Analysis for Anonymous, 6 February 2005

This is how you described the room:

It's fairly bright, with sunlight coming through two windows on one wall. The quartered panes of glass are cracked but clean. The walls, floor, and ceiling are smooth and bare -- the walls and ceiling painted a glossy white, badly chipped and peeling and showing cement block behind them. The floor has dark linoleum on it, clean and well-kept but quite old. It feels like solid concrete slab underneath it; no give at all. Otherwise it's bare. There are cheap lithograph posters on the wall (political), and on one window sill an old glass vase with flowers of some kind -- possibly plastic; they look dusty. There's a table and some chairs, all wood and fairly battered, with chipped paint, in the middle of the room, a similarly battered old flat-top office desk opposite it, and a pair of sofas, dark-colored thin fabric covered with plastic protective drop-cloths. There's an open packing crate in one corner, holding books and raffia. Other than that, it's empty and very quiet; inside it feels relatively cool and even a bit clammy, and outside it's obviously blazing hot and muggy.

The initial room is the subject’s childhood. What interests us here is the general atmosphere of the room, in addition to the level of furnishings described by the subject. An uncomfortable room suggests a childhood that was devoid of happiness. Few, simple furnishings tells us that the subject has few memories of that time.

You wanted to leave the room.

The subject wanted to become an adult.

This is how you described the forest:

Deciduous forest, with things like birch, oak, maple, aspen, I think -- and others I don't really know the names of. Being a conifer kind of person and all that. It seems to be late fall, perhaps, and most of the leaves are off the branches and down on the ground; colorful enough, and giving a good view through the trees. It's not a very old forest; the trees are all about the same age and size -- middling. Very little undergrowth, oddly -- just some winterized bush and shrub skeletons here and there and some ferns. It's cold and clear, basically.

The forest is growing up, and the trees are those adults with whom the subject interacted at that time. Average-sized trees imply the normal influence adults have on a child: neither insignificant nor impressive. Average lighting tells us that the subject received enough attention from the adults to be guided but not oppressed.

This is how you described the path:

As paths go it's pretty minimal -- the path of least resistance, you could say. It's not obviously marked off as a path or anything, just a thin trail of compacted earth, where people's feet have worn down a thin shallow rut. There are projecting roots sticking out of the path in places, and a few muddy spots or puddles in depressions. It looks well-traveled but not recently so; the leaves are covering it over quite a bit. It's narrow, clearly made by people walking in single file, but the forest is so sparse it's not exactly confining.

Adolescence is represented by the path through the forest. Poor visibility of the path tells us the subject was often confused by the changes brought on by adolescence. A narrow path suggests that the subject had limited options for emotional growth at this time. The strong evidence of fellow travelers tells us that the subject received a lot of support from friends and family during that potentially troubling time. That plants are the major source of obstructions tells us that the subject’s problems arose mostly from interactions with adults.

This is how you described the water:

A brook, running pretty fast, from left to right; it looks shallow (calf-deep, maybe) and perhaps three or four meters broad. The water is crystal clear and looks cold, and it's got a rocky pebble bed. The banks are short but sheer and largely rocky, and there are a lot of rocks and small boulders projecting out of the stream as well. It's noisy, rushing along and echoing off the hillside behind me in the otherwise very still air; there's a bit of white water or foam as it pours over the rocks, and it swirls along to burble in the eddies under the bank.

The water is the subject’s sexuality. What interests us here is the clarity of the water (representing attitude) and its movement (representing libido). Fast-moving water indicates a strong, active sex drive. Clear water tells us that the subject has no issues regarding sex.

When you came to the water, you went around it.

The subject is not interested in new sexual experiences.

This is how you described the cup:

An old Coke bottle, 250ml size, uncapped, empty, and scoured clean. In fact the edges are scoured down to a milky translucency. It's not literally Coke, I see -- it's too scuffed up to read, but there's some painted-on brand name/logo in Japanese that I don't recognize.

The vessel, or specifically the practicality of the vessel, is how the subject approaches marriage or bonding. A practical container indicates that the subject is pragmatic when it comes to questions of marriage.

You left the cup behind.

The subject is not interested in marriage.

This is how you described the key:

Longer than usual, totally flat (no groove), simple square-cut teeth, made out of dull gray aluminum, with no markings of any kind on it. I think it's a mailbox key, or maybe for something like a locker or garage door.

The key is the ideal career for the subject. What interests us here is how the key appears (representing how others view the career) and what it may open (representing the subject’s goals for the career). Having the key open a house, car, or other commonplace use tells us that the subject has no extraordinary expectations about a career. An ordinary-looking key suggests that the subject desires a nondescript career.

You avoided the bear.

In a crisis, the subject prefers the indirect, non-confrontational approach.

When you came to the wall, you jumped over it.

The wall represents death: by jumping over it, the subject not only acknowledges death but has come to accept its finality.