Dream Interpretation

For several years, I have had a recurring dream. The details vary each time, but the gist of the dream is always the same.

I am in an undeveloped, usually wooded area, surrounded by a developed, usually suburban area. For an unknown reason, I need to leave the undeveloped area and get past the developed area. However, I have to do so without being seen. Inevitably, I will be seen, and at that moment I lose all power to move. The dream typically ends soon after that.

While the core of the dream never varies, the details almost always do. Typically, there I have no reason for needing to avoid being seen. However, once the dream did provide me with a reason: a van had gone from house to house in the developed area, and done something to the inhabitants within that I knew was bad. Whatever the people in the van did, I knew that it meant I couldn't be seen. I can't relate exactly what was done, however.

Other details vary as well. Once, I am seen by a bear in the undeveloped area, and even though every single part of me is screaming "run" I am unable to do so. Another time, a child playing in his backyard sees me, even though I had desperately tried to conceal myself within the underbrush. Both times, I was struck with the same sense of the dread, the same urge to escape, and was unable to do so. Usually I end up forcing myself to awaken.

A psychoanalytic interpretation of this dream could probably focus on a few questions:

1. Why is this a recurring dream?
2. Why do I need to escape the undeveloped and developed areas?
3. What do the things that seem me represent?
4. Why do I find myself unable to move?
5. Do the varying details hold any significance?

My own interpretation of the dream, from a psychoanalytic perspective, is that it is a manifestation of my general anxiety. I fear being noticed, and I must escape attention of both the undeveloped and developed areas. The undeveloped area, of which I am the only inhabitant, could be my own consciousness; the part of myself that is critical of the my identity as a whole. In contrast to this the developed area is the attention of others. However, it is ultimately impossible for me to escape everyone's attention, and when I am noticed, I don't know what to do--hence the paralysis.