilities. I know I have lots of talent yet I have also had to live with these terrible birth marks which make me feel like a freak. They have affected my confidence badly."