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Dreaming of Barack: Sometimes a President is Just a President

by Roy C | February 7, 2009 at 02:15 pm

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This is an excellent article which includes a sampling of what one journalist at the New York Times has found in her quest to find out who has been dreaming of Obama and Michelle and in what way.

In the process of her inquiry, she received reports of dreams in which Obama and Michelle are represented as ideals, as a kind of royal couple, as Jungians would describe them, an image of the complementation of opposites, a sign of harmony in the psyche, leading the dreamer to reflect on the imperfect nature of her own marriage.

Beyond that, his success and his dedication in law school have caused some to regret what they have done with their own lives.

Some have the same reaction that Boomers had on Clinton's election: that this is someone who is a peer, and that they can identify with them.

The point is that presidents have a job akin to a religious figure in our political culture. That is why we have an "inauguration", from the Latin word referring to augury, the attempt to divine meanings or be seen as indicated by a Higher Power.

These feelings are largely unconscious in a people who either belong to a secular culture that eschews religious notions or an orthodox religious one that is threatened by an analysis of the psyche inclined to move religion from without to within.

The idolization and demonization of presidents results from this. We don't see the president as human, as "a cigar only being a cigar", but as the embodiment of something religious, loaded with numinous energy.

If anyone wanted to contribute their own dream of Barack and Michelle to this, that would be most welcome. Unfortunately, I have had no dreams of President Obama as of yet. I have been following my dreams as best I can for decades.

Here is the link, a title referring to Freud's comment that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" and not a phallic symbol:

Sometimes a President Is Just a President

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Barry Artiste

at 16:57 on February 7th, 2009

But then there are some who "Dream their Obama Dreamy Dreams" not wanting to wake up to a Nightmare that is the Economy and Joblessness.

Roy C

at 17:58 on February 7th, 2009

Yeah, yeah. When I saw that their was a comment, I thought it would be from you about that.

That is what people need to look at. What is our relationship to leaders, to leadeship? Are we conscious of what Jung called "the religious function", that part of our psyche that makes up secularist religions such as Marxism even when we are atheists and then finishes the job with Chosen Proletariats, trials for heresy, sacrifice, shrines with the embalmed remains of Lenin and Stalin, our Marxist pharoahs, and so on.

Growing up in a religion is good in that you, at least, know what a religion is. I mean did any of my radical friends really recognize the religious aspect of their politics?

Yet, we consign the criticism to the orthodox traditional religious practicioners among us. We, modern and enlightened, we don't do that.

The whole rock phenomenon was religious.

Barry Artiste

at 21:37 on February 7th, 2009

I am sure Obama is one who dreads to wake up to a nightmare in fixing the US economy

Phillip Harrington (not verified)

at 07:01 on February 8th, 2009

Obama has raised the *hope* of this nation and much of the world.

To use the term, "just a President", is a negative or indifferent attitude toward the office. That would reflect on all past and future Presidents too.

But United States Presidents *are* set apart by the times, their ideals, dreams and ability to share and express their vision of a better life for all.

A President can either stir populations to action or bore them to indifference.

Obama has shown that he has what it takes to inspire hope and dreams. He has declared his intention to serve *all* "the people". We should support his success, for all.

On Judith Warner's blog she says "This is, perhaps, the price of faux-familiarity. If I were Barack Obama (or Michelle, for that matter), I’d be a little scared. After all, when people are wearing their egos on their sleeves, it’s so easy to bruise their feelings. What will happen if fantasy turns to contempt?"

I would call that "a little" inflammatory and suggestive, her opinion of course.

And in this world of opinion, sometimes a blogger is just a blogger.