Jung on Dreams.

The dream, Jung says, is an autonomous and meaningful product of psychic activity. In that sense it is susceptible, as all other psychic functions, of a systematic analysis. Dreaming has a meaning, like everything else we do. Combined with the idea that no psychic (or physical fact) is accidental we need to ask: “why does this particular person dream this particular thing”.

Freud says that every dream represents the fulfilment of a repressed wish. The difficulty is that a person will always resist to face the repressed desire, will always exclude it from conscious reflection – this is why it appears in a dream in the first place. It is towards oneself that one has the strongest resistances. Freud’s psychoanalytical method was supposed to be the instrument for resolving or overcoming the most tenacious resistances.

The most important point Jung makes here is that it is the dreamer who explains the meaning of the elements in his dream. There are no “fixed” explanations – the analyst knows nothing about this dreamers dream: “one is obliged … to admit one’s ignorance and, renouncing all preconceived ideas, to prepare for something entirely unexpected.

Jung differentiates two points of view to evaluate psychological data, namely that of causality and that of finality. Applying the casual point of view (Freud’s among others) we reduce the manifest dream-content to certain fundamental tendencies or ideas exhibited by the material. When we take into account that all psychological phenomena have some sense of purpose inherent in them, and we evaluate the dream searching for such “sense of purpose”, we apply the finality point of view (Jung’s addition). The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. Jung’s most important question regarding dreams is: “what is the purpose of this dream?”

For me this is linked to the self-regulating, balancing, mechanism of the psyche. Only with a concept of this system in mind can Jung claim that we need to look for a purpose of a dream (as a product of this same psyche), and at the same time it makes no particular sense to analyse its meaning consciously, because the dream in itself ìs the self-regulating the psyche does.

It’s like regulating the water temperature by hand while using a well-tuned thermostat (measuring the water in the tub while taking a shower).

Jung mentions that understanding is not an exclusively intellectual process. This is an important addition to what is said about dreams having a purpose. In the book Jung does not elaborate on this, but I think he should have.

Dreams are real to the dreamer. One normally cannot differentiate between waking reality and dream reality. Assuming this, we could consider the possibility that for our psyche it does not matter whether we experience something in a waking state or in a dream state. We create reality (and ourselves) through contact, in the moment of contact, thus reenergizing ourselves as “creative beings”. Could it be that in our dreams we more or less actively compensate or complement our “adjustment to the social constructs”, and our “understanding and knowing reality by means of abstractive processes”? (thanks for your words Frank) Isn’t it so that in dreams we can let go of our inhibitions and learned logic and thus are much more open and free to create our reality. The creator within seems to reign the dream-world – not hindered by our waking constructs and other contextual limitations.

Jung claims that dreams add “all those aspects which are essential for a totally different point of view” to the conscious psychological situation of the moment. This function of dreams amounts to a psychological adjustment, a compensation or complementation Jung envisions absolutely necessary for properly balanced action. What Jung says here is that the process of conscious reflection (I assume he means about life’s choices) is automatically continued in dreams; all those aspects occur to the dreamer that during the day were insufficiently appreciated. It appears that Jung is interested in bringing these aspects appearing in dreams to consciousness, in order to provide and extra source of information, of wisdom. He states that a symbol in a dream does not conceal but that it teaches.

My questioning mind wonders whether Jung needs to bring dream-material to consciousness (and analyse it) for it to be “effective” in its compensatory or complementary qualities. Dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche. I can imagine that by “experiencing” a dream we “take” all we need from it. Analysing a dream could then be the same as analysing one’s (waking) life in a psychotherapy session. Of course there are things to learn, the casual and the finality point of evaluation, but it could well be that in “forcing” the freely created into the restricting “constructs” of our abstract reality, Jung takes away the most important value of the dream, namely its (basically) undisturbed, un-constructed creative power. I assume that what we live through in our dreams is as “valuable” an experience as what we live through awake, both adding to “what we are” and thus what our reality consists of. Jung himself says that the character of the dream is always closely bound up with the whole nature of the individual (almost forgetting that the individual is creating himself and reality in his dream too).

In that sense Jung is right when he says: “dreaming has a meaning, like everything else we do”.

With that in mind I agree that dreams are a source of information and wisdom…

When Jung talks about the prospective function of dreams – anticipating future conscious achievements – he sees them as merely anticipatory combinations of probabilities. I propose a different outlook. When we create ourselves and reality in the moment of contact, also while dreaming, a “prospective” dream has a direct impact on who we are and our waking reality. Even when we are not consciously aware of this impact, who we are, our attitude and thus our behaviour is transformed by the experience of the dream. Not quite a self-fulfilling prophecy but close.

It is interesting what Jung says about the figurative language of dreams being a survival from an archaic mode of thought (like the body bears traces of its phylogenetic development). Too simple, I think – we (still?) need this “figurative” language because it gives us freedom from our abstractions and constructs. And it is conceivable to me that, being part of a bigger whole, our psyche indeed contains archaic contents. Jung claims he proved as much. It is more imaginable for me that we have the ability to think in a different mode (what Jung calls an archaic mode) in which we “think” or should I say “create” in symbols or archetypes. When archetypal images or features appear in our dreams (as they do) this could mean that this mode of “creating” is at work. The dream-creations/images are products of this “mode of creating”. I think this is why we often find archetypal material in all kinds of psychic creations (not only in our dreams): in our fantasies and stories they appear too.

Furthermore it seems that, while dreaming, we have our subliminal memory banks at our disposal. This in itself is a wonderful addition to our waking conscious “working mind”. I discovered to what extend one remembers during hypnosis sessions. It is almost inconceivable that we “register” (almost?) everything within our field of perception without consciously realizing we do. All these registered data are still somewhere buried within us (in Jung’s terms in the personal unconscious). While dreaming (and in some altered states) we tap into these data. A Gestaltist would say that “unfinished Gestalts” become fore-ground – as in waking reality – in other words: contents that resonate with theme’s that are “on our psyche’s mind” will pop up and serve as elements in our dreams. This is exactly why it is so important to look at what these elements mean to this particular person (this person is the person he is because of all the self-creating contacts/experiences he has had), because only then can we decipher “why he was dreaming this particular thing”, or “what is on this psyche’s “mind””.

There are many people whose conscious attitude is defective, not as regards adaptation to environment but as regards expression of their own character. Others are not living on their true level. Dreams have a compensatory function, in Jung’s view, and because of this compensatory relationship between the contents of the unconscious and consciousness, the knowledge of the conscious situation is necessary if we want to understand dreams. I would say it is important to get the whole picture, take an holistic look at this person as the creation of what he experienced, in waking life, in dreams and in other “states” of his psyche.

Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem. I don’t think anybody who values an holistic approach would disagree. This even strengthens my belief that our dream-experiences are as part of our reality as our more conscious experiences. Isn’t it true that we tend to repress conscious thoughts about problems or illness? Should it surprise us that these “known” imbalances show up in our dreams, and that body and mind are on that level part of the whole; inseparably connected?

Then there is the issue of projection (and counter-projection). There is a discrepancy between perception and reality, at least this is what we realize when we experience shifts in how we perceive our reality. All the contents of our (unconscious) psyche are constantly being projected into our surroundings. “We can only recognize certain properties of the objects as projections that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects”, says Jung. In my idea all we perceive is our projection, our creation. The outer object becomes (in the moment of contact) an inner object (Jung says this too). This is especially true for the way we relate to our fellow human beings; we are projecting our own psychology into the other. We recognize something in the other (a quality of the inner object we create) because it resonates somehow within us. Or coming from the other side: it is what we project onto the other that makes us perceive him. (I should probably relativate these statements, but let me be provocative for a moment here)

When we become consciously aware of the projected content we can, by choice, lift this projection from its former carrier and re-integrate or restore its content and thus psychic energy within our psyche. Jung writes: “This restoration is achieved through conscious recognition of the projected content, that is, by acknowledging the “symbolic value” of the object (to the subject).” It is therefore that analysis seeks to find the meaning of the object to the subject, in other words an interpretation on the subjective level.

The interpretation of a dream requires exact knowledge of the conscious status quo, Jung says, as the treatment of dream symbolism demands that we take into account the dreamer’s philosophical, religious, and moral convictions.

Dream-images are projections too. Dream-work in the Jungian sense, conceives all the figures in the dream as personified features of the dreamer’s own personality. Of course, especially in our dreams, we create our own worlds, a reality according to ourselves. It have experience with Gestalt-dreamwork (where the individual engages in a dialogue with his dream-images) and hypnotic dreamwork (same but in a trance state) and I am impressed. I have always wondered about the importance of the source of the images though. It seems to me that it is not so important whether we “get” these images from our dreams or from other projections, in “real life” or from our fantasies or from the bed-time stories we tell our kids. The moment of creation, of possible healing, seems to be the moment of contact, of dialogue with the image – from whatever experience this image comes from. The original moment of contact with this image – while experiencing the dream – is past; its is no longer “in the moment”. The re-construction of the dream can only tell us the story “second-hand”, already detached, and thus abstracted from its true experience or reality. Hypnosis could in a way bring us (as close as we can be) “back there” but I don’t think we can duplicate an experience, simply because time has passed and thus we are no longer what we were when we experienced this particular dream-image.

Jung says: “ every advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self-awareness.” He refers to the re-integration (the conscious assimilation of unconscious contents into our self) of our projections. The reality previously perceived as being the “reality out there” becomes “self in here”, thus enlarging our conscious awareness of self.

In Jung’s words: man needs that “split-off energy” (contained in the projection) for his own development.

Yes, it seems to work that way. When really taking projections seriously we could even discuss the possibility that our projections – being parts of ourselves that we project onto an object – can act as mirrors. When we realize we see ourselves in the other, we are no longer talking about “split-off energy”. We then realize that this psychic energy was never “spit-off” but always a – unconscious in Jung’s terms – part of us. By realizing this we become consciously aware of this part – the image we saw in the mirror can become what we are. Self-awareness indeed.