GOING UNDER:

This depicts the anesthesia phase.  The wolf, a recurring symbol (see my symbolism guide at the bottom of the page), appears out of the enveloping blackness, and the red water is the blood that will soon be spilt. 

CHILLING THOUGHTS:

Thinking about the operation, a dreamscape where the unconscious mind's eye sees the terrors to come.  The eye is red for dramatic effect, and while I'm not a needle-phobic, I included some syringes becuase needle-phobia can be part of "medical" phobia.

NOTES: GALLERY#1

ANTICIPATION:

Preparation.  The face in the background is distorted; its fanged mouth is the encroaching horror devouring the phobic and distorting her/his  mind.

THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW:

The doctor or nurse, in the phobic's eye, becomes terror itself.  A fire-breathing wolf-headed (see below) bloody-handed demon has replaced the caring physician or nurse now that the procedure is about to be done.

COUNT BACKWARDS:

The end-stage of anesthesia.  The sun is setting; the dark woods are closing in, smothering.  Clouds (see symbol guide) gather and the storm is coming, monsters lurk in the mystery state of drug-induced unconsciousness.   Will I awaken?

WAITING ROOM:

The angst before hand.  This image was a direct inspiration from the "mole incident" ; I shrink in fear of the doctor and his knife.  I dread the huge gash I believe that he will inflict on my arm. 

VULNERABLE:

Should speak for itself, suffice to say even non-phobics feel this way in medical situations.

RED IN TOOTH, CLAW AND....

Nature is red in tooth and claw, and surgery is red in stainless steel tooth and claw...  I made the last part up, of course, but that is what I mean here.  The similarities are clear; nature's claws, fangs, teeth and talons secure, grasp, clamp, hold and slice, and so do their metal conterparts in surgery, viper fangs inject venom and hypo needles inject drugs, a shark's tooth slices cleanly like a scalpel, and so on.

Back to DREAD: Gallery#1

SYMBOLIC IMAGERY:

This is what these things mean to me; not a Jungian analysis per-se, though some interpretations may be similar to Carl Jung's dream imagery analysis.

The wolf:  The face of terror, the fear the phobic experiences.  I have chosen to use the historical symbolism of the wolf, not the benevolent, beautiful animal we know today, but what it represented for many centuries:  evil, terror, death, fear, anything that was out to get someone, bloodlust.  The face that replaces the humanity of the doctor and nurse, obscures rational thought with unrelenting dread.  The phobic is so terrified that the doctor, despite his actions to the contrary, might as well have become a ravening beast of prey. 

Sunrise/sunset:  Rising:  Creation, renewal, beginning.  Setting: shutting down, fading away, closing.  Alternately  the brightness, heat of the sun:  Fusion, alchemy.

Water/ocean/lakes: If red - blood.  Otherwise, being overwhelmed, drowning, but also re-birth.

Clouds:  Sleep, dreams, drug-induced stupor and amnesia, memories, the past. 

Blurred imagery:  The past, time distortion, slow motion, memory and imagination.

Colors:  Greens, blues and any hues in between:  stereotypical hospital colors

Red: blood, anxiety.   Yellow:  creation,  alternately  pallor, illness, nausea

Fire:  danger, or perceived danger