gottagrip,
Thanks for the response. No, I am not a shrink. I only do dream analysis and interpretation using Jungian psyche. If you should ever decide to see a psychologist try to find one who uses dreams in their analysis. That most likely be a Jungian psychologist.

As for whether the abuse from your mother is what the dream is about. Most definitely. The big storm is an emotion storm brewing within your unconscious. Consciously you may have been able to repress the emotions but unconsciously it is still very much a part of your psyche. Most likely it has affected you in ways you never realized. Early life abuse, physical and/or emotional have a great influence on later life, including personality. One only need look at the children abused by Catholic priests to see the damage these early life experiences will cause. The younger the psyche where there is abuse the worst the damage. The early years are the formative years and form the foundations of who and what we become in later life. It all catches up with the person eventually, with mid-life being the usual time the 'accumulative' emotional baggage begins to show itself.

Dreams can be a barometer of unconscious contents that need to be made conscious. Often the emotional conflicts are the subject matter in our dreams, before it becomes conscious. We may have known all along of the experiences but have pushed it deep into the unconscious so it will not hinder our conscious life. Dreams are a direct link to the unconscious and those emotional experiences that retain strong psychic energies are stored in the psyche, waiting to be exposed at some time in later life. Your conscious life has unknowingly been affected but now your unconscious howling is becoming a conscious experience {your wife waking you because you were howling in your sleep}. You can expect more of that unless the conflicts are resolved.

The dream was a short dream but exact to what its message was. At the age of 54 you are in the later years of the mid-life stage and it is only a matter of time before the full force of your past begins to show itself, first in your dreams and eventually in a more conscious attitude {if it has not already begun to do so}. That is besides any affect it has had through the years on your personality. If it gets really bad and you are unable to handle the emotional pressures {depression and beyond} it may be you will need to seek professional counseling. Only by confronting the issues will you be able to resolve the conflicts.

As for the dog. Yes, it is a part of you, symbolically. Dreams are often very precise and the dog used was a Great Dane. You may have waking life associations with this type dog but when you look at the breed it fits with distinct requirements of the dream message. The 'bigness' of the dog depicts the 'great' energy forces of your past experiences. But this breed dog is a gentle breed which may very well depict the gentle soul of a child and possible who you are as an adult. The sympathy you feel is toward that child you were {I know this from first hand experience, being in a similar situation and having the same feelings toward my 'lost childhood'}. Feelings from a dream are as important as the symbols.

I hope my analysis puts some perspective on what is happening and what to expect. As I stated in my analysis the dream did not point to the cause of the 'strong storm'. Future dreams will likely address those aspects and your mother will be in your dreams, as herself and possibly in the form of 'negative' symbolic images. So you will know what future dreams may depict, the howling may be a prelude to future night time actions.

Jerry

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wow, cool...i think you may be correct.
I am fine...I keep the emotional baggage right below my surface.
I never tried to repress my past, but few know of (that part) it.

Thank you for taking out your valuable time for me.
If I have another dream that is related (or that I can even remember), I will come back to your site.

gotta go,
Gottagrip

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gottagrip,
Be careful not to let it come up from beneath that surface. If it should threaten to do so then do seek professional advice. No matter how strong you are and or how good you are at keeping it beneath the surface, the fact that it is there is always a danger. It is much like an inactive volcano that has a history of erupting. You don't know when it could do so but there is always that possibility.

Jerry

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