"My wife is schizophrenic but in my dream was healthy and wanted to divorce. Help!" - Dream interpretation

I dreamed that my wife had completely recovered after great effort on my part (something that I'm really working on today and do see positive results). Suddenly she decides that she wants a divorce (which in reality, for her, is out of the question) and finds herself close to marrying someone else. We get divorced and I really encourage her and thank her for her new life. She wants to thank me and tries to kiss me and I slip away telling her we cannot be close to each other now.

I am 41 years old, ultra-Orthodox Jewish. My wife is diagnosed with schizophrenia, she is treated with pills, and there is a noticeable improvement in her behavior at home. She is a wonderful woman, our relationship is excellent, we have been married for seventeen years and feel like we are living in an on-going honeymoon.

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An interesting dream you dreamed.

The dream tells you that everything is okay with your wife. At the core, there is no problem. Only during the dream when the barriers of the mind and ego go down, you are able to perceive the real situation as it is. In essence, your wife's soul is healthy (you may want to read my post about taking pills. The dream leaves no room for doubt about her health. Of course, the work you do has a tremendous contribution to her recovery. Thanks to your love, patience, and perhaps the sense of mission you survive this crisis.

In the second part, the dream tries to convey a message to you about both the real cause of the situation and the proper way of living from here on. Please read the following carefully and check for yourself if this is appropriate for you. Use discretion:

In order to reach a complete cure and to prevent the situation from getting worse, you will have to abandon some of the attitudes that currently limit you. These attitudes affect you, your wife, and your family. As an ultra-Orthodox person, you are bound by many prohibitions. These are the commandments and instructions that you have been given by virtue of being within the framework of the religious system. I do not judge this framework - for better or for worse.

The dream tells you that it's time to look carefully at your place in it. And perhaps even to disengage from the religious system. Your wife, because she has a unique mental structure has felt from an early age that the system of prohibitions limits her self-expression as a person. She felt torn between her duty to you, her husband, her religion and family and her duty to her inner self who wanted to express in many ways. As a faithful woman, this inner conflict has created two systems for her, two personalities. But it should be remembered that at the core of the inner self there is no such separation.

You represent for her the intellectual part, the mind, the part of the prohibitions (in the dream you did not allow yourself to touch her). It's hard for her. She wants more freedom (not from you, from the restrictions) and in the dream, she divorced you and felt good.

We do not feel limited in being ultra-Orthodox. In fact, we have become religious only in our adult life and do not see any restriction in the change that has been done to us. In addition, with regard to the prohibitions that you mentioned, the opposite is true. I am the one who constantly looks to ease the restrictions and she seeks to take on more limits. For example, she does not want Internet at home and she wants me to devote more of my time to study the bible.

What you wrote only strengthened my opinion because there is still within you the secular part that has been suppressed since you have become religious. The secular side and the ultra-Orthodox side clash. For your wife, the collision is more felt because, according to you, she is more rigid with herself.

In order to live in peace with herself (while maintaining her religious life routine), she felt a strong need to suppress the secular side, to trample it. Obviously, such approach is not practical. It is impossible to sweep parts of consciousness beneath the 'soul carpet'. They must erupt eventually.

When the personality feels imprisoned, it may create a secondary personality who lives in peace alongside the first one. Hence, the schizophrenic diagnosis.

The dream, then, reflects your concern that your wife will not accept your leniency, your moderate approach, but will strive to be more extreme and more diligent in fulfilling the prohibitions and commandments.

On another level, closer to you, the dream speaks of your own fear of your own approach, that your moderate attitude towards your religion might not be accepted by your God. These are issues that you will need to examine with your self, because it is your attitudes and beliefs that shape the reality of your world, including your life next to your wife.

Good Luck.

Tomorrow (and not on Sunday) I will publish chapter 5 of
From a Slave to a Master; a Memoir