Adultery

Adultery (pronounced uh-duhl-tuh-ree)

(1) Voluntary sexual intimacy between a married person and someone with whom they do not enjoy the benefit of lawful marriage.

(2) Used loosely, based on biblical traditions, lewdness or unchastity of thought as well as act; sinful sexual behavior as a category (priests have long lists of what's deemed sinful).

(3) In historical biblical use, faithlessness in religion (obsolete). 

(4) In English common law, the fine and penalty formerly imposed for the offence of adultery (obsolete).

(5) In historic ecclesiastical jargon, the intrusion of a person into a bishopric during the life of the bishop.

(6) In political economy, adulteration; corruption.

(7) Injury; degradation; ruin (obsolete). 

1325-1375: From the Middle English adulterie, from the Classical Latin adulterium (voluntary violation of the marriage bed).  Adulterie replaced an earlier Middle English form advouterie, drawn from the Old French avoutrie.  So, construct was: adulterie, altered (as if directly from Latin adulterium) from avoutrie, via Old French from Latin adulterium, from adulter, back formation from adulterāre.  Modern spelling, with the re-inserted -d, is from early fifteenth century.  Interestingly, in Middle English, word also applied even to "sex between husband and wife for recreational purposes”, sex for other than procreation being regarded by the church as idolatry, perversion and heresy.  The church variously classified the sin as single adultery (with an unmarried person) and double adultery (with a married person).  In Old English the word was æwbryce (breach of lawful marriage), drawn from the German Ehebruch.  The old English synonym advowtry is long obsolete and the most pleasing feminine noun plural is adulteresses.  Adultery, adulterousness, adulterant, adulterer & adulteress are nouns, adulter is a noun & verb, adulterize is a verb, adulterate is a verb & adjective, adulterous is an adjective and adulterously is an adverb; the most common noun plural is adulterers.

In the US, Adultery Dune in Arizona corresponds to the Navajo sei adilehe (adultery sand), the place where, prior to European settlement, illicit lovers met.  It’s apparently something between Hampstead Heath and Death Valley as depicted in Michelangelo Antonioni’s (1912-2007) Zabriskie Point (1970).  Everyone should see Zabriskie Point before they die.

As one might imagine, the tradition of adultery goes way back and so does the condemnation by clerics and others; it is of course proscribed by one of the Ten Commandments (coming in usually at 6 or 7 in most translations) in the Christian Bible's Old Testament and the ever zealous Leviticus (at 20:10) spelled out the consequences: If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.  In the hierarchy of sin, that the injunction again adultery appears usually at (6) or (7) in the Ten Commandments has by some been used to suggest it may not be thought by God to be as serious a matter as blasphemy (3) but worse than coveting thy neighbor’s ass.  That’s probably theologically dubious and the order of listing is thought thematic rather than a ranking of relative sinfulness.  The first four commandments focus on the “vertical” relationship between man and God while the later six deal with the “horizontal” relationships between people.

Double Adultery: adulteress Cheryl Kernot (left) & adulterer Gareth Evans (right).

Although adultery can be a difficult, complicated business, to avoid things ending badly, there are really two options.  One is not to commit adultery because, in the words of  English author, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), "advantage rarely comes of it."  Option two is not to get caught but there is a long list of politicians who made the greatest mistake of all: getting caught.  Although adultery seemed once almost obligatory (and once also tolerated) for French politicians great and humble, in the English-speaking world, it's always a scandal.  Of late, we’ve had the helpfully named Anthony Weiner (b 1964), Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) who had only himself to blame and Sir John Major (b 1943; UK prime-minister 1990-1997) who really must be admired; an affair with Edwina Currie (b 1946) seeming hardly safe-sex.  Jim Cairns (1914–2003) perjured himself while lying about his affair and John Profumo (1915–2006) committed adultery with Christine Keeler (1942–2017) while she was enjoying another adulterous affair with a Russian spy.  While leader of the opposition, Ben Chifley (1885–1951; prime minister of Australia 1945 to 1949) told the prime-minister he was going home to read a detective story, dying that night in the company of his mistress; men wept at the news of his death.  John Kennedy's (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) adultery was (within the beltway), famous even at the time and David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) blatantly took his mistress to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; one author claimed even the long-assumed faithful Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) may have strayed.

Doing his bit, Gareth Evans (b 1944; ALP (Australian Labor Party) senator or MP 1978-1999, sometime attorney-general & foreign minister) had an affair with then Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot (b 1948) who subsequently rated on them and joined the ALP although whether that was because or in spite of Gareth’s adulterous caresses has never been clear but, in the absence of contrary indications, he deserves the credit.  Unfortunately, when Ms Kernot published her memoir Speaking for Myself Again (2002), she neglected to discuss her adulterous affair which prompted one journalist to reveal what had until then been only “insider knowledge”.  Whether or not that lack of disclosure contributed to be book being reputedly the least successful Australian political memoir isn’t certain but it was out-sold even by Peter Howson’s (1919–2009) The Howson diaries: the life of politics (1984) that, while packed with fascinating details to delight the insiders, also lacked the juicy bits likely to attract a wider audience.

Still, given the disappointments "Gareth-Gareth" endured (not becoming prime minister (he regarded that as Australia's loss), not becoming UN (United Nations) secretary-general (he regarded that the world's loss) and not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (surely a greater injustice even than t.A.T.u. not winning the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest)), one should be fair and although unlikely much to impress the uncompromising Leviticus, it may be possible to gloss over the sinfulness of his infidelity on the basis of “the end justifying the means”, there being a precedent from Antiquity.  In De vita Caesarum (On the Life of the Caesars (121), biographies of the first dozen emperors of the Roman Empire during the Principate)), Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (circa 70-circa 123) wrote of Octavian (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, 63 BC–AD 14; founder of the Roman Empire and first Roman emperor 27 BC-AD 14): “That he was guilty of several acts of adultery is not denied, even by his friends; but they allege excuse for in, that he engaged in these intrigues, not from lewdness, but from policy, in order to discover more easily the designs of his enemies, through their wives.”  In the ALP, "getting the numbers" is very important and and violating one's marriage vows for that purpose likely would to Augustus have seemed just a "good tactic". 

End of the line for Sir Billy Snedden.

Most illustrious are those said to have died on the job, expiring usually in hotel rooms following heart-attacks or strokes.  The list includes 70 year old Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979; VPOTUS 1974-1977) who was with a 25 year old aide and 76 year old Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) who was in the company of an admirer of 37.  Lord Palmerston (1784-1865; variously UK prime-minister or foreign secretary on several occasions 1830-1865) is rumoured to have died on a billiard table with a housemaid and Pope John XII (circa 933–964; pope 955-964) is said to have expired in circumstances not dissimilar.  Famously, Sir Billy Snedden (1926–1987), at 61, breathed his last in a room at Sydney's Rushcutters Bay Travelodge he was sharing with a somewhat younger woman who was his son’s ex-girlfriend, an event recorded by what was perhaps the Melbourne Truth's most memorable front page.  Remarkably, despite decades of speculation, her identity has never publicly been confirmed.

Single adultery: Former National Party (the old Country Party) leader Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; twice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022), escorting then-wife Natalie (b 1969, left) and noticing mistress Vicki Campion (b 1985, right).

Mr Joyce joined a long line of adulterous politicians who made the greatest mistake of all: getting caught.  He's pictured here escorting (then) wife to the parliament's mid-winter ball in June 2017 (left) and casting his mistress an admiring glance (right).  The whip he carried was thought a photo-opportunity prop, verisimilitude for his “rural & regional shtick” rather than an indication of any other proclivities but who knows?  In a sense, Mr Joyce was a victim because when rugby union (and other codes) player Israel Folau (b 1989) in 2019 posted on social media a list of those God condemns to Hell that included “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters”, while there was strident support for the gay community, despite the mention of “adulterers” and “drunks” being obviously a blatant attack on Mr Joyce's character, not a whisper was heard in his defence.  Still, at the time she became his mistress, Ms Campion was unmarried, Mr Joyce thus guilty only of  “single adultery” so there's that.   

Conversation

Conversation (pronounced kon-ver-sey-shuhn)

(1) A (usually) informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc, by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy.

(2) Association or social intercourse; intimate acquaintance.

(3) In tort law, as criminal conversation, an action variously available (according to circumstances), pursuant to adultery.

(4) Behavior or manner of living (obsolete).

(5) Close familiarity; intimate acquaintance, as from constant use or study (now rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English conversacion & conversacioun, from the Old French conversacion (behavior, life, way of life, monastic life), from the Latin conversātiōnem (accusative singular of conversātiō) (conversation) (frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse, conversation), noun of action from the past-participle stem of conversari (to live, dwell, live with, keep company with), the passive voice of conversare (to turn about, turn about with (conversor (abide, keep company with) a frequently used derivative)), from an assimilated form, the construct being com (with, together) + versare, frequentative of vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer (to turn, bend).  Both the mid-fourteenth century meanings (1) "place where one lives or dwells" and (2) "general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world" are long obsolete.  Those senses were picked up from the Old French conversacion and directly from the Latin conversationem.

The modern sense of "informal interchange of thoughts and sentiments by spoken words" dates from the 1570s but this for a long time ran in parallel with being a synonym for "sexual intercourse", in use since at least the late fourteenth century.  Depending on the circles in which one moved, that might have been the source of misunderstandings.  In common law, the tort of criminal conversation emerged in the late eighteenth century.  The "conversation-piece" was noted from 1712 in the sense of "painting representing a group of figures arranged as if in conversation" al la "still life"; by 1784 it had come to mean "subject for conversation, something about which to talk".

The tort of criminal conversation

Like “knowing” (of biblical origin), "conversation" was a euphemism for illicit sex and in this sense has long been obsolete except as “criminal conversation”. which, at common law, is a tort which can be used in proceedings pursuant to certain types of adultery.  Dating from the eighteenth century, although abolished in England in 1857, the tort survived in Australia until 1975 when the Family Law Act replaced the old Matrimonial Causes Act, a piece of law reform which much disappointed Liberal Party lawyers, not a few moralists (professional & amateur) and readers of the Melbourne Truth, a most disreputable tabloid noted for its outstanding racing form guide and publication of salacious photographs (often taken through the windows of St Kilda motels) used as evidence in divorce cases.  The action remains available in a handful of jurisdictions in the United States where the rules can be more liberal than permitted in English courts in that women are entitled to sue.  The name has always been misleading; although called "criminal" conversation, the action was only ever strictly a claim for damages in money.

Example one (Cheryl & Gareth): A man has an affair with a married woman.  

The husband of the unfaithful wife would have been able to sue the unfaithful husband in the tort of criminal conversation.

It was a precisely defined tort which existed to allow wronged parties to seek monetary compensation for acts of unfaithfulness.  Under criminal conversation, within certain limitations of timings and sequence of events, a husband could sue any man who slept with his wife, even if consensual.  If the couple was already separated, the husband could sue only if the separation was caused by the person he was suing.

Example two (Vikki & Barnaby): A man has an affair with an unmarried woman.  

No action would have been possible in the tort of criminal conversation because the woman has no husband to raise the action.  Only a husband could be the plaintiff, and only the "other man" could be the defendant.

Reflecting the moral basis of the tort, each separate adulterous act could give rise to a separate claim for criminal conversation and curiously, the plaintiff, defendant and wife were not permitted to take the stand, evidence being given by other observers, often servants in the employment of one of the parties to the suit.  The tort was a matter wholly a creature of civil law and the definitions of adultery codified in canon law had no relevance to the offence or any subsequent penalty.  Under canon law, someone was deemed to have committed adultery if they enjoyed intimacy with someone while married to another whereas if the other party was also married, the offence was double adultery but neither aggravated the offence or could be offered in mitigation.

Conversation piece: Lindsay Lohan in conversation with her sister Aliana, La Conversation bakery & café, West Hollywood, California, April 2012.  Sadly, La Conversation is now closed.

Conversation piece: The Schutz Family and their Friends on a Terrace (1725) by Philip Mercier, Tate Gallery.  As a genre in painting, the "conversation piece" was a notionally informal (though obviously often staged) group portrait, usually small in scale and depicting families (and sometimes groups of friends) in domestic interior or garden settings.  They were popular for much of the eighteenth century, the most noted artists in the style including Philip Mercier (1689-1760), William Hogarth (1697-1764), Arthur Devis (1712-1787) and Johan Zoffany (1733-1810).

The form is interesting because it reflects the emergence of a new component of the leisured class, the newly rich merchants, or mine and factory owners whose wealth was derived from the profits of industrial revolution and the country’s expanding international trade.  The painters tended to show their subjects in genteel interaction, taking tea, playing games or sitting with their pets.  Conversation pieces were thus different from the formal court or grand style portraits favored by the aristocracy and were an attempt to represent the new middle class behaving as they imagined the old gentry did in everyday life.  Their influence worked also in reverse, aristocratic and royal patrons soon commissioning artist to paint their families in a similar vein.

Dream

Dream (pronounced dreem)

(1) Mental activity, usually in the form of an imagined series of events, occurring during certain phases of sleep.

(2) The sleeping state in which this occurs.

(3) To have a dream.

(4) A sequence of imaginative thoughts indulged in while awake; daydream; fantasy.

(5) A vain hope; to suffer delusions; be unrealistic you're dreaming if you think you can win

(6) A cherished hope; ambition; aspiration.

(7) A descriptor of a theoretically possible, though improbable assembly or conjunction of people, things or events (dream team etc).

1200–1250:  From the Middle English dreem from the Old English drēam (joy, pleasure, gladness, delight, mirth, rejoicing, rapture, ecstasy, frenzy, music, musical instrument, harmony, melody, song, singing, jubilation, sound of music).  Cognate with Scots dreme (dream), the North Frisian drom (dream), the West Frisian dream (dream), the Low German and Dutch droom (dream), the German traum (dream), the Danish & Norwegian Bokmål drøm, the Norwegian Nynorsk draum, the Swedish dröm (dream), the Icelandic draumur (dream), the Old Saxon drōm (mirth, dream) the Old Norse draumr (dream) and the Old High German troum (dream), the Old English drēag (spectre, apparition), the Dutch bedrog (deception, deceit), the German trug (deception, illusion) and even the Ancient Greek thrulos.  The Old English was derived from the Proto-Germanic draumaz and draugmaz, the ultimate root being the primitive Indo-European dhrowgh from dhrewgh (to deceive, injure, damage).  The modern sense was first recorded in Middle English but most etymologists assume it must have been current in both in Old English and Old Saxon; the sense of "dream", though not attested in Old English, may still have been present (compare Old Saxon drōm (bustle, revelry, jubilation), and was reinforced later in Middle English by Old Norse draumr (dream) from same Proto-Germanic root.

However, among scholars there are pedants who insist the link is not established.  In Old English, dream meant only "joy, mirth, noisy merriment" and also "music" and much study has failed to prove the Old English dream is the root of the modern word for "sleeping vision," despite being identical in spelling.  Either the meaning of the word changed dramatically or "vision" was an unrecorded secondary Old English meaning of dream, or there really were two separate words.  The words for "sleeping vision" in Old English were mæting and swefn, the latter originally meant "sleep," as did a great many Indo-European "dream" nouns such as the Lithuanian sapnas, the Old Church Slavonic sunu, and the Romanic words: the French songe, the Spanish sueño and the Italian sogno all from the Classical Latin somnium, derived from the primitive Proto-European swepno, cognate with Greek hypnos from which Modern English ultimately picked up somnolence.  Dream in the sense of "ideal or aspiration" dates only from 1931, derived from the earlier sense of "something of dream-like beauty or charm", noted first in 1888.  Dream is a noun, verb & adjective, dreamed is a verb, dreamery, dreamwork, dreamworker, dreamware, dreamsign, dreamsome, dreamlining, dreamscape, dreammate, dreamlife & dreamlet are nouns, dreamful is a noun & adjective and dreamward & dreamily is an adverb, dreamish, dreamy, dreamlike, dreamworthy, dreamwrapt & dreamless are adjectivesdreaming is a noun & verb; the noun plural is dreams.

From Aristotle to Freud

Philosophers and physicians have long discussed the nature of dreams and Aristotle (384–322 BC), a bit of both, included as one of three chapters discussing sleep, the essay  De Insomniis (On Dreams) in his Parva Naturalia (short treatises on nature).  Aristotle pondered (1) whether dreams are the product of thought or of sensations, (2) the nature of sleep, the effect upon the body and its senses and (3) how dreams are caused, concluding it’s the residual movements of the sensory organs that create their existence.  A practical Greek, he also noted some dreams appear to be cause by indigestion or too much strong drink.

Dream analysis: Lindsay Lohan on Sigmund Freud’s couch.

In western thought, not much was added for two thousand-odd years, the more cheerful of the philosophers happy to speak of dreams being the minds of men free to explore their imaginings while gloomier types like the deliciously wicked Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), writing in his classic Leviathan (1651), thought them but things “caused by the distemper of some inward parts of the body.”  It wasn’t until Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) book The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), that a systematised attempt was made to include dreams as part of psychiatry within the discipline of modern medicine.  Freud acknowledged Aristotle's definition of dreams as "…the mental activity of the sleeper in so far as he is asleep..." was empirically superior to any suggestion of them being something supernatural or mystic, a view that advances in modern neurobiology haven’t challenged although Freud’s views have been much criticised.

Carl Jung explains things to his wife, Swiss psychoanalyst Emma Marie Rauschenbach (1882–1955).

Dreams must once have seemed a gray area for those who dwell on the seventh of the Bible’s Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1–17 & Deuteronomy 5:6–21): “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and worry about the passage in Matthew (5:28): “…I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (King James Version (KJV, 1611)).  Jimmy Carter (1924-2024; POTUS 1977-1981) quoted Matthew in his Playboy interview (September, 1976, published in the November 1976 edition), a statement of presidential probity neither shared nor always adhered to by all his successors and predecessors, many of whom were students of the (unwritten) eleventh commandment: “Thou shall not get caught.”  What made President Carter’s interview interesting was not so much that openly he stated he’d “looked on a lot of women with lust” and committed adultery “in his heart” but that his reflections intertwined the conventional language of Christian theology with “colloquial language” not much associated with public statements from the pre-2017 White House.  The unexplored theological point was whether “lustful” dreams involving a woman with whom one does not enjoy benefit of marriage is as sinful as the same thoughts when one fully is conscious.  While it’s likely one could find theologians and bishops on either side of the debate, devotes of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) can take solace in what the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology Carl Jung wrote in Psychology and Alchemy (1953): “The conscious mind allows itself to be trained, like a parrot, but the unconscious does not - which is why St Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.”  So, the answer for those with sinful dreams is: Become a Jungian and go to Heaven.

Freud’s early thinking was that dreams were manifestations of the sleeper’s unconscious wish fulfilment, what he called the "royal road to the unconscious", made possible by the absence of the repressions of consciousness.  In order to conform to his other psychoanalytic theories, he argued our unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences, dreams having both a manifest and latent content, the latter relating to deep unconscious wishes or fantasies while the former he dismissed as superficial and without meaning although he did add the manifest often disguises or obscures the latent.  What was never disguised was that Freud regarded most of the latent, regardless of the form it assumed, as inherently sexual but he later retreated from this, just as he did from his early emphasis on the primacy of unconscious wish fulfilment, noting in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle that trauma other experiences could influence both the existence and content of dreams.

Freud’s technique of free association

Freud classified five separate processes that facilitate dream analysis.

(1) Displacement occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.

(2) Projection happens when the dreamer places their own personal desires and wants onto another person.

(3) Symbolization is illustrated through a dreamer’s unconscious allowing of repressed urges and desires to be metaphorically acted out.

(4) Condensation illustrates the process by which the dreamer hides their feelings and/or urges through either contraction or minimizing its representation into a brief dream image or event.

(5) Rationalization (also referred to as secondary revision) can be identified as the final stage of dream-work in which the dreaming mind intently organizes an incoherent dream into something much more comprehensible and logical for the dreamer.

Freud also held there was a universality of symbols in dreams and his list highlights socially undesirable behaviour in euphemistic forms, a subset of which is.

(1) Vagina - circular objects; jewelry.

(2) Penis and testicles - oblong objects; the number three.

(3) Castration - an action that separates a part from the whole (losing a tooth).

(4) Coitus - an action that resembles sexual behaviour (riding a horse).

(5) Urine - anything yellow in colour.

(6) Faeces - anything brown in colour; chocolate

Although, like much of his work, Freud theories on dreams have become less fashionable within the profession, in popular culture, dream interpretation services based on Freudian systems remain widely read and are a staple of self-help books, web pages and the dozens of dream interpretation apps.

After Freud: Not everything is about sex

Animals often represent the part of your psyche that feels connected to nature and survival. Being chased by a predator suggests you're holding back repressed emotions like fear or aggression.

Babies can symbolize a literal desire to produce offspring, or your own vulnerability or need to feel loved. They can also signify a new start.

Being chased is one of the most common dream symbols in all cultures. It means you're feeling threatened, so reflect on who's chasing you (they may be symbolic) and why they're a possible threat in real life.

Clothes make a statement about how we want people to perceive us. If your dream symbol is shabby clothing, you may feel unattractive or worn out. Changing what you wear may reflect a lifestyle change.

Crosses are interpreted subjectively depending on your religious beliefs. Some see it as symbolizing balance, death, or an end to a particular phase of life. The specific circumstances will help define them.

Exams can signify self-evaluation, with the content of the exam reflecting the part of your personality or life under inspection.

Death of a friend or loved one represents change (endings and new beginnings) and is not a psychic prediction of any kind. If you are recently bereaved, it may be an attempt to come to terms with the event.

Falling is a common dream symbol that relates to our anxieties about letting go, losing control, or somehow failing after a success.

Faulty machinery in dreams is caused by the language center being shut down while asleep, making it difficult to dial a phone, read the time, or search the internet. It can also represent performance anxiety.

Food is said to symbolize knowledge, because it nourishes the body just as information nourishes the brain. However, it could just be food.

Demons are sneaky evil entities which signify repressed emotions. You may secretly feel the need to change your behaviors for the better.

Hair has significant ties with sexuality, according to Freud. Abundant hair may symbolize virility, while cutting hair off in a dream shows a loss of libido. Hair loss may also express a literal fear of going bald.

Hands are always present in dreams but when they are tied up it may represent feelings of futility. Washing your hands may express guilt. Looking closely at your hands in a dream is a good way to become lucid.

Houses can host many common dream symbols, but the building as a whole represents your inner psyche. Each room or floor can symbolize different emotions, memories and interpretations of meaningful events.

Killing in your dreams does not make you a closet murderer; it represents your desire to "kill" part of your own personality. It can also symbolize hostility towards a particular person.

Marriage may be a literal desire to wed or a merging of the feminine and masculine parts of your psyche.

Missing a flight or any other kind of transport is another common dream, revealing frustration over missing important opportunities in life. It's most common when you're struggling to make a big decision.

Money can symbolize self worth. If you dream of exchanging money, it may show that you're anticipating some changes in your life.

Mountains are obstacles, so to dream of successfully climbing a mountain can reveal a true feeling of achievement. Viewing a landscape from atop a mountain can symbolize a life under review without conscious prejudice.

Nudity is one of the most common dream symbols, revealing your true self to others. You may feel vulnerable and exposed to others. Showing off your nudity may suggest sexual urges or a desire for recognition.

People (other dream characters) are reflections of your own psyche, and may demonstrate specific aspects of your own personality.

Radios and TVs can symbolize communication channels between the conscious and unconscious minds. When lucid, ask them a question.

Roads, aside from being literal manifestations, convey your direction in life. This may be time to question your current "life path".

Schools are common dream symbols in children and teenagers but what about dreaming of school in adulthood? It may display a need to know and understand yourself, fueled by life's own lessons.

Sex dreams can symbolize intimacy and a literal desire for sex. Or they may demonstrate the unification of unconscious emotions with conscious recognition, showing a new awareness and personal growth.

Teachers, aside from being literal manifestations of people, can represent authority figures with the power to enlighten you.

Teeth are common dream symbols. Dreaming of losing your teeth may mark a fear of getting old and being unattractive to others.

Being trapped (physically) is a common nightmare theme, reflecting your real life inability to escape or make the right choice.

Vehicles may reflect how much control you feel you have over your life - for instance is the car out of control, or is someone else driving you?

Water comes in many forms, symbolizing the unconscious mind. Calm pools of water reflect inner peace while a choppy ocean can suggest unease.

Deuterogamy & Putative

Deuterogamy (pronounced doo-tuh-rog-uh-mee or dyoo- tuh-rog-uh-mee)

A second marriage, (as distinct from bigamy, as defined in law and canon law), historically after the death of the first husband or wife but now applied also in other circumstances.

1650–1660: From the Ancient Greek deuterogamía (a second marriage), the construct being deuteron, from the Ancient Greek δεύτερος (deúteros) (second (of two)) +‎ -gamy (the suffix from the Ancient Greek γάμος (gámos) used to form nouns describing forms of marriage (and in biology to form nouns describing forms of fertilization).  The related forms are deuterocanonical, deuteromycete, deuteromycetes, deuteron, deuterogamist, deuteronomic and deuteronomis.

The permitted second marriage

Deuterogamy is a lesser-known companion word of bigamy and polygamy.  Bigamy is the act of marrying one person while in a stare of marriage with another; it can be committed unknowingly (in rare cases even by both parties) but it committed knowingly is a criminal offence in most jurisdictions.  Polygamy is the generic term for multiple marriages and encompasses bigamy, the word used mostly by anthropologists to describe both polygyny (having several wives) and polyandry (the predictably less common practice of enjoying several husbands).  There’s also the synonym digamy but it’s so easily confused with the almost homophonic bigamy it should be avoided and rendered obsolete (which it may already be).

Etymologically, deuterogamy describes merely the act of a second marriage but in canon law it was the definitional term for a permissible second marriage, one celebrated after the death of a first wife or husband.  Under canon law, marrying another when one’s original partner remained alive, even if a divorce had been granted by a civil court, was bigamy.  The only circumstances in which the church would countenance a deuteronomis marriage when the previous partner remained alive was if a bishop was prepared to issue a certificate of annulment which created not the legal fiction that the marriage never existed but that it was ab initio (void at its inception) because the essential sacramental component was always missing

As an example, noted Roman Catholic, father of six and amateur moral theologian Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; deputy prime-minister of Australia thrice variously since 2016):

(1) Is an adulterer because he enjoyed intimacy with a woman while married to another.  He’s guilty merely of single-adultery because the other woman with whom he cavorted was unmarried; had his mistress been married, double adultery would have been the offence.  Surely worse.

(2) Cannot, under canon law, undertake a deuteronomis marriage unless he can find grounds on which a bishop might be persuaded to annul his first marriage. 

All things considered, one might have thought this difficult but in 2015, Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) issued two possibly revolutionary motu proprio (literally “on his own impulse”; essentially the law-making mechanism available to absolute monarchs as the royal decree): Mitis iudex dominus Iesus (Reform to the Canons of the Code of Canon that pertain to the marriage nullity cases) and Mitis et misericors Iesus (Reform of the canons of the Code of Canons of Eastern Churches pertaining to cases regarding the nullity of marriage) which changed canon law, simplifying the annulment process.  It was a demonstration of what’s possible in an absolute theocracy and must have induced a little envy in people like prime-ministers dealing with bolshie cross-benchers or recalcitrant senators.

Better to help sinners consider their position, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio (b 1938; then president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts), issued a clarification, noting the Church “…does not decree the annulment of a legally valid marriage, but rather declares the nullity of a legally invalid marriage”.  While a piece of sophistry a bit different from what usually crosses the National Party mind and not obviously a great deal of help, it might have been enough to give Mr Joyce hope.

"A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience."  Samuel Johnson (1709–1784).

On Monday 17 January, it was announced Mr Joyce had proposed to his new partner and that she'd accepted.  In a nice touch, he presented his fiancée a parti sapphire engagement ring.  Parti sapphires are unique in the extraordinary way their several distinct colors simultaneously display in any light, unlike other polychromic stones which need light to fall in different ways for the range to show.  The other distinction of the parti is that their value lies not in perfection but in their flaws; it's the inclusions in the parti which create the dazzling iridescence.  Like Mr Joyce, the parti sapphire is loved and venerated for its flaws.

Redemption does seem much on Mr Joyce's mind.  After the National Party caucus, having decided to allow hope to triumph over experience and (for the third time) elect him leader (and thus deputy prime-minister), he was gracious in victory, saying  “I acknowledge my faults and I resigned as I should have and I did. I’ve spent three years on the backbench and, you know, I hope I come back a better person.”  The self-identification as the prodigal son seems to draw a long theological bow and is anyway not relevant to the matters a bishop is compelled to consider when reviewing an application to annul a marriage.  The reforms imposed by Francis are really about time and money, reducing how long it takes and how much it costs to secure an annulment; the legal basis on which one may be granted remains unchanged, Church teaching being not that the marriage in question failed, but that the sacramental component was always missing.  Still, a wind of change is blowing through the Vatican and Mitis iudex dominus Iesus, like other recent reforms, did make clear these were matters for the local bishop, the man closest to his flock.

Putative (pronounced pyoo-tuh-tiv)

Commonly believed or deemed to be the case; reputed; accepted by supposition rather than as a result of proof.

1432: From the late Middle English, from the Middle French putatif, from the Late Latin putātīvus (reputed) the construct being putāt(us), past participle of putāre (to think, consider, reckon (originally “to clean, prune”)) + -īvus (-ive).  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European pau- (to cut, strike, stamp), the most familiar Latin variants being putātus (thought) and putō (I think, I consider, I reckon).  The -īvus  suffix was from the primitive Indo-European -ihwós, an extended form of –wós; it was cognate with the Ancient Greek -εῖος (-eîos) (from which Latin picked up also -ēus) and was added to the perfect passive participial stem of verbs, forming a deverbal adjective meaning “doing” or “related to doing”.  Putative is an adjective, putatively an adverb.

Early use of the word was almost exclusively in Church Latin as putative marriage, one which, though legally invalid due to an impediment, was contracted in good faith by at least one party.  Putative is almost always used in front of a noun, the modified noun being that which is assumed or supposed to be. The putative cause of a disease is whatever is generally thought to be the cause, even if unproven.  As a point of usage, it’s not correct to say "the cause was putative."

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s marriage to Roman Catholic Carrie Symonds, mother of the two youngest of his seven children, was celebrated in London's Westminster Cathedral on 29 June 2021, the edifice briefly closed for the occasion.  Unannounced, as Mr Johnson’s third putative marriage, it attracted particular interest because it was a Roman Catholic ceremony.  Although probably most of the British public years ago lost any interest in theology, still widely known is the church’s doctrinal insistence that marriage is a permanent, lifelong union between a man and a woman, those who divorce unable to enter a second marriage recognized by the Church.

The prime-minister’s union is however within church rules.  A baptized Catholic, what he described as his school-boy conversion to Anglicanism was not something recognized by canon law, Mr Johnson joining the Church of England by a process the Vatican would view as not much more than him deciding one day he was Anglican.  Not good enough.  For any soul to depart the faith, what canon law requires is a “defection from the Catholic Church by a formal act”, a specifically defined legal process, undertaken in dialogue with the Church hierarchy and nothing like that was ever done.  Conversion cannot be effected simply by conduct or press-release and, although what was done might have made Mr Johnson an Anglican in the eyes of Lambeth, to the Holy See he was and remained one of them.

Marriage has a long history, the idea of a lifelong partnership between one man and one woman drawn from of natural law and something recognized and acknowledged by the Church by virtue of the conduct and acquiescence of the parties even before the medieval church regularized the practice in the Code of Canon Law.  The code contains also ecclesiastical laws governing how and when Catholics can enter marriage, among which is the requirements to conform with “canonical form” including the ceremony being performed in the parish church of the parties, the permission of their bishop to marry outside of the Church and the need to seek special dispensation, sometimes from Rome, to marry non-Christians.

The construction of the framework really began at the fourth Lateran Council (1215) which banned informal or secret marriages, beginning the codification of the forms and processes of formal marriage with rules ensuring marriages would be widely known within the community so (1) any impediment might be raised prior to or before the conclusion of the ceremony and (2), once done, neither party could deny the union.  This really was social engineering, addressing the not uncommon event of a man inducing consent from a woman or girl with assurance he regarded them as betrothed, only later, usually when he learned she was with child, to renounce the “marriage”.  All of this had a good scriptural basis, the notion of “what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” appearing both in Mark 10:9 and Matthew 19:6.  Further to strengthen the framework, after the Council of Trent (Concilium Tridentinum, 1545-1563, nineteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, Trent (Trento), Italy), the marriage sacrament came under jurisdiction of the Church, ceremonies performed and records maintained by priests.  Unless a marriage conformed to canonical form, it couldn’t be a valid marriage and, in the eyes of canon lawyers, never happened.  That was the legal abstraction.  On the ground, parish priests and presumptive fathers-in-law, knowing what had happened, dealt with miscreant “husbands”.  

Thus the prime minister is a baptized Catholic subject to the demands of canonical form and one whose previous marriages lacked canonical form.  Any Church tribunal would be compelled to hold the two unions invalid; they didn’t exist so he could marry Ms Symonds in a Catholic ceremony in a Catholic Church as his first valid marriage.  Helpfully, nor are sins of the father visited upon the children, the law recognizing the children born of putative marriages later declared null or invalid to be as legitimate as those born of valid marriages.  The origin of this lies in the Medieval habit of kings seeking (and gaining, sometimes on grounds more tenuous than those applying to Mr Johnson) an annulment.  Then it was the delicate business of handling the sunder without messing with long-settled issues of succession.

There are other quirks in Canon law.  While the Church does hold only a marriage between two baptized Christians can be a sacrament, it also recognizes that any marriage which conforms to its essential properties is valid, regardless of whether it involves those of other faiths or indeed atheists.  The exception is Catholics, on whom is imposed the more onerous demands of canonical form.