The Underclass -or- The Fear of Falling

Mary, 46 student  

I have two recurrent dreams, one in which I keep running and never making it, ie. catch the bus or similar, another dream that I am falling - sometimes off a cliff,  into a hole or similar. What do these two dreams signify? 

Mr Hagen's Response: The Inner Dream Life of the Middle Class

There are many questions I could ask, however from the information that you have provided, specifically, your age, your income, and background information, an interpretation of your dreams seems more obvious. 

Barbara Ehrenreich "The Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class" provides a guided tour of affluent lifestyle tastes which define the middle class family ego's imagination for security and the dread of poverty. As a popular cultural symbol of the American middle class, the fear of falling provides an economic framework for the behaviours of status seeking, conspicuous consumption and lifestyle (dreams received by the International Institute for Dream Research (IIDR) attest to these behaviours) in a class conscious society. The fear of falling becomes a metaphor for the dread of depressions and falling into the underclass.

For Ken Auletta "The Underclass" the poor, those living in poverty, the underclass feels that they are stigmatized (read dream received by the IIDR) and excluded from the mainstream of society, they are like outsiders, the school drop-outs, juvenile delinquents, ex-cons, ex-addicts, unemployed, long-term welfare recipients can all be seen as the stigmatized core of the underclass. We are told, that the underclass evidently lack life-skills due to the failure of their restricted vision and socialization. They, have always been viewed as the great unwashed also known as "Hoi polloi"

Has anyone thought to look at their dreams to understand, that since the so called underclass were not given opportunities to expand their horizons, they therefore are unable to realize their dreams?

 

 

 

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