Suzanne is floating down a river to the ocean. As she reaches the ocean she realizes she is dreaming, and becomes lucid. As she swims out into the ocean she sees a gigantic male arm and hand reaching out to her, and someone calling and beckoning to her. It speaks to her silently and symbolically saying, "Come and help me." She feels the power of the gargantuan hand and is determined not to get caught in its grip, so she swims around it repeatedly sending it a vibration of love and peace until finally the hand and arm shrink down to a manageable size. Now she takes the hand in her own hand and goes down with it into the ocean. They go down, down and she comes to the bottom of the sea and she sees a nude male body lying on the ocean floor and approaches it. The man looks similar to her husband, though also dissimilar in certain ways. She feels a great deal of compassion for him. She approaches him and tries to send him a message of consola-tion. She makes a sexual overture but the man does not respond. Now she approaches his body from different sides and continues to make sexual advances while receiving no response, until at last she decides it is just time to move on. She peacefully floats up to the surface of the ocean and as the dream ends she feels very good.

As a psychotherapist I am particularly interested in the process of working with potential nightmares, dream situations in which the dreamer finds himself or herself being attacked. I am sure you are all familiar with various methods of fighting back in such dreams, and familiar with the potential for becoming lucid when one is under pressure both in the dream state and in the waking state. . . . [One familiar] model . . . is to face the adversary in the dream and fight back, even to the point of killing the adversary if necessary. That method is commonly called the Senoi method. The second rather well known model is one of facing the adversary in a threatening sit-uation and fighting back verbally and psychologically with a series of forceful and pointed questions such as "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" This demanding and aggressively engaging type of interaction is generally deemed to be less violent than the first model. The third model involves facing the adversary and becoming lucid in the dream, and then consciously creating strategic departures from or trans-cending of the threatening dream image, such as flying away from the scene (which is not necessarily a form of escapism), flying over a barrier or flying through a wall, or perhaps levitating one’s body in the dream.