working on it

What a fascinating subject. And that was certainly an interesting dream. I subscribe to the Gestalt theory that all the people, animals, and even objects in our dreams are actually stand-ins for aspects of ourselves. Gestalt dream analysis involves retelling the story of the dream out loud from the POV of different characters and things in the dream, one at a time. Doing this out loud in important -- and try to record yourself if you can, so you can go back and pick up on slippery insights that you might otherwise forget. The dream you've described sounds like it would lend itself to that kind of analysis. I mean, what if the man in the dentist's office is an aspect of yourself that you know, on some subconscious level, to be destructive. In the dream as you've told it here, you fight that aspect of yourself and force it to submit to a healthier aspect of yourself. Parlour analysis. I love it. ;-)