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It had never occurred to him when he began dreaming the dream. He honestly could not answer the question. “I can’t remember when it began. I have been dreaming it for so long that I really don’t have any clue when it started.”
    “Let’s try to narrow the time frame down if we can Ben. You say that in the dream you are an adult at a cocktail party after the bus accident, so we can assume that you began having this dream as an adult. Would you agree with this statement?”
    “I guess so doctor, but I think the storm part has been around much longer.”
    Doctor Levine scribbled more in his pad and then sat back in his chair. He thought for a long moment and said; “Ben, this is what I can tell you about dreams in general, and more specifically about the dream and its relation to psychotherapy.
    As you know dreams have been around and have been baffling people since the beginning of time. Many of the prophets in the Bible had sacred revelation, or prophecy revealed in dreams. The author Robert Louis Stevenson got his idea for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from a dream. Discoveries have been revealed in dreams such as the molecular structure of the benzene atom in which the scientist had a vision of a snake biting its own tail.
    Sigmund Freud once called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious,” and Carl Jung said “dreams are a way of communicating and acquainting yourself with the unconscious.” While both of these men had differing viewpoints of how to interpret dreams, they were agreed that the path to the unconscious was through the analysis of the remembered dream. Repetitive dreams are an indication that you are missing the point of the dream.
    The dream itself is telling you to “wake up” that is, to wake up and remember it; and by not remembering or getting the point, you are stuck in a rut that is leading you around and around until you do so. It is my belief that you are missing some point in your dream Ben, and that is how we will begin to approach your problem.”
    Ben felt in his gut that the doctor was right. There was some missing point and he knew it. Each day as he woke up from the dream he had an uneasy sense of something missing, like a jig-saw puzzle with one missing piece, but he never quite understood what he was feeling. “Doctor Levine, I think you are right. I think I am missing something.”
      “Ben, we are nearly out of time, but before we meet again I want you to try something. Remembering a dream in it’s entirety is a known, albeit erratic process. What I want you to do first is this; I want you to keep a pad of paper and a pen near your bed, and when you wake up, write down everything you can remember about your dream. Try to include any random thing that might not seem important to you. Hopefully, after a few nights of writing your dream down, you may piece together some enigmatic point you have been missing. You may find out very quickly what your unconscious mind is trying to tell you, and if so, the dream will simply go away. How about we meet again in four days, say Wednesday. Make an appointment with Ms. Beck on your way out.”
    And just like that, Ben was free again. He thought to himself; “That wasn’t so bad.” And for the first time in a long time he felt real relief. He no longer had to go it alone.

CHAPTER THREE
Reconnaisance ( 1968 )

    en was nearly through the screen porch door when its hinges made their usual screeching sound. He had oiled them the day before with the hopes of sneaking out early under his mother’s radar. He froze and listened. No sound could be heard from the kitchen but the coffee pot percolating. He thought, “How in the heck can they make that noise when I oiled them yesterday?” The hinges were on his mother’s side. They worked for her.
    “She must have seen me oiling them and jimmied them after I was asleep!” he whispered to himself.
    “Ben, is that you? Ben? I want you to sit down and eat a healthy breakfast. You know that