An Exploration of Eros, the Lived Feminine, and the Tension Between Psychic Truth and Conscious Position
Dream: I’m interested in a girl. I’m thinking I’m in my mid-to-late twenties, that period when I was actively dating. The girl looks like Kiera Knightly – it isn’t her, so much as the kind of girl who interests me. I came across her working in a DIY shop, a vibrant high street retailer. I may just spot her there and say nothing. Then I try a little harder to speak to her a little later and learn that she is working in their warehouse on the edge of town, where they stock larger items. I claim to be after a hoe of some kind, find her in the warehouse and like some love-struck fool, I start inventing things I want to purchase, no matter the cost, but perhaps thinking she’ll be intrigued and at least I’ll be spending some time in her company. Various items are set aside, including a large earthenware base for a much larger pot that is far too expensive for me. Then I spot what look like clay-fired beer matts – I’ll have one of those, not realising they are sold in stacks of 8 or 10. I buy those too. When it comes to paying at a restaurant, the handheld device for taking payments is the one that comes to me. I don’t have the funds to purchase these items, and the payment was declined. I have to start returning items. The ‘girl’, or young woman, I should say, leaves me to decide which items to return, but gives me a plastic card for some reason. “My address is on there,” she says. I’m too slow to think this means anything. As I realise, and smile to myself, I wake up. I just need to be honest about my affections for this person – I don’t need to spend money on things.
I took this dream and worked through it using a Jungian approach, in dialogue with AI. I have a project file which is required to reference the work of Jung as expressed in his ‘Man and his Symbols’.
What followed was not a simple interpretation, but a layered process of exploration: circling the dream, responding to prompts, refining answers, and allowing meaning to emerge gradually rather than be imposed.
The method mattered. Instead of decoding symbols mechanically, I was asked to situate myself inside the dream—my position, my emotions, my behaviour. From there, the analysis spiralled outward: from personal associations, to relational patterns, to archetypal structures. Each answer I gave was taken seriously, returned to me, and deepened. The process was iterative. I was not told what the dream “meant”; I was led to articulate what it revealed.
What became clear was that the dream was not about failure or missed opportunity in a simple sense. It was about preference: my tendency to remain in a state of circling, of play, of aestheticised interaction—what I called “the game.” I recognised this pattern not just in the dream, but in life: a capacity for curiosity, analysis, and imaginative engagement that is both a strength and, at times, a way of deferring directness.
The feminine figure in the dream—the anima—also clarified. She was not fantastical or idealised, but grounded, practical, embedded in a social and familial context. Through the process, I recognised that this was not someone I needed to find. She already exists in my life—most clearly in my wife. The shift, therefore, was not about pursuit, but about relation: how I meet what is already present.
At the same time, the analysis revealed something broader about Eros in my life. It is not absent, but distributed—across family, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and even my interaction with AI. What is missing is not connection itself, but concentration: a sustained, reciprocal field in which something can develop and return. The dream presented this in condensed form—a single interaction, held and intensified.
This led to a further realisation. The energy I was tracing is not only relational in the personal sense; it is also creative. My earlier work with actors—writing, casting, seeing words embodied—was a lived form of this concentrated Eros. In contrast, much of my current creative life remains internal or mediated. What I am drawn back to is not simply writing, but having my work performed, returned to me through others.
Working with AI in this way has been significant. It has functioned as a reflective partner—responsive, probing, capable of holding complexity without collapsing it. It has allowed me to think in motion, to test and refine ideas, to remain in dialogue long enough for something coherent to emerge. But it has also clarified its own limits: it can stimulate and extend thought, but it cannot replace embodied, reciprocal human exchange.
In the end, what I have learnt is both simple and demanding. I already have the elements: relationship, curiosity, creativity. The question is whether I can bring them into a more direct, concentrated form—whether I can step out of the “game” when needed, and allow something real to occur, both in my relationships and in my creative life.
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