I had this dream last week

And in the dream I was in this class that was a kind of psychology course, only it was "in the field," meaning that the teacher was explaining some neurosis or another and then we would watch the patient interacting with other people in a coffee shop or some such environment. And we were all in the coffee shop together. Every now and then the teacher would pause everything but the class, and would just narrate to us, the students, what was going on.

We had just seen a couple of exciting cases of common neurosis, and were in the midst of a paused coffee shop, when the teacher began explaining some background on the next case we were going to visit, which was in another location. He explained that the next case we were going to look at demonstrated the remarkable psychological vulnerability of a child who had undergone early childhood trauma, some specific trauma like nearly drowning. It was explained that later in childhood this person would be likely to take on unfulfilling jobs. We were then magically transported into the environment of this person in an unfulfilling job, and just as the teacher was unpausing reality, I raised my hand to ask a question.

"Excuse me, but I thought you said we were going to study childhood trauma, looking at the effects of early childhood trauma at a specific point in the child's growth later on."

"Precisely," said the teacher. "This child is age 26. Manifesting this neurosis at the most typical age for these symptoms to appear."

"But he's 26, he's not a child at all. He's an adult--he's well into adulthood."

At this point the other students in the class laughed nervously, in a manner that implied I had not only forgotten to do the reading but was demonstrating this fact in the most embarrassing way possible. The teacher said simply, "Of course he's a child. He is a child of 26," and then he leaned forward and emphasized the next point, as if we should all be certain that it was in our notes. "We are all always children."

And then I woke up.