Dreams
Ancestral Dreams
by Iona Miller, (c)2015
As far as my knowledge goes we are aware in dreams of our other life that consists in the first place of all the things we have not yet lived or experienced in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day.
Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
~Carl Jung; The Red Book. Page 242.
As far as my knowledge goes we are aware in dreams of our other life that consists in the first place of all the things we have not yet lived or experienced in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341
Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
~Carl Jung; The Red Book. Page 242.
As far as my knowledge goes we are aware in dreams of our other life that consists in the first place of all the things we have not yet lived or experienced in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341
“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” ―Aeschylus
As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para 4.
Everything psychic has a lower and a higher meaning, as in the profound saying of late classical mysticism: ‘Heaven above, Heaven below, stars above, stars below, all that is above also is below, know this and rejoice.’ Here we lay our finger on the secret symbolical significance of everything psychic. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 77.
The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 64.
I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father's dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 62-64.
I don't use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
That is to say, by means of "free" association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~ Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pg. 292-294.
As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para 4.
Everything psychic has a lower and a higher meaning, as in the profound saying of late classical mysticism: ‘Heaven above, Heaven below, stars above, stars below, all that is above also is below, know this and rejoice.’ Here we lay our finger on the secret symbolical significance of everything psychic. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 77.
The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par. 398.
There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 64.
I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father's dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 62-64.
I don't use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.
That is to say, by means of "free" association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~ Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pg. 292-294.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante´s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice
Dreams, the realm of the collective unconscious, are where our holographic and ancestral memories live, and we can access them from there, and they likewise access us through the dreamworld.
Carl Jung brought the topic of mythology into psychotherapy, and he wrote about his own "personal myth." One approach to dreamwork is the identification of the functional or dysfunctional personal myth (or belief system) embedded in the dream. This personal myth usually is implicit or explicit in what Hartmann calls the "central image" of the dream. In addition, it typically serves as the "chaotic attractor" that self-organizes material drawn to it by the sleeping brain's neural networks. Jung's perspective on dreams is remarkably congruent with many findings in neuroscience as well as the self-regulatory processes that typify contemporary dream theory and research.
My collaborators and I have been studying what Jung called "big dreams" for some time. For various research studies we defined "big dreams" either as "memorable" dreams, as "important" dreams, as "especially significant" dreams, and as "impactful" dreams. In each case we found that the "big dreams" were characterized by significantly higher Central Image Intensity than control groups of dreams - thus more powerful imagery. We did not find clear differences in Content Analysis scoring of these dreams. We will discuss these studies and also present a possible neurobiology of "big dreams."
In an early work, Jung wrote about two types of thinking, directed and fantasy thinking, He had in mind what we might today see as the difference between left brain analytical thinking with words and right brain thinking in images and stories. The brain works differently in each mode, with different areas active and with different chemicals suffusing the neurons. Jung's two types combine what we would now distinguish as right and left brain activity while awake and dream thinking while we are asleep. In referring to the lunar mind, I am speaking about the sleeping mind at work as it dreams us and also the (probably mostly) right brain activity that we use in active imagination. In Jungian psychoanalysis, we are concerned with bringing lunar and solar minds into contact with one another in the field of an analytic relationship, and working with dreams is an essential aspect of this process.
Insights from contemporary neurobiology support rather than contest Jung's view that emotional truth underpins the dreaming process. Recent imaging studies confirm that dreams are the mind's vehicle for the processing of emotional states of being, particularly the fear, anxiety, anger or elation that often figure prominently. Dream sleep is also the guardian of memory, playing a part in forgetting, encoding and affective organization of memory.In the clinical sections of the presentation Margaret will let the dreams speak, revealing the emotionally salient concerns of the dreamers in a way that demonstrates the healthy attempt of the brain-mind to come to terms with difficult emotional experience. The dreams become dreamable as part of the meaning-making process.
Dreams...are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187
Carl Jung brought the topic of mythology into psychotherapy, and he wrote about his own "personal myth." One approach to dreamwork is the identification of the functional or dysfunctional personal myth (or belief system) embedded in the dream. This personal myth usually is implicit or explicit in what Hartmann calls the "central image" of the dream. In addition, it typically serves as the "chaotic attractor" that self-organizes material drawn to it by the sleeping brain's neural networks. Jung's perspective on dreams is remarkably congruent with many findings in neuroscience as well as the self-regulatory processes that typify contemporary dream theory and research.
My collaborators and I have been studying what Jung called "big dreams" for some time. For various research studies we defined "big dreams" either as "memorable" dreams, as "important" dreams, as "especially significant" dreams, and as "impactful" dreams. In each case we found that the "big dreams" were characterized by significantly higher Central Image Intensity than control groups of dreams - thus more powerful imagery. We did not find clear differences in Content Analysis scoring of these dreams. We will discuss these studies and also present a possible neurobiology of "big dreams."
In an early work, Jung wrote about two types of thinking, directed and fantasy thinking, He had in mind what we might today see as the difference between left brain analytical thinking with words and right brain thinking in images and stories. The brain works differently in each mode, with different areas active and with different chemicals suffusing the neurons. Jung's two types combine what we would now distinguish as right and left brain activity while awake and dream thinking while we are asleep. In referring to the lunar mind, I am speaking about the sleeping mind at work as it dreams us and also the (probably mostly) right brain activity that we use in active imagination. In Jungian psychoanalysis, we are concerned with bringing lunar and solar minds into contact with one another in the field of an analytic relationship, and working with dreams is an essential aspect of this process.
Insights from contemporary neurobiology support rather than contest Jung's view that emotional truth underpins the dreaming process. Recent imaging studies confirm that dreams are the mind's vehicle for the processing of emotional states of being, particularly the fear, anxiety, anger or elation that often figure prominently. Dream sleep is also the guardian of memory, playing a part in forgetting, encoding and affective organization of memory.In the clinical sections of the presentation Margaret will let the dreams speak, revealing the emotionally salient concerns of the dreamers in a way that demonstrates the healthy attempt of the brain-mind to come to terms with difficult emotional experience. The dreams become dreamable as part of the meaning-making process.
Dreams...are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187
Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317
Our dreams propel us into a landscape of universal symbols, which
can speak both to our deepest personal realities and to the collective
archetypal world that underpins them.
~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 86.
We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Page 262.
In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, 76.
They [Dreams] do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise… They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 189.
can speak both to our deepest personal realities and to the collective
archetypal world that underpins them.
~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 86.
We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Page 262.
In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, 76.
They [Dreams] do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise… They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 189.
“When a man is in the wilderness, it is the darkness that brings the dreams.”
-Jung
The dream arises from a part of the mind unknown to us, but none the less important, and is concerned with the desires for the approaching day. --Carl Jung (The Psychology of the Unconscious, 1943)
Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. --Jung, Lecture VII 8th March, 1935
We can have prophetic dreams without possessing second sight, innumerable people have such anticipatory dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Pages 26.
Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard-are you God? Is God a child, a maiden? Forgive me if I babble. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. They burned in my heart and drove me to all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to rise above myself. You let me see truths of which I had no previous inkling. You let me undertake journeys, whose endless length would have scared me, if the knowledge of them had not been secure in you. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
-Jung
The dream arises from a part of the mind unknown to us, but none the less important, and is concerned with the desires for the approaching day. --Carl Jung (The Psychology of the Unconscious, 1943)
Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. --Jung, Lecture VII 8th March, 1935
We can have prophetic dreams without possessing second sight, innumerable people have such anticipatory dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Pages 26.
Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard-are you God? Is God a child, a maiden? Forgive me if I babble. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. They burned in my heart and drove me to all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to rise above myself. You let me see truths of which I had no previous inkling. You let me undertake journeys, whose endless length would have scared me, if the knowledge of them had not been secure in you. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.
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The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 198.
The essential thing is not what the dreamer believes but what he is;
it is not my creed that matters, but what I am, every gesture betrays me.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 199.
There are certain dreams which seem really to concern themselves with the fate of the ego, but these belong to the category of big dreams. Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 198.
All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 204.
Pioneer dream researcher Montague Ullman (1988) states, "I no longer look upon dreaming primarily as an individual matter. Rather, I see it as an adaptation concerned with the survival of the species and only secondarily with the individual." Shamanic dreaming harnesses this transcultural aspect of dreamtime.
For Ullman, dreams represent our failures and frustrations in maintaining positive bonds, links to others, our connections with the larger supportive environment, our capacity for involvement. The images metaphorically reflect the core of our being, the place we have made for ourselves in the world. They offer deeper insight into the truth about ourselves, a way of exploring both internal and external hindrances to flow and unbroken wholeness. His view of dreams suggests, "that we are capable of looking deeply into the face of reality and of seeing mirrored in that face the most subtle and poignant features of our struggle to transcend our personal, limited, self-contained, autonomous selves so as to be able to connect with, and be part of, a larger unity." --Miller, Unborn Dream
The object of meditation is prescribed in the East but here we take a fragment of a dream or something of that kind and meditate upon it. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 15.
When you are in the darkness you take the next thing, and that is a dream.
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated.
~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Para 674.
The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of. These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says "to do it in such and such a way would be well”, but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.
Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. There are so many curious sources from which we dream, that we cannot say for certain where anything comes from. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.
Dreams can spring from physical or psychic causes, a dream can be caused by hunger, fever, cold, et cetera, but even then the dreams themselves are made of psychic material.
All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.
The essential thing is not what the dreamer believes but what he is;
it is not my creed that matters, but what I am, every gesture betrays me.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 199.
There are certain dreams which seem really to concern themselves with the fate of the ego, but these belong to the category of big dreams. Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 198.
All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 204.
Pioneer dream researcher Montague Ullman (1988) states, "I no longer look upon dreaming primarily as an individual matter. Rather, I see it as an adaptation concerned with the survival of the species and only secondarily with the individual." Shamanic dreaming harnesses this transcultural aspect of dreamtime.
For Ullman, dreams represent our failures and frustrations in maintaining positive bonds, links to others, our connections with the larger supportive environment, our capacity for involvement. The images metaphorically reflect the core of our being, the place we have made for ourselves in the world. They offer deeper insight into the truth about ourselves, a way of exploring both internal and external hindrances to flow and unbroken wholeness. His view of dreams suggests, "that we are capable of looking deeply into the face of reality and of seeing mirrored in that face the most subtle and poignant features of our struggle to transcend our personal, limited, self-contained, autonomous selves so as to be able to connect with, and be part of, a larger unity." --Miller, Unborn Dream
The object of meditation is prescribed in the East but here we take a fragment of a dream or something of that kind and meditate upon it. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 15.
When you are in the darkness you take the next thing, and that is a dream.
And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated.
~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Para 674.
The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of. These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says "to do it in such and such a way would be well”, but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.
Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. There are so many curious sources from which we dream, that we cannot say for certain where anything comes from. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.
Dreams can spring from physical or psychic causes, a dream can be caused by hunger, fever, cold, et cetera, but even then the dreams themselves are made of psychic material.
All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.
BIG DREAMS
Big Dreams, also known as archetypal dreams, seem to be cut from a different cloth. Most importantly, they feel more real than real life, and a strong “felt meaning” is experienced in the moment. I think some visitation dreams definitely fit this description. But the other categories really set Big Dreams apart from ordinary dreams.
The most common elements are: encounters with mythological creatures and strange, intelligent animals feeling awe, fascination, fear and terror, and a sense of “Other”abstract geometric patterns and kaleidoscopic mandalas,the experience of flying, floating or falling,
Unlike ordinary dreams, these dreams are not easily picked at with standard dream interpretation procedures like psychoanalysis because very little personal history is encoded in these larger-than-life experiences. Archetypal dreams also have a consistency unmatched by ordinary dreams; in other words, their structure is cleanly focused, and the delivery to consciousness resembles waking visions of shamans and saints more than other nocturnal dreams.
For the Elgoni tribe of dreamers, big dreams were seen as collective dreams. The dreamer was dreaming for the community, for the landscape, and perhaps for all of the world. This shamanic style of dreaming matched well with Jung’s own experience, and it gave him further insight into his theories of the collective unconscious (as a side note, later in life, Jung revised his earlier essays about the collective unconscious and moved away from theories dealing with “racial memory”, instead framing these shared experiences in a way that is more parsimonious with today’s evolutionary psychology: as bodily expressions transformed metaphorically into cognitive symbols that all humans share due to our common biological heritage.)
http://dreamstudies.org/2008/11/14/big-dreams-archetypal-visions/
Big Dreams, also known as archetypal dreams, seem to be cut from a different cloth. Most importantly, they feel more real than real life, and a strong “felt meaning” is experienced in the moment. I think some visitation dreams definitely fit this description. But the other categories really set Big Dreams apart from ordinary dreams.
The most common elements are: encounters with mythological creatures and strange, intelligent animals feeling awe, fascination, fear and terror, and a sense of “Other”abstract geometric patterns and kaleidoscopic mandalas,the experience of flying, floating or falling,
Unlike ordinary dreams, these dreams are not easily picked at with standard dream interpretation procedures like psychoanalysis because very little personal history is encoded in these larger-than-life experiences. Archetypal dreams also have a consistency unmatched by ordinary dreams; in other words, their structure is cleanly focused, and the delivery to consciousness resembles waking visions of shamans and saints more than other nocturnal dreams.
For the Elgoni tribe of dreamers, big dreams were seen as collective dreams. The dreamer was dreaming for the community, for the landscape, and perhaps for all of the world. This shamanic style of dreaming matched well with Jung’s own experience, and it gave him further insight into his theories of the collective unconscious (as a side note, later in life, Jung revised his earlier essays about the collective unconscious and moved away from theories dealing with “racial memory”, instead framing these shared experiences in a way that is more parsimonious with today’s evolutionary psychology: as bodily expressions transformed metaphorically into cognitive symbols that all humans share due to our common biological heritage.)
http://dreamstudies.org/2008/11/14/big-dreams-archetypal-visions/
A dream gives us unadorned information about the condition of a patient, it is as if a nature- being were stating his diagnosis or taking a child by the ear and telling him what he is doing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
Dreams never really repeat experience, they always have a meaning, they are like association experiments, only they themselves produce the test words, they are a whole system of test words. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 134.
Big dreams are impressive, they go with us through life, and sometimes change us through and through, but small dreams are fragmentary and just deal with the personal moment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 133.
So we cannot judge dreams from the conscious point of view, but can only think of them as complementary to consciousness. Dreams answer the questions of our conscious.
~Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.
It was the anticipatory quality in dreams that was first valued by antiquity and they played an important role in the ritual of many religions. ~Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 P. 156.
Dreams often seem nonsense to us, but they spring from nature and are related to our future life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something which we know nothing of. ~ Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
A dream gives us unadorned information about the condition of a patient, it is as if a nature- being were stating his diagnosis or taking a child by the ear and telling him what he is doing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
A symbol of primal source of growth and potential that can heal or destroy. In dreams they can appear as a magician, doctor, priest, father, teacher, guru or any other authority figure. Jung called this archetype 'mana' personalities. They can lead us to higher levels of awareness, or away from them. Trickster appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all. In dreams {and myth} the trickster can be seen as The Fool The Magician The Clown The Jester The Villain The Destroyer. The shadow is often depicted as: A shadowy figure, often the same sex as dreamer but inferior; a zombie or walking dead; a dark shape; an unseen "Thing"; someone or something we feel uneasy about or in some measure repelled by; drug addict; pervert; what is behind one in a dream; anything dark or threatening; sometimes a younger brother or sister; a junior colleague; a foreigner; a servant; a gypsy; a prostitute; a burglar; a sinister figure in the dark. The shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon or some other dark, wild or exotic figure.
Some symbols of the anima are the cow, a cat, a tiger, a cave and a ship. All of those are more or less female figures. Ships are associated with the sea, which is a common symbol for the feminine, and are womb-like insofar as they are hollow. (At a launching we still say, 'Bless all who sail her".) Caves are hollow and womb-like. Sometimes they are filled with water, which - as we have seen - is a symbol of the feminine, and are the womb of the Mother Earth or vaginal entrances to her womb. The earth is seen as female (Mother Earth) and symbolizes sensuous existence - that is, existence confined within the limits of the senses - plus intuition.
With the exception of the mother figure, the dream symbols representing soul-image are always of the opposite sex to the dreamer. Thus, a man's anima may be represented in his dreams by his sister; a woman's animus by her brother. Some other symbols of the animus are an eagle, a bull, a lion, and a phallus (erect penis) or other phallic figure such as a tower or spear. The eagle is associated with high altitudes and in mythology the sky is usually (ancient Egyptian mythology is the exception) regarded as a male and symbolizes pure reason or spirituality. In dreams the Divine Child usually appears as a baby or infant. It is both vulnerable, yet at the same time inviolate and possessing great transforming power. The persona can appear in dreams as a scarecrow or tramp, or as a desolate landscape, or as a social outcast. To be naked in a dream would symbolize a loss of persona.
Dreams never really repeat experience, they always have a meaning, they are like association experiments, only they themselves produce the test words, they are a whole system of test words. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 134.
Big dreams are impressive, they go with us through life, and sometimes change us through and through, but small dreams are fragmentary and just deal with the personal moment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 133.
So we cannot judge dreams from the conscious point of view, but can only think of them as complementary to consciousness. Dreams answer the questions of our conscious.
~Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.
It was the anticipatory quality in dreams that was first valued by antiquity and they played an important role in the ritual of many religions. ~Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 P. 156.
Dreams often seem nonsense to us, but they spring from nature and are related to our future life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something which we know nothing of. ~ Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
A dream gives us unadorned information about the condition of a patient, it is as if a nature- being were stating his diagnosis or taking a child by the ear and telling him what he is doing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
A symbol of primal source of growth and potential that can heal or destroy. In dreams they can appear as a magician, doctor, priest, father, teacher, guru or any other authority figure. Jung called this archetype 'mana' personalities. They can lead us to higher levels of awareness, or away from them. Trickster appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all. In dreams {and myth} the trickster can be seen as The Fool The Magician The Clown The Jester The Villain The Destroyer. The shadow is often depicted as: A shadowy figure, often the same sex as dreamer but inferior; a zombie or walking dead; a dark shape; an unseen "Thing"; someone or something we feel uneasy about or in some measure repelled by; drug addict; pervert; what is behind one in a dream; anything dark or threatening; sometimes a younger brother or sister; a junior colleague; a foreigner; a servant; a gypsy; a prostitute; a burglar; a sinister figure in the dark. The shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon or some other dark, wild or exotic figure.
Some symbols of the anima are the cow, a cat, a tiger, a cave and a ship. All of those are more or less female figures. Ships are associated with the sea, which is a common symbol for the feminine, and are womb-like insofar as they are hollow. (At a launching we still say, 'Bless all who sail her".) Caves are hollow and womb-like. Sometimes they are filled with water, which - as we have seen - is a symbol of the feminine, and are the womb of the Mother Earth or vaginal entrances to her womb. The earth is seen as female (Mother Earth) and symbolizes sensuous existence - that is, existence confined within the limits of the senses - plus intuition.
With the exception of the mother figure, the dream symbols representing soul-image are always of the opposite sex to the dreamer. Thus, a man's anima may be represented in his dreams by his sister; a woman's animus by her brother. Some other symbols of the animus are an eagle, a bull, a lion, and a phallus (erect penis) or other phallic figure such as a tower or spear. The eagle is associated with high altitudes and in mythology the sky is usually (ancient Egyptian mythology is the exception) regarded as a male and symbolizes pure reason or spirituality. In dreams the Divine Child usually appears as a baby or infant. It is both vulnerable, yet at the same time inviolate and possessing great transforming power. The persona can appear in dreams as a scarecrow or tramp, or as a desolate landscape, or as a social outcast. To be naked in a dream would symbolize a loss of persona.
Archetypal Approach
The basic philosophy behind archetypal psychology was inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the archetypes: Primordial symbols, appearing predominantly within our dreams, which are the common heritage of all mankind. The concept of archetypes implies that there are sources of health, healing, strength and wisdom within the psyche that are accessible to all of us. Archetypal psychology seeks to open up connections to this deeper source, believing that the true cures for a wide array of mental and emotional problems can be found there.
In The Dream and the Underworld, archetypal psychologist and post-Jungian James Hillman prefers to allow the dream and dream symbols to remain what they are, and not to analyze and interpret them but to simply interact with them and see what comes about. However, Hillman’s method of seeing focuses far more on an artistic view than from a therapeutic or results-oriented standpoint. As such, when it comes to dreams and symbols, he stays with the process and activity itself instead of seeking an outcome or solution. He values the description over interpretation, the animating and making a thing come alive rather than suffocating it with a contrived explanation from outside the dream. He thrives on visiting the dream in its own realm of power, the underworld, and in honoring it by allowing it to be its own entity there instead of trying to make it come alive in our ordinary world of thinking.
Hillman’s goal, as was Jung’s, is to get ever closer to the characters and activity in the dream realm, but as opposed to Jung who then turned to amplification in order to find meaning and interpretation at the level of the waking ego, Hillman chooses not to bring the dream element back into waking life and force it to match up with symbols or meanings we already hold. In fact, Hillman claims that to bring the dream out of the underworld actually betrays the dream. Hillman advocates finding wordplays, asking questions of the objects themselves, and then allowing them to live out their own soul-like existence without comparison or contrast to external references. He chides us in our desire to analyze, our wish to know, and speaks of “letting our desire die away into its images (p. 201). http://www.depthinsights.com/blog/working-with-dreams-depth-psychology-techniques-of-carl-gustav-jung-and-james-hillman/#sthash.nTyRGyAb.dpuf
Jung studied how historical religions, deities, and fables influenced an individual’s sense of self. Archetypal psychology theorizes that a person’s dreams and psyche are intertwined with their beliefs and that this union is what forms their behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. The archetype is symbolic of an individual’s collective life experiences and determines what choices, both conscious and unconscious, a person makes. Archetypal psychology focuses on the soul of a person and Jung and his predecessors found similarities in the archetypes of legends and the drive that is human motivation. Today, archetypal psychologists still consider archetypes a prominent force in the development of an individual’s psychological construct.
Dream analysis
Because Hillman's archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, it is not surprising that dreams are considered to be significant in relation to soul and soul-making. Hillman does not believe that dreams are simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), but neither does he believe that dreams are compensatory for the struggles of waking life, or are invested with “secret” meanings of how one should live (à la Jung). Rather, “dreams tell us where we are, not what to do” (1979). Therefore, Hillman is against the 20th century traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis. Hillman’s approach is phenomenological rather than analytic (which breaks the dream down into its constituent parts) and interpretive/hermeneutic (which may make a dream image “something other” than what it appears to be in the dream). His dictum with regard to dream content and process is “Stick with the image.”
Hillman (1983) describes his position succinctly:
For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour with this black snake talking about the devouring mother, talking about anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind, all those interpretive moves that people make, and what is left, what is vitally important, is what this snake is doing, this crawling huge black snake that’s walking into your life…and the moment you’ve defined the snake, you’ve interpreted it, you’ve lost the snake, you’ve stopped it.… The task of analysis is to keep the snake there.… The snake in the dream does not become something else: it is none of the things Hillman mentioned, and neither is it a penis, as Hillman says Freud might have maintained, nor the serpent from the Garden of Eden, as Hillman thinks Jung might have mentioned. It is not something someone can look up in a dream dictionary; its meaning has not been given in advance. Rather, the black snake is the black snake. Approaching the dream snake phenomenologically simply means describing the snake and attending to how the snake appears as a snake in the dream. It is a huge black snake, that is given. But are there other snakes in the dream? If so, is it bigger than the other snakes? Smaller? Is it a black snake among green snakes? Or is it alone? What is the setting, a desert or a rain forest? Is the snake getting ready to feed? Shedding its skin? Sunning itself on a rock? All of these questions are elicited from the primary image of the snake in the dream, and as such can be rich material revealing the psychological life of the dreamer and the life of the psyche spoken through the dream. [Wikipedia - Hillman]
The basic philosophy behind archetypal psychology was inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the archetypes: Primordial symbols, appearing predominantly within our dreams, which are the common heritage of all mankind. The concept of archetypes implies that there are sources of health, healing, strength and wisdom within the psyche that are accessible to all of us. Archetypal psychology seeks to open up connections to this deeper source, believing that the true cures for a wide array of mental and emotional problems can be found there.
In The Dream and the Underworld, archetypal psychologist and post-Jungian James Hillman prefers to allow the dream and dream symbols to remain what they are, and not to analyze and interpret them but to simply interact with them and see what comes about. However, Hillman’s method of seeing focuses far more on an artistic view than from a therapeutic or results-oriented standpoint. As such, when it comes to dreams and symbols, he stays with the process and activity itself instead of seeking an outcome or solution. He values the description over interpretation, the animating and making a thing come alive rather than suffocating it with a contrived explanation from outside the dream. He thrives on visiting the dream in its own realm of power, the underworld, and in honoring it by allowing it to be its own entity there instead of trying to make it come alive in our ordinary world of thinking.
Hillman’s goal, as was Jung’s, is to get ever closer to the characters and activity in the dream realm, but as opposed to Jung who then turned to amplification in order to find meaning and interpretation at the level of the waking ego, Hillman chooses not to bring the dream element back into waking life and force it to match up with symbols or meanings we already hold. In fact, Hillman claims that to bring the dream out of the underworld actually betrays the dream. Hillman advocates finding wordplays, asking questions of the objects themselves, and then allowing them to live out their own soul-like existence without comparison or contrast to external references. He chides us in our desire to analyze, our wish to know, and speaks of “letting our desire die away into its images (p. 201). http://www.depthinsights.com/blog/working-with-dreams-depth-psychology-techniques-of-carl-gustav-jung-and-james-hillman/#sthash.nTyRGyAb.dpuf
Jung studied how historical religions, deities, and fables influenced an individual’s sense of self. Archetypal psychology theorizes that a person’s dreams and psyche are intertwined with their beliefs and that this union is what forms their behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. The archetype is symbolic of an individual’s collective life experiences and determines what choices, both conscious and unconscious, a person makes. Archetypal psychology focuses on the soul of a person and Jung and his predecessors found similarities in the archetypes of legends and the drive that is human motivation. Today, archetypal psychologists still consider archetypes a prominent force in the development of an individual’s psychological construct.
Dream analysis
Because Hillman's archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, it is not surprising that dreams are considered to be significant in relation to soul and soul-making. Hillman does not believe that dreams are simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), but neither does he believe that dreams are compensatory for the struggles of waking life, or are invested with “secret” meanings of how one should live (à la Jung). Rather, “dreams tell us where we are, not what to do” (1979). Therefore, Hillman is against the 20th century traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis. Hillman’s approach is phenomenological rather than analytic (which breaks the dream down into its constituent parts) and interpretive/hermeneutic (which may make a dream image “something other” than what it appears to be in the dream). His dictum with regard to dream content and process is “Stick with the image.”
Hillman (1983) describes his position succinctly:
For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour with this black snake talking about the devouring mother, talking about anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind, all those interpretive moves that people make, and what is left, what is vitally important, is what this snake is doing, this crawling huge black snake that’s walking into your life…and the moment you’ve defined the snake, you’ve interpreted it, you’ve lost the snake, you’ve stopped it.… The task of analysis is to keep the snake there.… The snake in the dream does not become something else: it is none of the things Hillman mentioned, and neither is it a penis, as Hillman says Freud might have maintained, nor the serpent from the Garden of Eden, as Hillman thinks Jung might have mentioned. It is not something someone can look up in a dream dictionary; its meaning has not been given in advance. Rather, the black snake is the black snake. Approaching the dream snake phenomenologically simply means describing the snake and attending to how the snake appears as a snake in the dream. It is a huge black snake, that is given. But are there other snakes in the dream? If so, is it bigger than the other snakes? Smaller? Is it a black snake among green snakes? Or is it alone? What is the setting, a desert or a rain forest? Is the snake getting ready to feed? Shedding its skin? Sunning itself on a rock? All of these questions are elicited from the primary image of the snake in the dream, and as such can be rich material revealing the psychological life of the dreamer and the life of the psyche spoken through the dream. [Wikipedia - Hillman]
Ancestral Vigal; Dream Incubation
The dream is its own interpretation.
“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.” —Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man, 1934
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
--General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
It has been proved over and over again that very long dreams can take place in the
shortest time imaginable. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
There are people who hold that dreams are self sufficient and that they can be understood without their associations. This is an illusion. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 142.
There is no stereotyped explanation for dream symbols, we must not forget that words often have a totally different setting for other people than for ourselves and if we talk to them from our preconceived ideas it is as bad as talking Swiss-German to an Englishman. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 141.
It is as if there were another time, under the dream, and as if something existed there which knew far more and saw much further than we do. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The psychic contents of a dream are very complicated; it runs timelessly through the head as if there were no time. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The position of the body produces some dreams, and a real noise can work itself into a dream in a most peculiar way. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
With complexes we are still in a sphere where we can experiment, but with dreams experimenting comes to an end, for we are dealing with pure nature. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 133.
“This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.”
Professor Jung:
This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
We are the object of the dream, not its maker.
The French say: “To makedream.”
This is wrong.
The dream is dreamed to us.
We are the objects.
We simply find ourselves put into a situation.
If a fatal destiny is awaiting us, we are already seized by what will lead us to this destiny in the dream, in the same way it will overcome us in reality.
One of my friends, who was attacked by a mamba (cobra) in Africa, dreamed of this event two months in advance in Zurich.
The snake attacked him in the dream exactly in the way it later did in reality.
Such a dream is anticipated fate.
Participant:
So we cannot always assume that the dream wants to make something conscious?
Professor Jung:
No, not at all.
This is anthropomorphic thinking.
We can only try to understand what the dream offers.
If we are wise, we can put it to use.
We must not think that dreams necessarily have a benevolent intention.
Nature is kind and generous, but also absolutely cruel.
That is its characteristic.
Think of children.
There is nothing more cruel than children, and yet they are so lovely.
If I had such a dream, I would naturally react differently from the woman in question.
But as I am a different person, I also have a different dream.
So that’s not how we should think. We can only compare.
The hopeless case has the hopeless dream, the hopeful one has the hopeful dream.
Participant:
Is it possible to understand all dreams? Isn’t it already in the nature of such a dream that it cannot be understood?
Professor Jung:
If the dreamer had had it in her to understand this dream at some point later on, there probably would have been a suffix of hope added to it.
There would be a ray of light at the end, which would give the doctor a hint.
He could then say: “You have had a very alarming dream.”
And the patient would perhaps understand him. If she understands the dream, she will be on her way to integrate the pathological part.
With this patient, I had talked about dreams. Interestingly, she did not mention these dreams.
But when she was gone, they came to her as an esprit d’escalier.
She then told me about them in a letter.
If the dreamer had actually told them, I would have been even more scared.
I had seen her a couple of times, but had not come far enough to identify the content of her peculiar disturbance.
She did not come into a mental institution, but hovers above the ground as a shadow.
Right before she came to me, she had undergone a psychotic phase.
She came to me during the downhill phase of a psychotic interval.
You can see which fate the two dreams from childhood have anticipated.
Participant: Couldn’t there come positive dreams again later on, which would lessen the uncanny aspect?
Professor Jung:
Positive dreams may well follow, but none of them have the importance of the childhood dreams, because the child is much nearer the collective unconscious than the adults.
Children still live directly in the great images.
There are high points in life—puberty, midlife—when the great dreams appear again, those dreamed out of the depth of the personality.
In the life of the adult, dreams mostly refer to personal life.
Then the persona is in the foreground, what is essential in their personality has long emigrated, is long gone, perhaps never to be reached again. ~Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 159-160.
We are not far from the truth, in fact we are very near to primeval truth, when we think of our dreams as answers to questions, which we have asked and which we have not asked. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 157
Dreams repeat themselves and motifs appear again and again, sometimes quite regularly, showing the continuity of the unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 167
A single dream is not convincing, one dream flows out of another, they are images which come from an inner source, a stream that never ceases and which comes to the surface when our consciousness relaxes. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Pages 166-167.
Phantasies and dreams do not of themselves enlarge consciousness, they have to be understood and here the great difficulty begins. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.
Speaking from the standpoint of many thousands of dreams I cannot say that they show guidance. It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says "to do it in such and such a way would be well", but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 198.
The dream is its own interpretation.
“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.” —Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man, 1934
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
--General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
It has been proved over and over again that very long dreams can take place in the
shortest time imaginable. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
There are people who hold that dreams are self sufficient and that they can be understood without their associations. This is an illusion. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 142.
There is no stereotyped explanation for dream symbols, we must not forget that words often have a totally different setting for other people than for ourselves and if we talk to them from our preconceived ideas it is as bad as talking Swiss-German to an Englishman. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 141.
It is as if there were another time, under the dream, and as if something existed there which knew far more and saw much further than we do. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The psychic contents of a dream are very complicated; it runs timelessly through the head as if there were no time. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The position of the body produces some dreams, and a real noise can work itself into a dream in a most peculiar way. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 134.
With complexes we are still in a sphere where we can experiment, but with dreams experimenting comes to an end, for we are dealing with pure nature. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 133.
“This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.”
Professor Jung:
This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
We are the object of the dream, not its maker.
The French say: “To makedream.”
This is wrong.
The dream is dreamed to us.
We are the objects.
We simply find ourselves put into a situation.
If a fatal destiny is awaiting us, we are already seized by what will lead us to this destiny in the dream, in the same way it will overcome us in reality.
One of my friends, who was attacked by a mamba (cobra) in Africa, dreamed of this event two months in advance in Zurich.
The snake attacked him in the dream exactly in the way it later did in reality.
Such a dream is anticipated fate.
Participant:
So we cannot always assume that the dream wants to make something conscious?
Professor Jung:
No, not at all.
This is anthropomorphic thinking.
We can only try to understand what the dream offers.
If we are wise, we can put it to use.
We must not think that dreams necessarily have a benevolent intention.
Nature is kind and generous, but also absolutely cruel.
That is its characteristic.
Think of children.
There is nothing more cruel than children, and yet they are so lovely.
If I had such a dream, I would naturally react differently from the woman in question.
But as I am a different person, I also have a different dream.
So that’s not how we should think. We can only compare.
The hopeless case has the hopeless dream, the hopeful one has the hopeful dream.
Participant:
Is it possible to understand all dreams? Isn’t it already in the nature of such a dream that it cannot be understood?
Professor Jung:
If the dreamer had had it in her to understand this dream at some point later on, there probably would have been a suffix of hope added to it.
There would be a ray of light at the end, which would give the doctor a hint.
He could then say: “You have had a very alarming dream.”
And the patient would perhaps understand him. If she understands the dream, she will be on her way to integrate the pathological part.
With this patient, I had talked about dreams. Interestingly, she did not mention these dreams.
But when she was gone, they came to her as an esprit d’escalier.
She then told me about them in a letter.
If the dreamer had actually told them, I would have been even more scared.
I had seen her a couple of times, but had not come far enough to identify the content of her peculiar disturbance.
She did not come into a mental institution, but hovers above the ground as a shadow.
Right before she came to me, she had undergone a psychotic phase.
She came to me during the downhill phase of a psychotic interval.
You can see which fate the two dreams from childhood have anticipated.
Participant: Couldn’t there come positive dreams again later on, which would lessen the uncanny aspect?
Professor Jung:
Positive dreams may well follow, but none of them have the importance of the childhood dreams, because the child is much nearer the collective unconscious than the adults.
Children still live directly in the great images.
There are high points in life—puberty, midlife—when the great dreams appear again, those dreamed out of the depth of the personality.
In the life of the adult, dreams mostly refer to personal life.
Then the persona is in the foreground, what is essential in their personality has long emigrated, is long gone, perhaps never to be reached again. ~Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 159-160.
We are not far from the truth, in fact we are very near to primeval truth, when we think of our dreams as answers to questions, which we have asked and which we have not asked. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 157
Dreams repeat themselves and motifs appear again and again, sometimes quite regularly, showing the continuity of the unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 167
A single dream is not convincing, one dream flows out of another, they are images which come from an inner source, a stream that never ceases and which comes to the surface when our consciousness relaxes. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Pages 166-167.
Phantasies and dreams do not of themselves enlarge consciousness, they have to be understood and here the great difficulty begins. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.
Speaking from the standpoint of many thousands of dreams I cannot say that they show guidance. It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says "to do it in such and such a way would be well", but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 198.
The dream is never a mere repetition of previous experiences, with only one specific exception: shock or shell shock dreams, which sometimes are completely identical repetitions of reality. That, in fact, is a proof of the traumatic effect. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 21.
And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 340.
The Ancestral Core
The chief concern of the Red Book (Jung's Book of the Dead), according to Hillman and Shamdasani, is giving voice to the dead - to history, to the actual dead, to buried ideas. Our culture is so forward looking, valuing novelty over reflection on the past, that the ancestors are too often forgotten. If we don't deal with them, their lament will continue to haunt us and foil our intents. True novelty requires the seed-bed of the past's rich loam.
Dreams and fantasies play significant roles in waking life. In addition, a major focus is “the dead” as both a literal and metaphysical concept, as well as the imperative to provide a voice and place for the dead to enable our own living.
Jung calls attention to the one deep, missing part of our culture, which is the realm of the dead. The realm not just of your personal ancestors but the realm of the dead, the weight of human history, and what is the real repressed, and that is like a great monster eating us from within and from below and sapping our strength as a culture. It's all that's forgotten, and not just forgotten in the past, but that we're living in a world which is alive with the dead, they’re around us, they're with us, they are us. The figures, the memories, the ghosts, it's all there, and as you get older your borders dissolve, and you realize I am among them.
--Lament of the Dead
We have to place the dream so that we can see it in human life, we have to see its meaning in the psyche. A dream comes in a fragmentary form like a telegram and we often fail to understand it for want of context. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 166.
Precognitive dreams can be recognized and verified as such only when the precognized event has actually happened.
Otherwise the greatest uncertainty prevails.
Also, such dreams are relatively rare.
It is therefore not worth looking at the dreams for their future significance.
One usually gets it wrong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 460-461.
And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 340.
The Ancestral Core
The chief concern of the Red Book (Jung's Book of the Dead), according to Hillman and Shamdasani, is giving voice to the dead - to history, to the actual dead, to buried ideas. Our culture is so forward looking, valuing novelty over reflection on the past, that the ancestors are too often forgotten. If we don't deal with them, their lament will continue to haunt us and foil our intents. True novelty requires the seed-bed of the past's rich loam.
Dreams and fantasies play significant roles in waking life. In addition, a major focus is “the dead” as both a literal and metaphysical concept, as well as the imperative to provide a voice and place for the dead to enable our own living.
Jung calls attention to the one deep, missing part of our culture, which is the realm of the dead. The realm not just of your personal ancestors but the realm of the dead, the weight of human history, and what is the real repressed, and that is like a great monster eating us from within and from below and sapping our strength as a culture. It's all that's forgotten, and not just forgotten in the past, but that we're living in a world which is alive with the dead, they’re around us, they're with us, they are us. The figures, the memories, the ghosts, it's all there, and as you get older your borders dissolve, and you realize I am among them.
--Lament of the Dead
We have to place the dream so that we can see it in human life, we have to see its meaning in the psyche. A dream comes in a fragmentary form like a telegram and we often fail to understand it for want of context. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 166.
Precognitive dreams can be recognized and verified as such only when the precognized event has actually happened.
Otherwise the greatest uncertainty prevails.
Also, such dreams are relatively rare.
It is therefore not worth looking at the dreams for their future significance.
One usually gets it wrong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 460-461.
The Value of Dreamwork,
by Iona Miller
The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are precisely those which have inspired the basic images of ritual and mythology. These eternal ones of the dream are not to be confused with the personality modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmares or madness to the tormented individual. Dream is the personalized myth. Myth is the depersonalized dream. --Joseph Campbell
No one who does not know himself can know others. And in each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dream and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a different situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude; the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. --C. G. Jung
As we spend a large proportion of our lives in a dream state, a fuller understanding of their implications may prove valuable. Today, there are several prevailing theories concerning the significance and value of dreams. No final statement about dream may be made. There are several approaches to each perspective which is assumed a priori. There are many alternatives to choose from. One's choice of style in dreamwork will be determined by the mythemes currently embraced. The characteristic attitudes associated with the archetypes will motivate and influence one's approach to the dreamworld.
Strephon Kaplan Williams (3) (Jungian-Senoi Institute) is one of the foremost proponents of Dreamwork. He outlines a six-point program for continued use. 1. Dialogue with the dream characters, asking questions and recording answers. 2. Re-experience of the dream through imagination, art projects, and creativity. 3. Examination of unresolved aspects of the dream, and contemplation of solutions. 4. Actualization of insights in daily life, where relevant. 5. Meditation on the source of dreams and insight from the Self. 6. Synthesize the essence of dreamlife and its meaning in a journal and apply them in one's life journey. To offer a variety of other approaches, we will cover theories on dreams and dreaming from Jung's original work, the analytical psychology school, para-psychology, and archetypal or imaginal psychology.
Knowledge of the antiquated Freudian system is so wide-spread that no further comment here seems necessary. Jung was the first to depart from Freud's "sexuality-fraught" perception of dreams. Where Freud saw one complex, Jung saw many. He saw in dreams a gamut of archetypes overseen by the transcendent function, or Self. Analytical psychology amplified and clarified his original material. Most of this work is concerned with the fantasy of the process of individuation. It reflects an ego with a heroic attitude, and proceeds by stages of development. Consciousness, at this stage, is generally monotheistic. It has a tendency to seek the center of meaning, as if there were only One.
Parapsychological work done with dreams also seems to reflect this attitude of searching, influencing, and controlling. In Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman differs from the traditional analytical viewpoint by stating: Dreams are important to the Soul--not for the message the ego takes from them, not for the recovered memories or the revelations; what does seem to matter to the soul is the nightly encounter with a plurality of shades in an underworld...the freeing of the soul from its identity with the ego and the waking state...What we learn from dreams is what psychic nature really is--the nature of psychic reality; not I, but we...not monotheistic consciousness looking down from its mountain, but polytheistic consciousness wandering all over the place. In Jung's model, one major function of dreams is to provide the unconscious with a means of exercising its regulative activity. Conscious attitudes tend to become one-sided. Through their postulated compensatory effect, dreams present different data and varying points of view. Individuation is the psyche's goal; it seeks to bring this about through an internal adjustment procedure. There is an admonition in Magick to "balance each thought against its opposite."
Dreams, according to Jung, do this for us automatically. However, there must be a conscious striving toward incorporation of the balancing attitudes presented through dreams (this applies equally to fantasies and visions). Another apparent function for a dream state is to take old information, contained in long-term memory, incorporate it with those experiences, and integrate them with new experiences. This creates new attitudes. Since the dream conjoins current and past experiences to form new attitudes, the dream contains possible information about the future. There is a causal relationship between our attitudes and the events which manifest from our many possible futures. In studies at Maimonides Dream Labs, Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman were trying to impress certain information on an individual's dream. They found that an individual, being monitored for dream states, could incorporate a mandala, which was being concentrated on by another subject, into his dream. This led to their famous theory on dream telepathy.
Dream symbols appear to allow repressed impulses to be expressed in disguised forms. Dream symbols are essential message-carriers from the instinctive-archetypal continuum to the rational part of the human mind. Their incorporation enriches consciousness, so that it learns to understand the forgotten language of the pre-conscious mind. The dream language presents symbols from which you can gain value through dream monitoring. You can use these dream symbols directly to facilitate communication with this other aspect of yourself.
Should you choose later to re-program yourself out of old habit patterns, you're going to want an accurate conception of what dream symbols really mean. A symbol always stands for something that is unknown. It contains more than it's obvious or immediate meaning. The symbolic function bridges man's inner and outer world. Symbolism represents a continuity of consciousness and preconscious mental activity, in which the preconscious extends beyond the boundaries of the individual. These primitive processes of prelogical thinking continue throughout life and do not indicate a regressive mode of thought.
Dream symbols are independent of time, space, and causality. The meaning of unconscious contents varies with the specific internal and external situation of the dreamer. Some dreams originate in a personal or conscious context. These dreams usually reflect personal conflicts, or fragmentary impressions left over from the day. Some dreams, on the other hand, are rooted in the contents of the collective unconscious. Their appearance is spontaneous and may be due to some conscious experience, which causes specific archetypes to constellate. It is often difficult to distinguish personal contents from collective contents. In dreams, archetypes often appear in contemporary dress, often as persons vitally connected with us.
In this case, both their personal aspect (or objective level), and their significance as projections or partial aspects of the psyche (subjective level) may be brought into consciousness. A dream is never merely a repetition of preceding events, except in the case of past psychic trauma. There is specific value in the symbols and context the psyche utilizes. It may produce any; why is it sending just this dream and not another?
Dreams rich in pictorial detail usually relate to individual problems. Universal contexts are revealed in simple, vivid images with scant detail. No attempt to interpret a single dream, or even the sequence dreams fall in, is fruitful. In fact, later research by Asklepia Foundation researchers asserts it is more important to journey using dreams as experiential springboards for therapeutic outcomes. In interpreting a group of dreams, we seek to discover the 'center of meaning' which all the dreams express in varied form.
When this 'center' is discovered by consciousness and its lesson assimilated, the dreams begin to spring from a new center. Recurring dreams generally indicate an unresolved conflict trying to break into consciousness. There are three types of significance a dream may carry: 1) It may stem from a definite impression of the immediate past. As a reaction, it supplements or compliments the impressions of the day. 2) Here there is balance between the conscious and unconsciousness components. The dream contents are independent of the conscious situation, and are so different from it they present conflict. 3) When this contrary position of the unconscious is stronger, we have spontaneous dreams with no relation to consciousness. These dreams are archetypal in origin, and consequently are over-powering, strange and often oracular. (These dreams are not necessarily most desirable to the student, as they may be extremely dangerous if the dreamer's ego is still too narrow to recognize and assimilate their meaning.)
We can never empirically determine the meaning of a dream. We cannot accept a meaning merely because it fits in with what we expected. Dreams can exert a reductive as well as prospective function. In other words, if our conscious attitude is inflated, dreams may compensate negatively, and show us our human frailty and dependence. They also may act positively by providing a 'guiding image' which corrects a self-devaluing attitude, re-establishing balance. The unconscious, by anticipating future conscious achievements, provides a rough plan for progress. Each life, says Jung, is guided by a private myth.
Each individual has a great store of DNA information. It is generally mediated by the archetypes which are deployed by both myth and dream. As you create this individual or private myth, it attracts, if you will, an archetypal pattern and molds itself in a characteristic way (or visa versa). The archetype precipitates compulsive action. It is the motivating factor which may become externalized in the physical world. Jung notes: "The dreamer's unconscious is communicating with the dreamer alone. And is selecting symbols which have meaning to the dreamer and no one else. They also involve the collective unconscious whose expression may be social rather than personal."
We may discover hidden meaning in our dreams and fantasies through the following procedure: 1) Determine the present situation of consciousness. What significant events surround the dream? 2) With the lowering of the threshold of consciousness, unconscious contents arise through dream, vision, and fantasy. 3) After perceiving the contents, record them so they are not lost (the Hermetic seal). 4) Investigate, clarify, and elaborate by amplification with personal meanings, and collective meaning, gleaned from similar motifs in myth and fairy tale. 5) Integrate this meaning with your general psychic situation. INstincts are the best guide; if you are obtaining "value" from your interpretation, it will "feel" correct. Complexes and their attendant archetypes draw attention to themselves but are difficult to pinpoint.
We may use conscious amplification of the symbolism presented in dream form. All the elements of the dream may be examined in a limited, controlled, and directed association process, which enlarges and expands the dream material through analogy. The nucleus of meaning contained in the analogy is identical with that of the dream content. When a dream is falsely interpreted, others follow to correct the error. Preconscious contents are on the verge of being remembered.
Just as language skills facilitate new conceptualization, knowledge of the vocabulary of dream symbolism allows closer rapport with the preconscious. Dreaming is one of the easiest methods of contact with the numinous element, or unknown. To illustrate how archetypes may affect perspective, we will now examine another of the methods for working with dreams and other images. If Freud's view on dreams can be seen as Aphroditic/sexual, and Jung's as heroic/developmental (Yesod and Tiphareth, respectively in QBL), then Hillman's newer "Verbal Technique" might be seen as associated with Hades, Lord of the Underworld or deep subconscious, (DAATH in QBL).
This relationship to the image is seeking value, depth, and volume. This method stresses keeping to the image as presented rather than analyzing symbols. This method, while usable by anyone, is being applied by those who are thoroughly acquainted with symbols and their meaning in an attempt to recapture to unknown element. The dream image expresses this if the symbols are not dissected from their "specific context, mood, and scene." An image presents symbols with their particularity and peculiarness intact.
Dream presents a variety of images which are all intra-related. Time and sequence are distorted in dream. Hillman prefers to view dream images with all parts as co-relative and co-temporaneous. This approach to the dream is a sort of metaphorical word-play. The elements of the dream are chanted or interwoven. Repeat the dream while playfully rearranging the sequence of events. Remain alert to analogies which form themselves during this word play. Ruminate on any puns which may occur. As the play unfolds, deeper significance emerges as a resonance.
By allowing the dream to speak for itself, interpretations appear indirectly. This is a method of communicating with the psyche which is in harmony with its inherent structure. In alchemy, it is known as an iteratio of the prima materia. Its value is evident, according to Hillman. "We do not want to prejudice the phenomenal experience of their unknowness and our unconsciousness by knowing in advance that they are messages, dramas, compensations, prospective indications, transcendent function.
We want to get at the image without the defense of symbols." (1) The archetypal content in an image unfolds during participation with it. We have found that an archetypal quality emerges through a) precise portrayal of the image (including any confusion or vagueness presented with the image); b) sticking to the image while hearing it metaphorically; c) discovering the necessity within the image (the fact that all the symbols an images presented are required in this context); d) experiencing the unfathomable analogical richness of the image. (2) In this context, 'archetypal' is seen as a function of making. The adjective may be applied to any image (6) upon which the operations are performed. This means that no single image is inherently more meaningful than another. Value may be extracted from them all. This coincides with the alchemical conception of the Opus as work. Here the Opus is carried by the dreamwork technique. Archetypal psychology contends that the value of dreams has little application to practical affairs.
In Re-Visioning Psychology , Hillman postulates that: Dream's value and emotion is in relation with soul and how life is lived in relation with soul. When we move the soul insights of the dream into life for problem-solving and people-relating, we rob the dream and impoverish the soul. The more we get out of a dream for human affairs the more we prevent its psychological work, what it is doing and building night after night, interiorly, away from life in a nonhuman world. The dream is already valuable without having any literalizations or personalistic interpretations tacked on to it.
Hillman ends his "Inquiry Into Image" by stating that the final meaning of a dream cannot be found, no matter how it seems to "click." Analogizing is like my fantasy of Zen, where the dream is the teacher. Each time you say what the image means, you get your face slapped. The dream becomes a Koan when we approach it by means of analogy. If you can literalize a meaning, "interpret" a dream, you are off the track, lost your Koan. (For the dream is the thing, not what it means.) Then you must be slapped to bring you back to the image. A good dream analysis is one in which one gets more and more slaps, more and more analogies, the dream exposing your entire unconscious, the basic matters of your psychic life.
This type of analysis seems consistent with the origins of the word. Originally, it had to do with "loosening." This type of dream analysis loosens our soul from its identity with day-to-day life. It reminds us that styles of consciousness other than that of the ego have validity.
The soul experiences these styles nightly. No paper of dreams would be complete without some mention of nightmares. Even though dream is an easy method of contacting the unconscious, it is not always pleasant. Occult literature speaks of a figure called "the Dweller on the Threshold." In Eastern philosophies there are the wrathful deities. This figure corresponds with Trump XV, The Devil, in Tarot. This seems consistent with Hillman's attribution of the dream as Hades' realm. The healthy person learns easily to cooperate on his descents into the psyche.
The uninformed or neurotic personality is likely to encounter hindrances. These hindrances often take the form of frightening, monstrous, overpowering forces. Ego-consciousness is not able to comprehend them. When the subconscious is highly activated these images may occur during waking hours and in sleep. This dread and oppression form the basis for nightmares. Pan and his attendant phenomena (such as panic) are archetypal representations of the nightmare. Pan also corresponds with Trump XV. In the heroic model, as consciousness develops, there is a marked difference in both the content of dream and the dreamer. He gains increased ability to assimilate the charges of energy associated with the dream. The more conscious the experience of the numinous, the less fraught with irrationality and fear the experience. This holds true in waking and sleeping hours.
John Gowan, in Trance, Art, and Creativity , states, "It is this gentling, humanizing process exerted on the preconscious by creative function of the individual which is the only proper preparation for the psychedelic graces." These graces include an immersion of the ego in the expanded context of the subconscious. The ego is then able to return from its experience enriched by the contact. Contents which might formerly have been considered nightmarish are more fully understood, and the monsters become transformed into butterflies. (7) This attitude toward nightmare is not consistent with Hillman's approach. He does not advocate changing or controlling the psyche. This is, in fact, neither possible nor desirable. He asserts that to enter dream is to enter the underworld, Hades' realm.
Psychic images are metaphorical. All underworld figures are shades or shadow souls. There is no reason for them to conform to the constraints of the ego's dayworld. Soul is the background of dream-work. Underworld is psyche. This relates, therefore, to a metaphorical perception of death. Dreams present us with that different reality, in which pathology and distortion are inherent aspects. We needn't control them, but rather acknowledge their value and depth. Assuming it is necessary or desirable to control any aspect of dream life, there is a further development of consciousness which enables one to consistently experience what is known as the "lucid dream" or "high dream." In a lucid state, there is an overlapping of normal waking consciousness coupled with the dream state. At this stage, one is able to progressively acquire and exercise will in dream states.
In the lucid dream, one "witnesses" the fact that one is dreaming, and may take an active role in the unfolding of the dream. This optional ability is generally associated with the heart-center, or Tiphareth. The heart-center has to do with developing consciousness of the imaginal realm. Rather than control or meddle with dreams, it is more effective to exercise creative expression in waking hours. Many persons pursuing their fantasy of individuation have an outlet through active imagination. Active imagination is, in itself, an art form. It is generally practiced through a discipline, such as psychology, alchemy, or Magick. It may be dramatic, dialectic, visual, acoustic, or in some form of dancing, painting, drawing, modeling, etc.
People who give free rein to fantasy in some form of creative imagination often dream less. All psycho-active drugs also tend to diminish dreaming. In other words, there seems to be a variable ratio between creativity and dream. Jung made the discovery that "this method often diminished to a considerable degree, the frequency and intensity of dreams, thus reducing the inexplicable pressure exerted by the unconscious." There need be no conscious desire to control or interfere in the actual dream. The ego learns to meet the subconscious on a middle ground, the vale of soul making. The activities and intent of both are harmonized. Staying close to the original image is fundamental.
http://www.pauldevereux.co.uk/body_dragonproject.html
The Dragon Project, latterly the Dragon Project Trust (DPT), was founded in 1977 in order to mount an interdisciplinary investigation into the rumour (existing in both folklore and modern anecdote) that certain prehistoric sites had unusual forces or energies associated with them. The DPT, a loose and shifting consortium of volunteers from various disciplines, conducted many years of physical monitoring at sites in the UK, and other countries. In the end, it was concluded that most stories about "energies" were likely to have no foundation in fact, and in a few cases might be due to mind states and psychological effects produced by certain locations. But hard evidence of magnetic and radiation anomalies was found at some sites, and some questionable evidence of infrared and ultrasonic effects also. In addition, it was found that the kind of locations favoured by megalith builders tended to have a higher than average incidence of unsual lightball phenomena or "earth lights".
Some initial on-site studies were conducted with dowsers and psychics, but results of this work were not published as the research remained incomplete. In 1990, the DPT, with its limited resources, decided to shift the main focus of its work to the study of the interaction between human consciousness and ancient site environments. It has started this broad area of enquiry with a research programme investigating dreaming at selected ancient sacred places. This dreamwork programme, which is being conducted jointly with the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, and is still ongoing at the time of this writing, is a kind of modern re-visiting of the ancient practice of temple sleep (see Divination).
The basic aim of the programme is to run many dream sessions at just four selected ancient sites: a holy hill in the Preseli range in Wales, and three Cornish sites - a Neolithic dolmen, a Celtic holy well, and an Iron Age underground passage and chamber called a fogou in Cornish dialect and a "souterrain" by archaeologists. Each of these places possesses an interesting geophysical anomaly. The sleep volunteers are drawn from as wide a range of the public as possible. Ages have ranged from teenagers to 70-year-olds. Women volunteers have so far slightly outnumbered men. Work at the Welsh site and the Cornish souterrain has now been completed, though dreams are still being collected at the other two sites. Each volunteer is accompanied by a least one helper who keeps watch while he or she is alseep. When the helper notes a rocking and rolling action beneath the volunteer's closed eyelids, a motion called Rapid Eye Movements ( R.E.M) which denotes dreaming sleep, the sleeper is awoken and a report of any dreams being experienced at that time are tape-recorded in situ. Later, these are transcribed and sent, along with control "home" dreams from each subject, to the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco under the consultancy of Dr Stanley Krippner. There the dreams are subjected to long and painstaking analysis, breaking each one down into a set of designated elements, and are coded. They will ultimately be presented for double-blind judging under scientifically-accepted protocols. The aim is to test if dreams had at these places revealed site-specific components: will there be a statistically significant number of the coded dreams that, in effect, could be identified as relating to the sites they took place at? Is there something about the physical nature of the places that influences dreams experienced at them? For instance, do the geophysical anomalies of the places affect the dreaming mind? ( The DPT had already noted that places with high background radiation can trigger brief, vivid hallucinatory episodes in some subjects - see the Energies entry.) Even more exotically, do these ancient and long-used magico-religious locations have a "memory field" that could be picked up by the dreaming mind? (If so, this might speak to such ideas as Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic resonance".) But the research programme is an experiment, and there may be negative answers to all such questions. The point is to test and see. Even if the experiment does produced a negative result, the DPT will be able to console itself that a unique and important body of dream data has been brought into existence that can be used for other, future research.
In 2003, the 10-year long DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme came to a pause if not an end. The beginning of the analysis of the dreams began. An initial academic (peer-reviewed) paper was published in the refereed journal Dreaming in June, and a general article was published in Fortean Times magazine in December.
Fortean Times 178 (December, 2003) had an article on the DPT ancient sites dreamwork programme as its cover story. The article actually contained some new material that had not been ready for the slightly earlier academic paper, shopwing how different dreamers had picked up similar dream themes at a specific one of the four selected sites, hinting that transpersonal information may have been picked up by the dreamers’ sleeping minds.
This is the abstract of the academic paper:
The Use of the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and Adam Fish Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2) 95-105, June 2003. Thirty-five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor “sacred sites” in England and Wales where they were awakened following rapid eye movement periods and asked for dream recall. They also monitored their dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries. Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each volunteer. Two judges, working blind and independently, evaluated each of the resulting 206 dream reports, using the Strauch Scale which contains criteria for identifying “bizarre,” “magical,” and “paranormal” elements. Of the 103 site dream reports, 46 fell into one of these categories, versus 31 of the home dream reports. A number of explanations exist for this difference, including expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, the nature of the volunteers' awakenings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites. The latter possibility, however, is unlikely due to the fact the 22 volunteers reported site dreams containing Strauch Scale items, while 20 reported home dreams containing these content items, a minimal difference.
KEY WORDS: content analysis; dream reports; sacred sites. At:
http://www.asdreams.org/journal/issues/asdj13-2.htm#The%20Use%20of%20the%20Strauch%20Scale%20to%20Study%20Dream%20Reports
'The Dreaming' or 'the Dreamtime' indicates a psychic state in which or
during which contact is made with the ancestral spirits, or the Law, or
that special period of the beginning.—Mudrooroo, Aboriginal writer
What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming.—Djon Mundine, Bundjalung man and Aboriginal Curator
In Dreams & The Underworld, Hillman suggests that "we honor dreams for their own expressions and view the “gurgitations that ‘come up’ in dreams without attempts to save them morally or to find their dayworld use.”
Dreaming With the Ancestors
Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten.
Let There Be Dark
Dreams are psyche's permeable membrane -- a holographic projection of the mystery of being. Ancestral images in dreams can be projections, but might carry objective information. A unified concept of the individual does not separate us from the environment, or relatives, clan or ancestors. Ancestors are the Dark Matter of our corporeal being.
Ancestral Self
Aspire to be an Ancestor instead of fantasizing about eternal youth, Hillman urges. “To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.” The ancestors carry both our wisdom and madness, as we embody their unlived potential. Ancestral blessings are accompanied by ancestral curses. Along with the wisdom there is violence, madness, abuse and shame. But even more frightening is what we don’t know in the shadow of shadows -- those dark family secrets.
The Seer & the Seen
Dreams can lead us to explore our ancestry. All dreams bring us meaning, but some stand out more than others - full moon dreams, ancestral dreams, initiatory dreams, premonitory dreams, sacred dreams, shamanic soul flight, etc. Some dreams are ordinary; some are iconic or Big Dreams that stick with us -- or enduring memories. Our bodies and personalities arose from an intricate web of cultural and family influences, physically and psychologically. Rootlessness is loss of connection with our recent familial and ancient lineage. Both positive resources and dysfunctional patterns are legacies from the past.
Dream for Your Life
We are the dreams of our ancestors; we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors. Sometimes their nightmares visit. For many cultures relationships with the ancestors is central and an anchor for personal identity. They connected with the land, cosmos, and dreams. We may pick up on our ancestors' lives or even their own dreams. Dreams can reflect rough times -- even catastrophes -- but the hope, fears, passions, ecstasies, conflict, suffering, devastations, and thoughts were no different than today. We share the same reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibitions, and lethary, as well as the pressure of the depths in depression, oppression, and suppression. Our ancestors had dreams and worked towards fulfilling those dreams. No one did it for them.
Heeding the Ancestors
Dreams are visits from the Otherworld. We see differently through the lens of the collective unconscious. We may have 'primitive' hunter-gatherer dreams, animistic dreams of immense landscapes of by-gone eras, or dreams of settlers' perspectives in new worlds. We don't have to interpret them or bring them back to daily life, but let them silently work in us, live in us. By reducing their expressions to daily concerns and personal trauma, we may be dishonoring our ancestors.
Ancient Dreams
Some dreams mirror divine realities -- fantastic realms beyond imagining. We may consult dreams for healing and divination like our ancestors did. Our ancestral cosmology centers on roots and blood. The timeless and eternal is just around the corner in our dreams. Like them we are bound by seasons, fertility, sacrifice, passages, death and rebirth. Like a holographic or fractal metaphor, even a dream fragment can point in a meaningful direction. We might even glimpse our indigenous mind.
Dream Themes
We may even discover generations-old trauma passed down through our paternal or maternal lines. Travels and pilgrimage can elicit dreams, even guidance, support and synchronicity. We may have collective or mutual dreaming and dream-sharing. Family patterns mirror the patterns in our souls. We should pay attention to our "waking dreams", too. They may be symbolic or metaphorical. Dreams and inner journeys allow us to peer down the well of souls. If you talk with family members about ancestral dreams, further connections may come up.
Setting, Location & Characters
We may dream of our ancestral homes and homelands, or ancestral waters. This is not a search for ghosts, but meaning and gnosis. Such experience may bring our attention to certain family groups, geographical sites, or events. You may dream of meeting your clan or experience a reunion, of sorts -- reconnection, reverence, acknowledgement, tribute, gratitude, or recognition. But, we must not get lost in the dreams of our forefathers.
Dream Genealogy
We can even intentionally incubate such dreams. This subjective experience can be healing. You might also recall extreme cold, hunger, or privation, painful partings, even abuses. You might recall ancient skills, kinesthetic knowledge, migrations, ancestral lands, inventions, discoveries, and journeys -- even transformations.
Ancestors may not come as actual deceased relatives but as clearly ancestral dream images, sometimes mythic, symbolic or metaphorical.
Ancestors can be the sources of our clarity, revelations, blessings, limiting beliefs, confusion, or blocks. Still, we should resist the urge to give a dream a single source, conceptual system, interpretation, or meaning that stops the hermeneutic process. Hillman suggests a phenomenological approach in which we "stick to the image."
For example, Hillman (Healing Fiction) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive.
Ancestral Romance
Many report seeing recent and long-departed family members in dreams, for spiritual or psychological reasons. Some conjecture that dead family members try to contact the family member (or appear in the dreams) of those who they feel are most likely to connect. We don't have to take such connection literally to derive meaning from a dreamwalk with the ancestors. We may experience conception dreams, intuitions, or by-gone events. Dreams may reveal mythic aspects of collective events and lives.
Ancestral Ways of Life & Knowing
There may be untimely or violent deaths, prolonged illness, and other rough passages with unfinished business; some weren't buried right. But we don't have to make their issues our own, but just be a silent witness. Some dream of what one of their ancestors actually did in their lifetime. They might elicit pain, guilt, remorse, judgment or compassion, but we cannot judge their era or social reality with modern mores. Some dreams come back with a reality we cannot ignore.
Dreamseekers
Deep family-of-origin issues can manifest in our dreams. Virtually any human potential can arise -- the anonymous, the reknown, the infamous. Dreamwork is archaeology of the soul and our biology, unearthing abandoned treasures. It is up to us to make those connections to remember and honor our heritage. We may find ourselves "digging graves" or digging up the past or in vast libraries of human knowledge filled with magical books. We help ourselves more than the departed, but ancestral dreams may even seek our guidance and counsel. In nonlinear dreamtime, everything happens NOW.
The Humble, the Gifted & the Glorified
Cultivating these dreams helps us 'know' our forgotten lifeways and the traumas that haunt our heritage. Dreams help us overcome “melting pot indigestion”, to know who we are, where we came from, and where we live. By dreaming our ancestors, we meet them halfway. Dreams can be brought about by an event or something that we saw or heard in the days leading up to the dream.
Bridge Between Worlds
Deep grief dreams can help us confront the ugly truths of European, ethnic, and other heritage. You don't need to inject your ego or beliefs onto the dream, but let it unfold organically. Concentrate on the situation at hand. Acknowledged, these traumas may lead us on a quest to these ancestral lands, or we might meet a teacher, helpful animals, spirits, or family dreamseer 'inside' who changes the way we live in the world.
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
~Jung, The Red Book, Pg 242
What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming.—Djon Mundine, Bundjalung man and Aboriginal Curator
In Dreams & The Underworld, Hillman suggests that "we honor dreams for their own expressions and view the “gurgitations that ‘come up’ in dreams without attempts to save them morally or to find their dayworld use.”
Dreaming With the Ancestors
Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten.
Let There Be Dark
Dreams are psyche's permeable membrane -- a holographic projection of the mystery of being. Ancestral images in dreams can be projections, but might carry objective information. A unified concept of the individual does not separate us from the environment, or relatives, clan or ancestors. Ancestors are the Dark Matter of our corporeal being.
Ancestral Self
Aspire to be an Ancestor instead of fantasizing about eternal youth, Hillman urges. “To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.” The ancestors carry both our wisdom and madness, as we embody their unlived potential. Ancestral blessings are accompanied by ancestral curses. Along with the wisdom there is violence, madness, abuse and shame. But even more frightening is what we don’t know in the shadow of shadows -- those dark family secrets.
The Seer & the Seen
Dreams can lead us to explore our ancestry. All dreams bring us meaning, but some stand out more than others - full moon dreams, ancestral dreams, initiatory dreams, premonitory dreams, sacred dreams, shamanic soul flight, etc. Some dreams are ordinary; some are iconic or Big Dreams that stick with us -- or enduring memories. Our bodies and personalities arose from an intricate web of cultural and family influences, physically and psychologically. Rootlessness is loss of connection with our recent familial and ancient lineage. Both positive resources and dysfunctional patterns are legacies from the past.
Dream for Your Life
We are the dreams of our ancestors; we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors. Sometimes their nightmares visit. For many cultures relationships with the ancestors is central and an anchor for personal identity. They connected with the land, cosmos, and dreams. We may pick up on our ancestors' lives or even their own dreams. Dreams can reflect rough times -- even catastrophes -- but the hope, fears, passions, ecstasies, conflict, suffering, devastations, and thoughts were no different than today. We share the same reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibitions, and lethary, as well as the pressure of the depths in depression, oppression, and suppression. Our ancestors had dreams and worked towards fulfilling those dreams. No one did it for them.
Heeding the Ancestors
Dreams are visits from the Otherworld. We see differently through the lens of the collective unconscious. We may have 'primitive' hunter-gatherer dreams, animistic dreams of immense landscapes of by-gone eras, or dreams of settlers' perspectives in new worlds. We don't have to interpret them or bring them back to daily life, but let them silently work in us, live in us. By reducing their expressions to daily concerns and personal trauma, we may be dishonoring our ancestors.
Ancient Dreams
Some dreams mirror divine realities -- fantastic realms beyond imagining. We may consult dreams for healing and divination like our ancestors did. Our ancestral cosmology centers on roots and blood. The timeless and eternal is just around the corner in our dreams. Like them we are bound by seasons, fertility, sacrifice, passages, death and rebirth. Like a holographic or fractal metaphor, even a dream fragment can point in a meaningful direction. We might even glimpse our indigenous mind.
Dream Themes
We may even discover generations-old trauma passed down through our paternal or maternal lines. Travels and pilgrimage can elicit dreams, even guidance, support and synchronicity. We may have collective or mutual dreaming and dream-sharing. Family patterns mirror the patterns in our souls. We should pay attention to our "waking dreams", too. They may be symbolic or metaphorical. Dreams and inner journeys allow us to peer down the well of souls. If you talk with family members about ancestral dreams, further connections may come up.
Setting, Location & Characters
We may dream of our ancestral homes and homelands, or ancestral waters. This is not a search for ghosts, but meaning and gnosis. Such experience may bring our attention to certain family groups, geographical sites, or events. You may dream of meeting your clan or experience a reunion, of sorts -- reconnection, reverence, acknowledgement, tribute, gratitude, or recognition. But, we must not get lost in the dreams of our forefathers.
Dream Genealogy
We can even intentionally incubate such dreams. This subjective experience can be healing. You might also recall extreme cold, hunger, or privation, painful partings, even abuses. You might recall ancient skills, kinesthetic knowledge, migrations, ancestral lands, inventions, discoveries, and journeys -- even transformations.
Ancestors may not come as actual deceased relatives but as clearly ancestral dream images, sometimes mythic, symbolic or metaphorical.
Ancestors can be the sources of our clarity, revelations, blessings, limiting beliefs, confusion, or blocks. Still, we should resist the urge to give a dream a single source, conceptual system, interpretation, or meaning that stops the hermeneutic process. Hillman suggests a phenomenological approach in which we "stick to the image."
For example, Hillman (Healing Fiction) discusses a patient's dream about a huge black snake. The dream work would include "keeping the snake" and describing it rather than making it something other than a snake. Hillman notes that "the moment you've defined the snake, interpreted it, you've lost the snake, you've stopped it and the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions ... and you've lost the snake. The task of analysis is to keep the snake there, the black snake...see, the black snake's no longer necessary the moment it's been interpreted, and you don't need your dreams any more because they've been interpreted" (p. 54). One would inquire more about the snake as it is presented in the dream by the psyche so to draw it forth from its lair in the unconscious. The snake is huge and black, but what else? Is it molting or shedding its skin? Is it sunning itself on a rock? Is it digesting its prey? This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive.
Ancestral Romance
Many report seeing recent and long-departed family members in dreams, for spiritual or psychological reasons. Some conjecture that dead family members try to contact the family member (or appear in the dreams) of those who they feel are most likely to connect. We don't have to take such connection literally to derive meaning from a dreamwalk with the ancestors. We may experience conception dreams, intuitions, or by-gone events. Dreams may reveal mythic aspects of collective events and lives.
Ancestral Ways of Life & Knowing
There may be untimely or violent deaths, prolonged illness, and other rough passages with unfinished business; some weren't buried right. But we don't have to make their issues our own, but just be a silent witness. Some dream of what one of their ancestors actually did in their lifetime. They might elicit pain, guilt, remorse, judgment or compassion, but we cannot judge their era or social reality with modern mores. Some dreams come back with a reality we cannot ignore.
Dreamseekers
Deep family-of-origin issues can manifest in our dreams. Virtually any human potential can arise -- the anonymous, the reknown, the infamous. Dreamwork is archaeology of the soul and our biology, unearthing abandoned treasures. It is up to us to make those connections to remember and honor our heritage. We may find ourselves "digging graves" or digging up the past or in vast libraries of human knowledge filled with magical books. We help ourselves more than the departed, but ancestral dreams may even seek our guidance and counsel. In nonlinear dreamtime, everything happens NOW.
The Humble, the Gifted & the Glorified
Cultivating these dreams helps us 'know' our forgotten lifeways and the traumas that haunt our heritage. Dreams help us overcome “melting pot indigestion”, to know who we are, where we came from, and where we live. By dreaming our ancestors, we meet them halfway. Dreams can be brought about by an event or something that we saw or heard in the days leading up to the dream.
Bridge Between Worlds
Deep grief dreams can help us confront the ugly truths of European, ethnic, and other heritage. You don't need to inject your ego or beliefs onto the dream, but let it unfold organically. Concentrate on the situation at hand. Acknowledged, these traumas may lead us on a quest to these ancestral lands, or we might meet a teacher, helpful animals, spirits, or family dreamseer 'inside' who changes the way we live in the world.
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
~Jung, The Red Book, Pg 242
“A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience.” -C.G. Jung, CW 16, para. 252
Jungian and post-Jungian Dreamwork
http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=gjcp
While analytical (Jungian) psychology is concerned with the manifestations of the Self and the path of individuation, Archetypal psychology is focused centrally on psyche, or soul (Hillman, 1983). Rather than accepting the notion of a centrally located, organizing Self, Hillman stresses the poly-centric and mutating nature of our being, and the manner in which we become caught in narrative “images”. He states that “an essential work of therapy is to become conscious of the fictions in which the patient is cast and to re-write...collaboratively, the story by re-telling it in a more profound and authentic style” (Hillman, 1983, p. 45). Along those lines, Hillman takes a drastically different view on pathology, seeing in pathological conditions diminished versions of situations and modes-of-being exemplified in myths, or archetypes (hence the name). This work is based in an understanding that images (fantasies, dreams, etc) are the foundation of depth psychology, that our psychology is essentially imagined and imaged.
Hillman wishes to emphasize the “disintegrative effects” of the dream, which “confront us with our lack of a central hold on ourselves. Dreams show us to be plural and that each of the forms that figure there are the 'full man himself', full potentials of behavior” (Hillman, 1979, p. 41). Consistent with the polytheistic and multiple view of the self within the Archetypal approach, Hillman contends that the value in encountering these images inheres in our ability to extend consciousness or our sense of personal identity to contain these potentials. Hillman contends that the archetypal is brought to the foreground even through seemingly objective dream characters.
Jungian and post-Jungian Dreamwork
http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=gjcp
While analytical (Jungian) psychology is concerned with the manifestations of the Self and the path of individuation, Archetypal psychology is focused centrally on psyche, or soul (Hillman, 1983). Rather than accepting the notion of a centrally located, organizing Self, Hillman stresses the poly-centric and mutating nature of our being, and the manner in which we become caught in narrative “images”. He states that “an essential work of therapy is to become conscious of the fictions in which the patient is cast and to re-write...collaboratively, the story by re-telling it in a more profound and authentic style” (Hillman, 1983, p. 45). Along those lines, Hillman takes a drastically different view on pathology, seeing in pathological conditions diminished versions of situations and modes-of-being exemplified in myths, or archetypes (hence the name). This work is based in an understanding that images (fantasies, dreams, etc) are the foundation of depth psychology, that our psychology is essentially imagined and imaged.
Hillman wishes to emphasize the “disintegrative effects” of the dream, which “confront us with our lack of a central hold on ourselves. Dreams show us to be plural and that each of the forms that figure there are the 'full man himself', full potentials of behavior” (Hillman, 1979, p. 41). Consistent with the polytheistic and multiple view of the self within the Archetypal approach, Hillman contends that the value in encountering these images inheres in our ability to extend consciousness or our sense of personal identity to contain these potentials. Hillman contends that the archetypal is brought to the foreground even through seemingly objective dream characters.
All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. ~Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 304.
We forget that the soul has its own ancestors.
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego.
We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us.
They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws.
They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious.
In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
~Carl Jung; The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits; CW 8; The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Pg 580
The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your diamon is the carrier of your destiny. As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity. This suggests that the circumstances, including my body and my parents whom I may curse are my soul’s own choice—and I do not understand this because I have forgotten. --Hillman
Letourneau in the Bulletins et Me’moires dela Societe’ d’ Anthropologie de Paris, claimed that certain external or psychic events that have deeply affected a person may result in a molecular reorientation, which may be transmitted to descendants. In this way, ancestral recollection can be produced and revived. That sounds like today's epigenetics.
Hillman taught that dreams are not simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), nor are they compensatory for the struggles of waking life, nor invested with “secret” meanings of how one should live. It follows that Hillman was against the traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis.
The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer? --James Hillman, Source: The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, P: 29
In his essay Extending the Family (1985), Hillman wrote: "The ancient home gave plenty of space to the invisibles that live in a family, propitiating and domesticating its daimones, which it acknowledged as rightfully belonging." He went on to add: "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors."
Yet, as he would elaborate in The Soul's Code (1995): "Only if a member of the natural family (itself not always determinable), say a grandparent or an uncle or an aunt, is worthy enough, powerful enough, knowledgeable enough, may he or she become an ancestor in the sense of a guardian spirit."
[Late in his life Dr. Jung stopped dreaming.]
Suzanne Percheron: I suppose that you dream?
Dr. Jung: No, I almost don't dream anymore. (!!!)
I used to dream when I began to discover my unconscious.
One dreams when the unconscious has something to say, but my consciousness is always so receptive now that the door is open. I am ready to accept. With me the unconscious can flow into consciousness.
I no longer have prejudice, or fear, or resistance. The dream is a way in which the unconscious makes itself known to consciousness. Many people have no memory of their dreams because the unconscious knows that it will not be heard, so what's the use; then they don't remember. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
We forget that the soul has its own ancestors.
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego.
We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us.
They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws.
They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious.
In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
~Carl Jung; The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits; CW 8; The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Pg 580
The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your diamon is the carrier of your destiny. As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity. This suggests that the circumstances, including my body and my parents whom I may curse are my soul’s own choice—and I do not understand this because I have forgotten. --Hillman
Letourneau in the Bulletins et Me’moires dela Societe’ d’ Anthropologie de Paris, claimed that certain external or psychic events that have deeply affected a person may result in a molecular reorientation, which may be transmitted to descendants. In this way, ancestral recollection can be produced and revived. That sounds like today's epigenetics.
Hillman taught that dreams are not simply random residue or flotsam from waking life (as advanced by physiologists), nor are they compensatory for the struggles of waking life, nor invested with “secret” meanings of how one should live. It follows that Hillman was against the traditional interpretive methods of dream analysis.
The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer? --James Hillman, Source: The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, P: 29
In his essay Extending the Family (1985), Hillman wrote: "The ancient home gave plenty of space to the invisibles that live in a family, propitiating and domesticating its daimones, which it acknowledged as rightfully belonging." He went on to add: "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors."
Yet, as he would elaborate in The Soul's Code (1995): "Only if a member of the natural family (itself not always determinable), say a grandparent or an uncle or an aunt, is worthy enough, powerful enough, knowledgeable enough, may he or she become an ancestor in the sense of a guardian spirit."
[Late in his life Dr. Jung stopped dreaming.]
Suzanne Percheron: I suppose that you dream?
Dr. Jung: No, I almost don't dream anymore. (!!!)
I used to dream when I began to discover my unconscious.
One dreams when the unconscious has something to say, but my consciousness is always so receptive now that the door is open. I am ready to accept. With me the unconscious can flow into consciousness.
I no longer have prejudice, or fear, or resistance. The dream is a way in which the unconscious makes itself known to consciousness. Many people have no memory of their dreams because the unconscious knows that it will not be heard, so what's the use; then they don't remember. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness By Stanton Marlan
The underworld is the realm of death as well as dreams
and the abode of the ancestral spirits.
As the dream is guardian of sleep, so our dream-work, yours and mine, is protective of those depths from which dreams rise, the ancestral, the mythical, the imaginal, and all the hiding invisibilities that govern our lives. Dreams are sleep's watchful brother, of death's fraternity, heralds, watchmen of that coming night, and our attitude toward them may be modeled upon Hades, receiving, hospitable, yet relentlessly deepening, attuned to the nocturne, dusky, and with a fearful cold intelligence that gives permanent shelter in his house to the incurable conditions of human being.
--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
James Hillman called for an underworld perspective, ‘an attitude of unknowing’ that ‘leaves room for the phenomenon itself to speak’. We should stay with a dream image, rather than dragging it into the day world of theoretical interpretation. Dreams arise from ancestral and imaginal depths and reflect ‘the hiding invisibilities that govern our lives’. Our attitude towards them should, therefore, be ‘modelled upon Hades’, receptive, and hospitable to ‘the incurable conditions’ associated with being human. Hillman deconstructed Christian and modernist devaluations of the underworld, and called for an approach to dreamwork that respected what was going on in dreams, a process of ‘dying to the dayworld’. As we dream of deceased family members, for example, we begin to perceive them as living ancestors.
-- Hillman, Dream & the Underworld
Some ancestral dreams may be the dreamer’s conception
of what their ancestor’s life was about. [A normal dream.]
Some ancestral dreams may about a given event that has been talked about
and passed throughout the years. [A normal dream.]
Some ancestral dreams are about ancestors that the dreamer
has never known or even heard about. [A possible a dream walk.]
Some ancestral dreams are thought to be brought about by an encoding
of DNA of ancestral memories passed on to the dreamer. These dreams
are of actual events of history that one of their ancestors went through.
How to deal with Ancestral Dreams
(Your own and people’s you love)
1) Don’t get attached to a powerful experience. Get the message and hang up the phone.
2) Watch carefully in the dream: be a witness
3) Be careful of the ego…. we can often crush a message without even meaning too
by our gaze alone.
4) Look at fears when they emerge. Face them, but act out of love, not fear.
5) Integrate the emotions that come up in a dream into waking life.
Remembrance, recording, dream sharing, ritual and art all can help with this.
6) Don’t get in the way of someone else’s process. If it’s not the way you'd do it, that’s good!
Jung hit upon his theory of the collective unconscious during psychoanalysis of his patients’ dreams. He believed that the symbolism he found was prominent in his patients’ dreams often bore marks of a specific ancestral history. This type of symbolism is a type of dream event that is difficult to explain by anything in the dreamer's own life.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201302/remembering-things-you-were-born
The underworld is the realm of death as well as dreams
and the abode of the ancestral spirits.
As the dream is guardian of sleep, so our dream-work, yours and mine, is protective of those depths from which dreams rise, the ancestral, the mythical, the imaginal, and all the hiding invisibilities that govern our lives. Dreams are sleep's watchful brother, of death's fraternity, heralds, watchmen of that coming night, and our attitude toward them may be modeled upon Hades, receiving, hospitable, yet relentlessly deepening, attuned to the nocturne, dusky, and with a fearful cold intelligence that gives permanent shelter in his house to the incurable conditions of human being.
--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
James Hillman called for an underworld perspective, ‘an attitude of unknowing’ that ‘leaves room for the phenomenon itself to speak’. We should stay with a dream image, rather than dragging it into the day world of theoretical interpretation. Dreams arise from ancestral and imaginal depths and reflect ‘the hiding invisibilities that govern our lives’. Our attitude towards them should, therefore, be ‘modelled upon Hades’, receptive, and hospitable to ‘the incurable conditions’ associated with being human. Hillman deconstructed Christian and modernist devaluations of the underworld, and called for an approach to dreamwork that respected what was going on in dreams, a process of ‘dying to the dayworld’. As we dream of deceased family members, for example, we begin to perceive them as living ancestors.
-- Hillman, Dream & the Underworld
Some ancestral dreams may be the dreamer’s conception
of what their ancestor’s life was about. [A normal dream.]
Some ancestral dreams may about a given event that has been talked about
and passed throughout the years. [A normal dream.]
Some ancestral dreams are about ancestors that the dreamer
has never known or even heard about. [A possible a dream walk.]
Some ancestral dreams are thought to be brought about by an encoding
of DNA of ancestral memories passed on to the dreamer. These dreams
are of actual events of history that one of their ancestors went through.
How to deal with Ancestral Dreams
(Your own and people’s you love)
1) Don’t get attached to a powerful experience. Get the message and hang up the phone.
2) Watch carefully in the dream: be a witness
3) Be careful of the ego…. we can often crush a message without even meaning too
by our gaze alone.
4) Look at fears when they emerge. Face them, but act out of love, not fear.
5) Integrate the emotions that come up in a dream into waking life.
Remembrance, recording, dream sharing, ritual and art all can help with this.
6) Don’t get in the way of someone else’s process. If it’s not the way you'd do it, that’s good!
Jung hit upon his theory of the collective unconscious during psychoanalysis of his patients’ dreams. He believed that the symbolism he found was prominent in his patients’ dreams often bore marks of a specific ancestral history. This type of symbolism is a type of dream event that is difficult to explain by anything in the dreamer's own life.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201302/remembering-things-you-were-born
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws. ~Carl Jung; The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits; CW 8; The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 580.
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. ~Carl Jung; The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man; CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 327
If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious.
Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 477.
For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego.
Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars.
All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.
There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
. . it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation. No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 38
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws. ~Carl Jung; The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits; CW 8; The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 580.
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. ~Carl Jung; The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man; CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 327
If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious.
Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 477.
For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego.
Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars.
All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.
There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304.
I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
. . it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation. No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 38
There are cases where it is strange, where it really doesn't belong to you; you can dream other people's dreams, can get them through the walls.
It is not usual, but you had better look out.
For instance, if you are observing the series of your dreams, keeping in contact with your unconscious, and then have suddenly a very strange dream, it would be fair to assume that a strange influence had taken place.
On the other hand, if you have not carefully recorded the series, you do not know.
You cannot say that the dream is strange, no matter how strange you feel it to be.
It is perhaps not strange at all, but is only something in you that is strange to yourself.
I would say that in one hundred cases, or not even as many, you might find perhaps one or two where the strangeness is objective, where you have dreamt the dream of another person. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1258-1259.
For dreams are chapters; if you put down your dreams carefully from night to night and understand them, you can see that they are chapters of a long text.
It is a process which moves in a circle if you do nothing about it.
You can see that with insane people where the conscious is absolutely unable to accept what the unconscious produces, and in that case the unconscious process simply makes a circle, as an animal has its usual way where it always circulates; deer or hares or any other wild animals move like that when they are pasturing.
And that is so with us inasmuch as the conscious is divorced from the unconscious.
But the moment the conscious peeps into the unconscious and the line of communication is established between the two spheres of life, the unconscious no longer moves in mere circles, but in a spiral.
It moves in a circle till the moment when it would join the former tracks again, and then it finds itself a bit above. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 956.
It is not usual, but you had better look out.
For instance, if you are observing the series of your dreams, keeping in contact with your unconscious, and then have suddenly a very strange dream, it would be fair to assume that a strange influence had taken place.
On the other hand, if you have not carefully recorded the series, you do not know.
You cannot say that the dream is strange, no matter how strange you feel it to be.
It is perhaps not strange at all, but is only something in you that is strange to yourself.
I would say that in one hundred cases, or not even as many, you might find perhaps one or two where the strangeness is objective, where you have dreamt the dream of another person. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1258-1259.
For dreams are chapters; if you put down your dreams carefully from night to night and understand them, you can see that they are chapters of a long text.
It is a process which moves in a circle if you do nothing about it.
You can see that with insane people where the conscious is absolutely unable to accept what the unconscious produces, and in that case the unconscious process simply makes a circle, as an animal has its usual way where it always circulates; deer or hares or any other wild animals move like that when they are pasturing.
And that is so with us inasmuch as the conscious is divorced from the unconscious.
But the moment the conscious peeps into the unconscious and the line of communication is established between the two spheres of life, the unconscious no longer moves in mere circles, but in a spiral.
It moves in a circle till the moment when it would join the former tracks again, and then it finds itself a bit above. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 956.
Walter Bruneel - The Abyss Stares Back
In the case of complicated dreams, it is advisable to group the dreams.
I want to give you a schema that can be generally applied.
1. Locale: Place, time, “dramatis personae.”
2. Exposition: Illustration of the problem.
3. Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation—which can also leave room for a catastrophe.
4. Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream.
Let us go through the elements of the dream we have just discussed:
1. Locale: Place: a plain house. Dramatis personae: the peasant woman, the dreamer.
2. Exposition: The ambitious plans for the future of the dreamer, his rise.
3. Peripateia: The crawfish that catches him by taking him into its claws.
4. Lysis: The monster that collapses dead.
This is the typical dream structure. Try to look at dreams under this aspect!
Most dreams show this dramatic structure.
The dramatic tendency of the unconscious also shows in the primitives: here, possibly everything undergoes a dramatic illustration.
Here lies the basis from which the mystery dramas developed.
The whole complicated ritual of later religions goes back to these origins.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Pages 30-31.
Jung on the attributions of meaning to a dream:
The dream is no unequivocal phenomenon. There are several possibilities of giving a meaning to a dream.
I would like to suggest to you four definitions, which are more or less an extract of the various meanings I have come across that dreams can have.
1. The dream is the unconscious reaction to a conscious situation.
A certain conscious situation is followed by a reaction of the unconscious in the form of a dream, whose elements point clearly, whether in a complementary or a compensatory way, to the impression received during the day.
It is immediately obvious that this dream would never have come into being without the particular impression of the previous day.
2. The dream depicts a situation that originated in a conflict between consciousness and the unconscious.
In this case, there is no conscious situation that would have provoked, more or less without doubt, a particular dream, but here we are dealing with a certain spontaneity of the unconscious.
To a certain conscious situation the unconscious adds another one, which is so different from the conscious situation that a conflict between them arises.
3. The dream represents that tendency of the unconscious that aims at a change of the conscious attitude.
In this case, the counter-position raised by the unconscious is stronger than the conscious position: the dream represents a gradient from the unconscious to consciousness.
These are very significant dreams. Someone with a certain attitude can be completely changed by them.
4. The dream depicts unconscious processes showing no relation to the conscious situation.
Dreams of this kind are very strange and often very hard to interpret because of their peculiar character.
The dreamer is then exceedingly astonished at why he is dreaming this, because not even a conditional connection can be made out.
It is a spontaneous product of the unconscious, which carries the whole activity and weight of the meaning.
These are dreams of an overwhelming nature. They are the ones called “great dreams” by the primitives.
They are like an oracle, “somnia a deo missa.”
They are experienced as illumination.
Dreams of this last kind also appear before the breakout of mental illness or of severe neuroses, in which suddenly a content breaks through by which the dreamer is deeply impressed, even if he does not understand it.
In the case of complicated dreams, it is advisable to group the dreams.
I want to give you a schema that can be generally applied.
1. Locale: Place, time, “dramatis personae.”
2. Exposition: Illustration of the problem.
3. Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation—which can also leave room for a catastrophe.
4. Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream.
Let us go through the elements of the dream we have just discussed:
1. Locale: Place: a plain house. Dramatis personae: the peasant woman, the dreamer.
2. Exposition: The ambitious plans for the future of the dreamer, his rise.
3. Peripateia: The crawfish that catches him by taking him into its claws.
4. Lysis: The monster that collapses dead.
This is the typical dream structure. Try to look at dreams under this aspect!
Most dreams show this dramatic structure.
The dramatic tendency of the unconscious also shows in the primitives: here, possibly everything undergoes a dramatic illustration.
Here lies the basis from which the mystery dramas developed.
The whole complicated ritual of later religions goes back to these origins.
~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Pages 30-31.
Jung on the attributions of meaning to a dream:
The dream is no unequivocal phenomenon. There are several possibilities of giving a meaning to a dream.
I would like to suggest to you four definitions, which are more or less an extract of the various meanings I have come across that dreams can have.
1. The dream is the unconscious reaction to a conscious situation.
A certain conscious situation is followed by a reaction of the unconscious in the form of a dream, whose elements point clearly, whether in a complementary or a compensatory way, to the impression received during the day.
It is immediately obvious that this dream would never have come into being without the particular impression of the previous day.
2. The dream depicts a situation that originated in a conflict between consciousness and the unconscious.
In this case, there is no conscious situation that would have provoked, more or less without doubt, a particular dream, but here we are dealing with a certain spontaneity of the unconscious.
To a certain conscious situation the unconscious adds another one, which is so different from the conscious situation that a conflict between them arises.
3. The dream represents that tendency of the unconscious that aims at a change of the conscious attitude.
In this case, the counter-position raised by the unconscious is stronger than the conscious position: the dream represents a gradient from the unconscious to consciousness.
These are very significant dreams. Someone with a certain attitude can be completely changed by them.
4. The dream depicts unconscious processes showing no relation to the conscious situation.
Dreams of this kind are very strange and often very hard to interpret because of their peculiar character.
The dreamer is then exceedingly astonished at why he is dreaming this, because not even a conditional connection can be made out.
It is a spontaneous product of the unconscious, which carries the whole activity and weight of the meaning.
These are dreams of an overwhelming nature. They are the ones called “great dreams” by the primitives.
They are like an oracle, “somnia a deo missa.”
They are experienced as illumination.
Dreams of this last kind also appear before the breakout of mental illness or of severe neuroses, in which suddenly a content breaks through by which the dreamer is deeply impressed, even if he does not understand it.
[Late in his life Dr. Jung stopped dreaming.]
Suzanne Percheron: I suppose that you dream?
Dr. Jung: No, I almost don't dream anymore. (! ! !)
I used to dream when I began to discover my unconscious.
One dreams when the unconscious has something to say, but my consciousness is always so receptive now that the door is open.
I am ready to accept. With me the unconscious can flow into consciousness.
I no longer have prejudice, or fear, or resistance. The dream is a way in which the unconscious makes itself known to consciousness.
Many people have no memory of their dreams because the unconscious knows that it will not be heard, so what's the use; then they don't remember. ~~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances;Pages 51-70.
"Dreams...are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand." ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187
Dreams are very often anticipations of future alterations of consciousness.
~Carl Jung; CW 5; Footnote 18.
For dreams are chapters; if you put down your dreams carefully from night to night and understand them, you can see that they are chapters of a long text.
It is a process which moves in a circle if you do nothing about it.
You can see that with insane people where the conscious is absolutely unable to accept what the unconscious produces, and in that case the unconscious process simply makes a circle, as an animal has its usual way where it always circulates; deer or hares or any other wild animals move like that when they are pasturing.
And that is so with us inasmuch as the conscious is divorced from the unconscious.
But the moment the conscious peeps into the unconscious and the line of communication is established between the two spheres of life, the unconscious no longer moves in mere circles, but in a spiral. It moves in a circle till the moment when it would join the former tracks again, and then it finds itself a bit above. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 956.
"Dreams show us how to find meaning in our lives, how to fulfill our destiny, how to realize the greater potential of life within us." ~Marie Louise Von Franz; "Way of the Dream"
"The dream may serve to unite all the people in a common action and the dream life is a factor that promotes this communion ... Very often dreams reveal a relationship with someone or something which, on a conscious level, we are not absolutely aware. Dreams create social ties and new social behaviors just like, sometimes, destroy old social qualms. Anyway the dream is not an asocial phenomenon. Dreams affirm the impossible". (The World of Dreams;
Marie-Louise von Franz)
...I handle the dream as if it were a text which I do not understand properly, say a Latin or Greek or Sanskrit text, where certain words are unknown to me or the text is fragmentary… My idea is that the dream does not conceal; we simply do not understand its language…There is a very wise word of the Talmud which says that the dream is its own interpretation. The dream is the whole thing…[172]
Therefore, first of all, when you handle a dream you say, ‘I do not understand a word of that dream.’ I always welcome that feeling of incompetence because then I know I shall put some good work into my attempt to understand the dream…[p.173]
Something more is needed to bring certain things home to us effectively enough to make us change our attitude and our behavior. That is what “dream language” does; its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.” (Man & his symbols, p.49)
No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. Each individual varies so much in the way that his unconscious complements or compensates his conscious mind that it is impossible to be sure how far dreams and their symbols can be classified at all.
~Carl Jung; Man & his symbols; Page. 53
[Carl Jung' remarkable statement regarding the Anima and Dreams.]
Today I no longer need these conversations with the anima, for I no longer have such emotions.
But if I did have them, I would deal with them in the same way.
Today I am directly conscious of the anima's ideas because I have learned to accept the contents of the unconscious and to understand them.
I know how I must behave toward the inner images. I can read the meaning directly from my dreams, and therefore no longer need a mediator to communicate them. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 188,
A persecutory dream always means: this wants to come to me. When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien—but it just becomes all the more dangerous. The urge of what had been split off to unite with you becomes all the stronger. The best stance would be: “Please, come and devour me!” ~Carl Jung, Children's Dreams Seminar.
Today I no longer need these conversations with the anima, for I no longer have such emotions.
But if I did have them, I would deal with them in the same way.
Today I am directly conscious of the anima's ideas because I have learned to accept the contents of the unconscious and to understand them.
I know how I must behave toward the inner images. I can read the meaning directly from my dreams, and therefore no longer need a mediator to communicate them. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 188,
A persecutory dream always means: this wants to come to me. When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien—but it just becomes all the more dangerous. The urge of what had been split off to unite with you becomes all the stronger. The best stance would be: “Please, come and devour me!” ~Carl Jung, Children's Dreams Seminar.
“Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.”
~Carl Jung
Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung
"In the realm of the psyche, miracles can happen." Jung
Dream Interpretation.
I have no theory about dreams, I do not know how dreams arise. And I am not at all sure that – my way of handling dreams even deserves the name of a “method.” I share all your prejudices against dream-interpretation as the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness.
On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it.
This something is not of course a scientific result to be boasted about or rationalized; but it is an important practical hint which shows the patient what the unconscious is aiming at.
Indeed, it ought not to matter to me whether the result of my musings on the dream is scientifically verifiable or tenable, otherwise I am pursuing an ulterior-and therefore autoerotic-aim. I must content myself wholly with the fact that the result means something to the patient and sets his life in motion again. I may allow myself only one criterion for the result of my labors: does it work?
As for my scientific hobby-my desire to know why it works-this I must reserve for my spare time. “The Aims of Psychotherapy” (1931). --CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 86
...I handle the dream as if it were a text which I do not understand properly, say a Latin or Greek or Sanskrit text, where certain words are unknown to me or the text is fragmentary… My idea is that the dream does not conceal; we simply do not understand its language…There is a very wise word of the Talmud which says that the dream is its own interpretation. The dream is the whole thing…[172]
Therefore, first of all, when you handle a dream you say, ‘I do not understand a word of that dream.’
I always welcome that feeling of incompetence because then I know I shall put some good work into my attempt to understand the dream…[p.173] Something more is needed to bring certain things home to us effectively enough to make us change our attitude and our behavior.
That is what “dream language” does; its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.” (Man & his symbols, p.49)
No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.
Each individual varies so much in the way that his unconscious complements or compensates his conscious mind that it is impossible to be sure how far dreams and their symbols can be classified at all. (Man & his symbols, p. 53)
~Carl Jung
Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung
"In the realm of the psyche, miracles can happen." Jung
Dream Interpretation.
I have no theory about dreams, I do not know how dreams arise. And I am not at all sure that – my way of handling dreams even deserves the name of a “method.” I share all your prejudices against dream-interpretation as the quintessence of uncertainty and arbitrariness.
On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it.
This something is not of course a scientific result to be boasted about or rationalized; but it is an important practical hint which shows the patient what the unconscious is aiming at.
Indeed, it ought not to matter to me whether the result of my musings on the dream is scientifically verifiable or tenable, otherwise I am pursuing an ulterior-and therefore autoerotic-aim. I must content myself wholly with the fact that the result means something to the patient and sets his life in motion again. I may allow myself only one criterion for the result of my labors: does it work?
As for my scientific hobby-my desire to know why it works-this I must reserve for my spare time. “The Aims of Psychotherapy” (1931). --CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 86
...I handle the dream as if it were a text which I do not understand properly, say a Latin or Greek or Sanskrit text, where certain words are unknown to me or the text is fragmentary… My idea is that the dream does not conceal; we simply do not understand its language…There is a very wise word of the Talmud which says that the dream is its own interpretation. The dream is the whole thing…[172]
Therefore, first of all, when you handle a dream you say, ‘I do not understand a word of that dream.’
I always welcome that feeling of incompetence because then I know I shall put some good work into my attempt to understand the dream…[p.173] Something more is needed to bring certain things home to us effectively enough to make us change our attitude and our behavior.
That is what “dream language” does; its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.” (Man & his symbols, p.49)
No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.
Each individual varies so much in the way that his unconscious complements or compensates his conscious mind that it is impossible to be sure how far dreams and their symbols can be classified at all. (Man & his symbols, p. 53)
We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
~Jung, The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols.
~Jung, The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols.
Leonora Carrington
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
Acknowledging the Irrational:
If We Suppress Bad Things From Entering the Mind
They Penetrate Through Dreams & Trancelike States;
Dreams of Discovery
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. -- Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man
We also . live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. -- Jung, Man and His Symbols
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.
One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
The archetype in dream symbolism
The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. P. 68 A remarkable instance of this can be found in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were finally suppressed in the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era. They expressed, together with the Delphic oracle, the essence and spirit of ancient Greece. On a much greater scale, the Christian era itself owes its name and significance to the antique mystery of the god-man, which has its roots in the archetypal Osiris-Horus myth of ancient Egypt. P. 68
It is commonly assumed that on some given occasion in prehistoric times, the basic mythological ideas were "invented" by a clever old philosopher or prophet, and ever afterward "believed" by a credulous and uncritical people. P. 69
But the very word "invent" is derived from the Latin invenire, and means "to find" and hence to find something by "seeking" it. P. 69
Goethe's Faust aptly says: "Im Anfang wr die Tat [in the beginning was the deed]." "Deeds" were never invented, they were done; thoughts, on the other hand, are a relatively late discovery of man. First he was moved to deeds by unconscious factors; it was only a long time afterward that he began to reflect upon the causes that had moved him; and it took it him a very long time indeed to arrive at the preposterous idea that he must have moved himself . . . his mind being unable to identify any other motivating force than his own. P. 70
. . . inner motives spring from a deep source that is not made by consciousness and is not under its control. In the mythology of earlier times, these forces were called mana, or spirits, demons, and gods. They are as active today as ever. If they go against us, then we say that it is just bad luck, or that certain people are against us. The one thing we refuse to admit is that we are dependent upon "powers" that are beyond our control. P. 71
If We Suppress Bad Things From Entering the Mind
They Penetrate Through Dreams & Trancelike States;
Dreams of Discovery
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. -- Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man
We also . live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. -- Jung, Man and His Symbols
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.
One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
The archetype in dream symbolism
The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. P. 68 A remarkable instance of this can be found in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were finally suppressed in the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era. They expressed, together with the Delphic oracle, the essence and spirit of ancient Greece. On a much greater scale, the Christian era itself owes its name and significance to the antique mystery of the god-man, which has its roots in the archetypal Osiris-Horus myth of ancient Egypt. P. 68
It is commonly assumed that on some given occasion in prehistoric times, the basic mythological ideas were "invented" by a clever old philosopher or prophet, and ever afterward "believed" by a credulous and uncritical people. P. 69
But the very word "invent" is derived from the Latin invenire, and means "to find" and hence to find something by "seeking" it. P. 69
Goethe's Faust aptly says: "Im Anfang wr die Tat [in the beginning was the deed]." "Deeds" were never invented, they were done; thoughts, on the other hand, are a relatively late discovery of man. First he was moved to deeds by unconscious factors; it was only a long time afterward that he began to reflect upon the causes that had moved him; and it took it him a very long time indeed to arrive at the preposterous idea that he must have moved himself . . . his mind being unable to identify any other motivating force than his own. P. 70
. . . inner motives spring from a deep source that is not made by consciousness and is not under its control. In the mythology of earlier times, these forces were called mana, or spirits, demons, and gods. They are as active today as ever. If they go against us, then we say that it is just bad luck, or that certain people are against us. The one thing we refuse to admit is that we are dependent upon "powers" that are beyond our control. P. 71
The Stuff that Dreams are made of by John Anster Fitzgerald
The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are precisely those which have inspired the basic images of ritual and mythology. These "eternal ones of the dream" are not to be confused with the personally modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmares or madness to the tormented individual. Dream is personalized myth - myth is depersonalized dream. --Joseph Campbell
*
Jung - occasionally the dreams of others, helped to shape, revise, or confirm my views on a life after death] Not only my own dreams, but also occasionally the dreams of others, helped to shape, revise, or confirm my views on a life after death.
I attach particular importance to a dream which a pupil of mine, a woman of sixty, dreamed about two months before her death. She had entered the hereafter. There was a class going on, and various deceased women friends of hers sat on the front bench. An atmosphere of general expectation prevailed.
She looked around for a teacher or lecturer, but could find none. Then it became plain that she herself was the lecturer, for immediately after death people had to give accounts of the total experience of their lives.
The dead were extremely interested in the life experiences that the newly deceased brought with them, just as if the acts and experiences taking place in earthly life, in space and time, were the decisive ones.
In any case, the dream describes a most unusual audience whose like could scarcely be found on earth: people burningly interested in the final psychological results of a human life that was in no way remarkable, any more than were the conclusions that could be drawn from it to our way of thinking.
If, however, the "audience" existed in a state of relative non-time, where "termination" "event," and "development" had become questionable concepts, they might very well be most interested precisely in what was lacking in their own condition.
At the time of this dream the lady was afraid of death and did her best to fend off any thoughts about it. Yet death is an important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to answer it.
To this end he ought to have a myth about death, for reason shows him nothing but the dark pit into which he is descending. Myth, however, can conjure up other images for him, helpful and enriching pictures of life in the land of the dead.
If he believes in them, or greets them with some measure of credence, he is being just as right or just as wrong as someone who does not believe in them. But while the man who despairs marches toward nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right into his death.
Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the one lives against his instincts, the other with them. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
*
Jung - occasionally the dreams of others, helped to shape, revise, or confirm my views on a life after death] Not only my own dreams, but also occasionally the dreams of others, helped to shape, revise, or confirm my views on a life after death.
I attach particular importance to a dream which a pupil of mine, a woman of sixty, dreamed about two months before her death. She had entered the hereafter. There was a class going on, and various deceased women friends of hers sat on the front bench. An atmosphere of general expectation prevailed.
She looked around for a teacher or lecturer, but could find none. Then it became plain that she herself was the lecturer, for immediately after death people had to give accounts of the total experience of their lives.
The dead were extremely interested in the life experiences that the newly deceased brought with them, just as if the acts and experiences taking place in earthly life, in space and time, were the decisive ones.
In any case, the dream describes a most unusual audience whose like could scarcely be found on earth: people burningly interested in the final psychological results of a human life that was in no way remarkable, any more than were the conclusions that could be drawn from it to our way of thinking.
If, however, the "audience" existed in a state of relative non-time, where "termination" "event," and "development" had become questionable concepts, they might very well be most interested precisely in what was lacking in their own condition.
At the time of this dream the lady was afraid of death and did her best to fend off any thoughts about it. Yet death is an important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to answer it.
To this end he ought to have a myth about death, for reason shows him nothing but the dark pit into which he is descending. Myth, however, can conjure up other images for him, helpful and enriching pictures of life in the land of the dead.
If he believes in them, or greets them with some measure of credence, he is being just as right or just as wrong as someone who does not believe in them. But while the man who despairs marches toward nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right into his death.
Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the one lives against his instincts, the other with them. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 242.
One would do well to treat every dream as though it were a totally unknown object. Look at it from all sides, take it in your hand, carry it about with you, let your imagination play round it, and talk about it with other people.
Primitives tell each other impressive dreams, in a public palaver if possible, and this custom is also attested in late antiquity, for all the ancient peoples attributed great significance to dreams.Treated in this way, the dream suggests all manner of ideas and associations which lead us closer to its meaning.
The ascertainment of the meaning is, I need hardly point out, an entirely arbitrary affair, and this is where the hazards begin. Narrower or wider limits will be set to the meaning, according to one’s experience, temperament, and taste. Some people will be satisfied with little, for others much is still not enough. Also the meaning of the dream, or our interpretation of it, is largely dependent on the intentions of the interpreter, on what he expects the meaning to be or requires it to do.
In eliciting the meaning he will involuntarily be guided by certain presuppositions, and it depends very much on the scrupulousness and honesty of the investigator whether you gain something by his interpretation or perhaps only become still more deeply entangled in his mistakes. --Jung, CW 10, Civilization in Transition, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man, Page 317
One would do well to treat every dream as though it were a totally unknown object. Look at it from all sides, take it in your hand, carry it about with you, let your imagination play round it, and talk about it with other people.
Primitives tell each other impressive dreams, in a public palaver if possible, and this custom is also attested in late antiquity, for all the ancient peoples attributed great significance to dreams.Treated in this way, the dream suggests all manner of ideas and associations which lead us closer to its meaning.
The ascertainment of the meaning is, I need hardly point out, an entirely arbitrary affair, and this is where the hazards begin. Narrower or wider limits will be set to the meaning, according to one’s experience, temperament, and taste. Some people will be satisfied with little, for others much is still not enough. Also the meaning of the dream, or our interpretation of it, is largely dependent on the intentions of the interpreter, on what he expects the meaning to be or requires it to do.
In eliciting the meaning he will involuntarily be guided by certain presuppositions, and it depends very much on the scrupulousness and honesty of the investigator whether you gain something by his interpretation or perhaps only become still more deeply entangled in his mistakes. --Jung, CW 10, Civilization in Transition, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man, Page 317
"This process of becoming human is represented in dreams and inner images as the putting together of many scattered units, and sometimes as the gradual emergence and clarification of something that was always there. The speculations of alchemy, and also of some Gnostics, revolve around this process. It is likewise expressed in Christian Dogma,
and more particularly in the transformation mystery of the Mass.”
~Carl Jung, Collected Works 11, Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, Paragraph 399
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
and more particularly in the transformation mystery of the Mass.”
~Carl Jung, Collected Works 11, Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, Paragraph 399
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
...Why are the [dreams] not understandable?...The answer must be that the dream is a natural occurrence, and that nature shows no inclination to offer her fruits gratis or according to human expectations. -- C.G. Jung
The paranormal dream that seems to transcend time and space remains no less controversial today than it was in the days of Cicero, the great Roman orator...
--Stanley Krippner
"Dream is the personalized myth. Myth is the depersonalized dream." --Joseph Campbell
Your Body Dreams: “A central idea arises from this book: The body is dreaming. We discover that body processes will mirror dreams when the body is encouraged to amplify and express its involuntary signals, such as pressures, pain, cramping, restlessness, exhaustion, or nervousness. Since a reduction of symptoms – and even healing – often accompany consciously unleashed body processes, we may conclude that in illness the body suffers from incomplete dreaming. The same unconscious contents that appear in dreams burden and activate the body with unexperienced forms of physical behavior and undetected insights”. (Dreambody, Mindell, 1982, p. 198)
The paranormal dream that seems to transcend time and space remains no less controversial today than it was in the days of Cicero, the great Roman orator...
--Stanley Krippner
"Dream is the personalized myth. Myth is the depersonalized dream." --Joseph Campbell
Your Body Dreams: “A central idea arises from this book: The body is dreaming. We discover that body processes will mirror dreams when the body is encouraged to amplify and express its involuntary signals, such as pressures, pain, cramping, restlessness, exhaustion, or nervousness. Since a reduction of symptoms – and even healing – often accompany consciously unleashed body processes, we may conclude that in illness the body suffers from incomplete dreaming. The same unconscious contents that appear in dreams burden and activate the body with unexperienced forms of physical behavior and undetected insights”. (Dreambody, Mindell, 1982, p. 198)
Dream Quotations:
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body. "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift. "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams. Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body. "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift. "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams. Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
David Ho
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche.
Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be.
We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. ~Jung, "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be.
We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. ~Jung, "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
"I'll tell you what happened to me. I was in Holland for a few days and one night I had a brief dream, but enlightening. I saw a large sword resting on a small table on which was placed an open book. On one page of the book was printed , in large letters, the word "Azoth." I woke up suddenly, and, as happens in these cases, I kept in mind the vivid images I have dreamed". --Paracelsus
He who sleeps in the grave of the millennia dreams a wonderful dream. He dreams a primordially ancient dream. He dreams of the rising sun.
If you sleep this sleep and dream this dream in this time of the world, you will know that the sun will also rise at this time. For the moment we are still in the dark, but the day is upon us.
He who comprehends the darkness in himself, to him the light is near. He who climbs down into his darkness reaches the staircase of the working light, fire maned Helios.
His chariot ascends with four white horses, his back bears no cross, and his side no wound, but he is safe and his head blazes in the fire.
Nor is he a man of mockery, but of splendor and unquestionable force. I do not know what I speak, I speak in a dream. support me for I stagger, drunk with fire. I drank fire in this night, since I climbed down through the centuries and plunged into the sun far at the bottom. And I rose up drunk from the sun, with a burning countenance and my head is ablaze. Give me your hand, a human hand, so that you can hold me to the earth with it,for whirling veins of fire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me toward the zenith.
But day is about to break, actual day; the day of this world. And I remain concealed in the gorge of the earth, deep down and solitary, and in the darkening shadows of the valley. That is the shadow and heaviness of the earth.
How can I pray to the sun, that rises far in the East over the desert? Why should I pray to it? I drink the sun within me, so why should I pray to it? But the desert, the desert in me demands prayers, since the desert wants to satisfy itself with what is alive. I want to beg God for it, the sun, or one of the other immortals. I beg because I am empty and am a beggar.
In the day of this world, I forget that I drank the sun and am drunk from its active light and singeing power. But I stepped into the shadows of the earth, and saw that I am naked and have nothing to cover my poverty. No sooner do you touch the earth than your inner life is over; it flees from you into things.
And a wondrous life arises in things. What you thought was dead and inanimate betrays a secret life and silent, inexorable intent. You have got caught up in a hustle and bustle where everything goes its own way with strange gestures, beside you, above you, beneath you, and through you; even the stones speak to you, and magical threads spin from you to things and from things to you. Far and near work within you and you work in a dark manner upon the near and the far. And you are always helpless and a prey.
But if you watch closely, you will see what you have never seen before, namely that things live their life, and that they live off you: the rivers bear your life to the valley,. one stone falls upon another with your force, plants and animals also grow through you and they are the cause of your death. A leaf dancing in the wind dances with you; the irrational animal guesses your thought and represents you. The whole earth sucks its life from you and everything reflects you again.
Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things.
Your dog robs you of your father, who passed away long ago, and looks at you as he did. The cow in the meadow has intuited your mother, and charms you with total calm and security. The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.
Like a stray child you stand pitifully among the mighty, who hold the threads of your life. You cry for help and attach yourself to the first person that comes your way. Perhaps he can advise you, perhaps he knows the thought that you do not have, and which all things have sucked out of you.
I know that you would like to hear the tidings of he whom things have not lived, but who lived and fulfilled himself. For you are a son of the earth, sucked dry by the suckling earth, that can suck nothing out of itself, but suckles only from the sun. Therefore you would like to have tidings of the son of the sun, which shines and does not suckle. You would like to hear of the son of God, who shone and gave, who begot, and to whom life was born again, as the earth bears the sun green and colorful children.
You would like to hear of him, the radiating savior, who as a son of the sun cut through the webs of the earth, who sundered the magic threads and released those in bondage, who owned himself and was no one's servant, who sucked no one dry, and whose treasure no one exhausted.
You would like to hear of him who was not darkened by the shadow of earth, but illuminated it, who saw the thoughts of all, and whose thoughts no one guessed, who possessed in himself the meaning of all things, and whose meaning no thing could express.
The solitary fled the world; he closed his eyes, plugged his ears and buried himself in a cave within himself but it was no use. The desert sucked him dry, the stones spoke his thoughts, the cave echoed his feelings, and so he himself became desert, stone, and cave. And it was all emptiness and desert, and helplessness and barrenness, since he did not shine and remained a son of the earth who sucked a book dry and was sucked empty by the desert. He was desire and not splendor, completely earth and not sun.
Consequently he was in the desert as a clever saint who very well knew that otherwise he was no different from the other sons of the earth. If he would have drunk of himself he would have drunk fire.
The solitary went into the desert to find himself But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you find manifold meaning only in yourself not in things, since the manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the same time, but is a succession of meanings.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself.
And therefore what happened to every desirous solitary also happened to him: the devil came to him with smooth tongue and clear reasoning and knew the right word at the right moment. He lured him to his desire. I had to appear to him as the devil, since I had accepted my darkness. I ate the earth and I drank the sun, and I became a greening tree that stands alone and grows. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
If you sleep this sleep and dream this dream in this time of the world, you will know that the sun will also rise at this time. For the moment we are still in the dark, but the day is upon us.
He who comprehends the darkness in himself, to him the light is near. He who climbs down into his darkness reaches the staircase of the working light, fire maned Helios.
His chariot ascends with four white horses, his back bears no cross, and his side no wound, but he is safe and his head blazes in the fire.
Nor is he a man of mockery, but of splendor and unquestionable force. I do not know what I speak, I speak in a dream. support me for I stagger, drunk with fire. I drank fire in this night, since I climbed down through the centuries and plunged into the sun far at the bottom. And I rose up drunk from the sun, with a burning countenance and my head is ablaze. Give me your hand, a human hand, so that you can hold me to the earth with it,for whirling veins of fire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me toward the zenith.
But day is about to break, actual day; the day of this world. And I remain concealed in the gorge of the earth, deep down and solitary, and in the darkening shadows of the valley. That is the shadow and heaviness of the earth.
How can I pray to the sun, that rises far in the East over the desert? Why should I pray to it? I drink the sun within me, so why should I pray to it? But the desert, the desert in me demands prayers, since the desert wants to satisfy itself with what is alive. I want to beg God for it, the sun, or one of the other immortals. I beg because I am empty and am a beggar.
In the day of this world, I forget that I drank the sun and am drunk from its active light and singeing power. But I stepped into the shadows of the earth, and saw that I am naked and have nothing to cover my poverty. No sooner do you touch the earth than your inner life is over; it flees from you into things.
And a wondrous life arises in things. What you thought was dead and inanimate betrays a secret life and silent, inexorable intent. You have got caught up in a hustle and bustle where everything goes its own way with strange gestures, beside you, above you, beneath you, and through you; even the stones speak to you, and magical threads spin from you to things and from things to you. Far and near work within you and you work in a dark manner upon the near and the far. And you are always helpless and a prey.
But if you watch closely, you will see what you have never seen before, namely that things live their life, and that they live off you: the rivers bear your life to the valley,. one stone falls upon another with your force, plants and animals also grow through you and they are the cause of your death. A leaf dancing in the wind dances with you; the irrational animal guesses your thought and represents you. The whole earth sucks its life from you and everything reflects you again.
Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things.
Your dog robs you of your father, who passed away long ago, and looks at you as he did. The cow in the meadow has intuited your mother, and charms you with total calm and security. The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.
Like a stray child you stand pitifully among the mighty, who hold the threads of your life. You cry for help and attach yourself to the first person that comes your way. Perhaps he can advise you, perhaps he knows the thought that you do not have, and which all things have sucked out of you.
I know that you would like to hear the tidings of he whom things have not lived, but who lived and fulfilled himself. For you are a son of the earth, sucked dry by the suckling earth, that can suck nothing out of itself, but suckles only from the sun. Therefore you would like to have tidings of the son of the sun, which shines and does not suckle. You would like to hear of the son of God, who shone and gave, who begot, and to whom life was born again, as the earth bears the sun green and colorful children.
You would like to hear of him, the radiating savior, who as a son of the sun cut through the webs of the earth, who sundered the magic threads and released those in bondage, who owned himself and was no one's servant, who sucked no one dry, and whose treasure no one exhausted.
You would like to hear of him who was not darkened by the shadow of earth, but illuminated it, who saw the thoughts of all, and whose thoughts no one guessed, who possessed in himself the meaning of all things, and whose meaning no thing could express.
The solitary fled the world; he closed his eyes, plugged his ears and buried himself in a cave within himself but it was no use. The desert sucked him dry, the stones spoke his thoughts, the cave echoed his feelings, and so he himself became desert, stone, and cave. And it was all emptiness and desert, and helplessness and barrenness, since he did not shine and remained a son of the earth who sucked a book dry and was sucked empty by the desert. He was desire and not splendor, completely earth and not sun.
Consequently he was in the desert as a clever saint who very well knew that otherwise he was no different from the other sons of the earth. If he would have drunk of himself he would have drunk fire.
The solitary went into the desert to find himself But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you find manifold meaning only in yourself not in things, since the manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the same time, but is a succession of meanings.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself.
And therefore what happened to every desirous solitary also happened to him: the devil came to him with smooth tongue and clear reasoning and knew the right word at the right moment. He lured him to his desire. I had to appear to him as the devil, since I had accepted my darkness. I ate the earth and I drank the sun, and I became a greening tree that stands alone and grows. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
The shamanic practice of travelling in dreamtime through non-ordinary states of consciousness is perhaps our oldest lore about dreamlife. Through their dream journeys, shamans garnered the personal power and knowledge to help and heal the members of their societies.
The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams possessed oracular power. In the Bible, for example, Joseph elucidates Pharoah's dreams and averts seven years of famine. Possibly the first recorded "dreamwork" was known as Egyptian "temple sleep," in which the participants entered a trance state. Hypnotic in nature, it probably was the prototype of practices re-iterated in Greece in the Asklepian dream healing temples.
Modern dreamwork employs various techniques, but trance is common to all the experiential methods. Mostly "natural trance" is employed rather than formal induction. Natural trance is induced simply by focusing inward, taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing the body. Modern dreamwork draws together these two threads of our heritage (dream and trance) in the relationship between therapist and client. This type of work creates a co-consciousness of the dreamworld shared by both participants.
Earlier Greeks realized the inherent healing power within dreams and deified this force as the Olympian god, Apollo, and his son the healer Asklepios (known later in Rome as Aesculapius). When the potions and practices of medicine failed, one sought healing in the sacred dream. There were many dream temples throughout the countryside devoted to this very mission. Here one could end one's pilgrimage with purifications in the sacred spring in hopes that the god Asklepios would visit on his nightly sojourn.
Priests attended these temples and the worshippers, but never interfered with the pure healing energy of the god by offering their own rational interpretations. This ancient approach to the dream grounds modern non-interpretive, experiential dreamwork in a rich cultural heritage. Because they have an archetypal quality, these images emerge again and again through the centuries and their dynamic is as relevant for us today as it ever was.
There is an archetypal timeless quality, something which transcends both space and time, to both dreams and dreamhealing. None of this means that there is no value in dream analysis or interpretation, but the dream's power is not limited to that. It is the ego, not the larger self, which forms and desires interpretation to give "meaning" to a dream. On the other hand, the meaning of dreams is inherent in the experience, much like the purpose of being IS being. There are many ways the dream symbols help us gain conscious self-knowledge.
Some people feel they really "get" a dream when they experience the moment of "a-ha" or integration. The problem here is that stops the process of relating to the dream image by substituting some sort of intellectual inner "click" which may or may not be "right." Dreams have many levels of reality, so no single interpretation can encompass that. A myriad of interpretations contain useful self-knowledge.
Even a single dream can continue to unfold over the years since it contains an unfathomable depth of information. Beyond the symbols, beyond the "click," beyond "a-ha" is a healing state. It is a gift from your dream in the form of a healing state--a place which is without dialogue, which is about vision, which is about healing inside, and which is beyond mere psychological understanding. This is Mystery.
One of the main focuses in modern dreamhealing is on actualizing the healing power within dreams and other visionary consciousness states. There are many things you can do with a dream. One popular pastime now is the development of lucid dreaming, where you become conscious within the dream and direct your activities as in waking life. This may produce an increased sense of personal power and control. However, there is a chance that this is an invasive intrusion on natural corrective forces by an over-active ego.
The point of dreamwork is not to take the ego into the dreamworld. We need to bring the dream images into our conscious awareness and waking life. Since the dream state arises from beyond the ego, anything can happen, and natural laws of physical reality do not apply. Unbounded by any physical limits and laws, dream realities broaden awareness so that we can begin to experience our full range of humanness. Virtually anything is possible in the dream reality -- death, rebirth, time travel, out-of-body journeys, enhanced physical or mental powers, even extraordinary effects like healing and balancing.
Borrowing from C.G. Jung, we propose the idea that dream symbols arise from the psychic energies that create us and bind us together with all other life forces, the collective unconscious. However, moving beyond analytical and interpretive methods of treating dreams, it is possible for us to experience directly the timeless and dimensionless primal force that creates dreams. To do so we have to use dreamhealing to travel beyond the symbols to their very source. We call these experiences dream journeys, in the old shamanic sense.
The therapist functions as a guide to take the client deeper than the surface symbolism. Symbols are merely a means of capturing our attention -- of attracting, appeasing, or scarring our ego's conscious waking awareness. Any illness or disease, as the name itself suggests, has at its source a state of dis-ease or out-of-balance energies.
Like the shamans of old, Jung noted that the onset of any serious disease was reflected in dreamlife. In addition to leading to the source of our dis-ease, dreams and nightmares also have within them the potential for expansive experiences which can heal and bring us back to a state of balance and health. They are both diagnostic and prescriptive, in that sense. They reveal both problem and solution, if we only learn how to attend to their clarion call.
The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams possessed oracular power. In the Bible, for example, Joseph elucidates Pharoah's dreams and averts seven years of famine. Possibly the first recorded "dreamwork" was known as Egyptian "temple sleep," in which the participants entered a trance state. Hypnotic in nature, it probably was the prototype of practices re-iterated in Greece in the Asklepian dream healing temples.
Modern dreamwork employs various techniques, but trance is common to all the experiential methods. Mostly "natural trance" is employed rather than formal induction. Natural trance is induced simply by focusing inward, taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing the body. Modern dreamwork draws together these two threads of our heritage (dream and trance) in the relationship between therapist and client. This type of work creates a co-consciousness of the dreamworld shared by both participants.
Earlier Greeks realized the inherent healing power within dreams and deified this force as the Olympian god, Apollo, and his son the healer Asklepios (known later in Rome as Aesculapius). When the potions and practices of medicine failed, one sought healing in the sacred dream. There were many dream temples throughout the countryside devoted to this very mission. Here one could end one's pilgrimage with purifications in the sacred spring in hopes that the god Asklepios would visit on his nightly sojourn.
Priests attended these temples and the worshippers, but never interfered with the pure healing energy of the god by offering their own rational interpretations. This ancient approach to the dream grounds modern non-interpretive, experiential dreamwork in a rich cultural heritage. Because they have an archetypal quality, these images emerge again and again through the centuries and their dynamic is as relevant for us today as it ever was.
There is an archetypal timeless quality, something which transcends both space and time, to both dreams and dreamhealing. None of this means that there is no value in dream analysis or interpretation, but the dream's power is not limited to that. It is the ego, not the larger self, which forms and desires interpretation to give "meaning" to a dream. On the other hand, the meaning of dreams is inherent in the experience, much like the purpose of being IS being. There are many ways the dream symbols help us gain conscious self-knowledge.
Some people feel they really "get" a dream when they experience the moment of "a-ha" or integration. The problem here is that stops the process of relating to the dream image by substituting some sort of intellectual inner "click" which may or may not be "right." Dreams have many levels of reality, so no single interpretation can encompass that. A myriad of interpretations contain useful self-knowledge.
Even a single dream can continue to unfold over the years since it contains an unfathomable depth of information. Beyond the symbols, beyond the "click," beyond "a-ha" is a healing state. It is a gift from your dream in the form of a healing state--a place which is without dialogue, which is about vision, which is about healing inside, and which is beyond mere psychological understanding. This is Mystery.
One of the main focuses in modern dreamhealing is on actualizing the healing power within dreams and other visionary consciousness states. There are many things you can do with a dream. One popular pastime now is the development of lucid dreaming, where you become conscious within the dream and direct your activities as in waking life. This may produce an increased sense of personal power and control. However, there is a chance that this is an invasive intrusion on natural corrective forces by an over-active ego.
The point of dreamwork is not to take the ego into the dreamworld. We need to bring the dream images into our conscious awareness and waking life. Since the dream state arises from beyond the ego, anything can happen, and natural laws of physical reality do not apply. Unbounded by any physical limits and laws, dream realities broaden awareness so that we can begin to experience our full range of humanness. Virtually anything is possible in the dream reality -- death, rebirth, time travel, out-of-body journeys, enhanced physical or mental powers, even extraordinary effects like healing and balancing.
Borrowing from C.G. Jung, we propose the idea that dream symbols arise from the psychic energies that create us and bind us together with all other life forces, the collective unconscious. However, moving beyond analytical and interpretive methods of treating dreams, it is possible for us to experience directly the timeless and dimensionless primal force that creates dreams. To do so we have to use dreamhealing to travel beyond the symbols to their very source. We call these experiences dream journeys, in the old shamanic sense.
The therapist functions as a guide to take the client deeper than the surface symbolism. Symbols are merely a means of capturing our attention -- of attracting, appeasing, or scarring our ego's conscious waking awareness. Any illness or disease, as the name itself suggests, has at its source a state of dis-ease or out-of-balance energies.
Like the shamans of old, Jung noted that the onset of any serious disease was reflected in dreamlife. In addition to leading to the source of our dis-ease, dreams and nightmares also have within them the potential for expansive experiences which can heal and bring us back to a state of balance and health. They are both diagnostic and prescriptive, in that sense. They reveal both problem and solution, if we only learn how to attend to their clarion call.
Archetypal Psychologists perceive dreams as images. Shamans from traditional societies perceive dreams as spirits. Whether images and spirits are equivalent constructs and how this knowledge can be useful in multicultural counseling are the topics of this dissertation. A cross-cultural comparison and contrast between these two perspectives will be conducted. Shamans from traditional societies rely on spirits to heal people. Archetypal Psychologists work with images to help clients therapeutically.
Shamans grant full ontological status to the spirits that appear in dreams and seek their help in order to heal people. Archetypal Psychologists have delineated and explained the anthropomorphic qualities of the image in dreams but have not really accepted images as manifesting a full living status. A closer look at what Archetypal Psychologists view as images finds them to be similar to what shamans perceive as spirits. It is suggested in this paper that spirits may be perceived as images. The approach of seeing spirits as living images by the Archetypal Psychologists will have therapeutic implications, especially in their clinical work with dreams.
http://udini.proquest.com/view/spirits-and-images-in-dreams-a-goid:858205300/
Shamans grant full ontological status to the spirits that appear in dreams and seek their help in order to heal people. Archetypal Psychologists have delineated and explained the anthropomorphic qualities of the image in dreams but have not really accepted images as manifesting a full living status. A closer look at what Archetypal Psychologists view as images finds them to be similar to what shamans perceive as spirits. It is suggested in this paper that spirits may be perceived as images. The approach of seeing spirits as living images by the Archetypal Psychologists will have therapeutic implications, especially in their clinical work with dreams.
http://udini.proquest.com/view/spirits-and-images-in-dreams-a-goid:858205300/
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams.
Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.
One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.
Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
The prospective function, on the other hand, is an anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast.
They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy."
That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation.
In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.~Carl Jung
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
A dream is nothing but a lucky idea that comes to us from the dark, all-unifying world of the psyche. What would be more natural, when we have lost ourselves amid the endless particulars and isolated details of the world's surface, than to knock at the door of dreams and inquire of them the bearings which would bring us closer to the basic facts of human existence?
Here we encounter the obstinate prejudice that dreams are so much froth, they are not real, they lie, they are mere wish-fulfillments. All this is but an excuse not to take dreams seriously, for that would be uncomfortable. Our intellectual hubris of consciousness loves isolation despite all its inconveniences, and for this reason people will do anything rather than admit that dreams are real and speak the truth. There are some saints who had very rude dreams.
Where would their saintliness be, the very thing that exalts them above the vulgar rabble, if the obscenity of a dream were a real truth? But it is just the most squalid dreams that emphasize our blood-kinship with the rest of mankind, and most effectively damp down the arrogance born of an atrophy of the instincts. Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more this unity is strengthened in the depths. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 305
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. ~"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.
One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.
The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.
Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 233.
The prospective function, on the other hand, is an anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast.
They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy."
That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation.
In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.~Carl Jung
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
A dream is nothing but a lucky idea that comes to us from the dark, all-unifying world of the psyche. What would be more natural, when we have lost ourselves amid the endless particulars and isolated details of the world's surface, than to knock at the door of dreams and inquire of them the bearings which would bring us closer to the basic facts of human existence?
Here we encounter the obstinate prejudice that dreams are so much froth, they are not real, they lie, they are mere wish-fulfillments. All this is but an excuse not to take dreams seriously, for that would be uncomfortable. Our intellectual hubris of consciousness loves isolation despite all its inconveniences, and for this reason people will do anything rather than admit that dreams are real and speak the truth. There are some saints who had very rude dreams.
Where would their saintliness be, the very thing that exalts them above the vulgar rabble, if the obscenity of a dream were a real truth? But it is just the most squalid dreams that emphasize our blood-kinship with the rest of mankind, and most effectively damp down the arrogance born of an atrophy of the instincts. Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more this unity is strengthened in the depths. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 305
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. ~"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
See DREAMHEALING online book, here
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/index.html
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/index.html
Hypnos & Thanatos
We look to the dream in much the same way we looked to the Wise Ones for a deeper understanding about our life and destiny. We seek a way of listening to psycheís voice as it speaks to us about family, love, career, aging, and perhaps most importantly, of the reality of a creative daimon in our life, calling for recognition and expression.
The ancients, and later C.G. Jung, understood that dreams carry a profound message from the transcendent. Modern approaches to working with dreams tend to overlook their archetypal a priori nature, and attempt to understand these impersonal, archetypal images through the lens of the conscious, subjective mind. Archetypes cannot be muted by conscious intent, but will reveal their true nature when we strive to step into their world, habits, and tendencies. -Conforti
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/130083
DREAM QUEST
A "dream journey" uses the mind, in the broader concept of mind, to enter one's healing states. States of mind or consciousness can manifest, for example, as the "placebo effect" in medical terminology -- or in the evangelist's terms, faith healing. It is a journey to our ultimate creative state of mind which is the source of our dreams and imagination.
If you are so minded you might even consider this state to be "the Creator," "Higher Power," or "God force" within. In Jungian terms it would mean an experience of the healing power of the Self. Healing is an act of creation, and that part of us, our creative spirit or the god within, speaks most vividly through dreams and imagination.
Even Einstein considered imagination more important than knowledge. It is not an anti-scientific approach to dream. A dream is a mystical expression of imagination and creative mind which is what ritual and ceremony help invoke. There is safety in ritual and ceremony -- a secureness in it. It is another symbolic act of commitment to an inner faith. Ceremony by-passes the mind or intellect; it boggles it. It is a way of opening to a state of grace or faith, and these are integral aspects of mystical healing.
Ceremony reminds you of something you already have within you, but don't usually notice. It brings it to surface awareness. Because ceremonies are not rational, they confuse the rational mind. They appeal to the senses and take us outside of our usual ego experiences and beyond the experience of the rational or intellectual ego mind. This is where you find these healing states of consciousness, beyond the rational ego mind, in the mystic. Any time you turn your attention within and become receptive to yourself you enter a whole new world of experience, which is just as real in effects as the outer world.
You can facilitate change within yourself and cooperate with your personal growth or evolution. The only problem is getting around the habitual ego identity with its resistances to change. Many techniques of hypnotherapy have been used for years to accomplish this. One of the more famous, the "confusion" technique was popularized by therapist Milton Erickson, a pioneer in modern hypnotic therapy.
Any momentary disequilibrium of either the mind or body can induce a trance state which by-passes the conscious censoring ego and creates receptivity in the subconscious. The ego mind is formed from the sum accumulation of our life's experiences and our reactions to them. It sets the limits or boundaries of our usual thing-feeling-behaving patterns.
Based on our experiences, at deep levels of mind we form multi-sensory images of self and world -- images that capture their essence and shape our belief systems which in turn shape our ego and personality. Not only do these primal sensory energy images and beliefs limits us, they also contain the "psychic" distortions which form the nuclei of our dis-eases.
This structure is the ego-mind. It is limited, but what lies beyond is infinite mind or consciousness. It is our source of energy for re-imagining ourselves and healing. New or unfamiliar experiences, irrational ones like ancient dream rituals that don't compute or match with your normal experiences cause confusion and disorientation in the ego-mind, and can even turn it off.
In fact, most of the techniques used in dream guiding are based on fooling this part of the mind. In ceremony, the ego either automatically or voluntarily steps aside and becomes willing to relinquish its fantasy of "control." It becomes more vulnerable and open, particularly if the environment is safe and supportive. This is when the deep wisdom, the collective infinite consciousness tapped into through dreams and visions helps transform the old beliefs and images into more ease-ful, less limiting ones. Then one opens to free and easy states of mind.
A healing retreat creates a different world image, one in which the inner mystical experiences, dreams and visions, are held to be equally, if not more important than outer processes. With sanctuary one is free to explore them -- the permission is there in the environment.
Virtually all religious traditions throughout recorded history held that the deities communicated with mortals through dreams and visions. Yet, direct communication with deity is a new, unsettling thought for many people. These experiences are neither encouraged nor allowed in our culture by its healing and religious institutions.
DREAMHEALING
Healing doesn't happen with a one or two time workshop, nor will one dream accomplish it entirely. Great progress comes in the initial stages occasionally, but it is not probable and most likely will only be symptomatic healing. Deep healing or restructuring takes a full commitment of self, time, and energy. Most disease has taken years, perhaps a lifetime to develop and permeate all levels of our organism.
By the time it takes on physical or emotional symptoms, it has been around for awhile and involves the whole person and most of their life patterns. There is a momentum to each life and that is not usually changed overnight. It might not take three months, or it may take longer. Still, a retreat gives a person time and sanctuary and a better chance to explore themselves thoroughly to make deep physical and mental changes, to change the momentum.
In ancient Greece, the dream priest would look for a sign of the god in dreams. If they saw a sign of the god, then that was a sign that the healing had already occurred. Then you simply paid your fee for the upkeep of the temple, and left.
As therapists, we can't say, "Oh, there is a snake in your dream--you've been healed--see you later." The ancient healings may have been conducted in this manner, but it is not necessarily enough for the modern ego, because it is a surrender of personal power to an external force which only visits in certain dreams. Dreamhealing participants learn to realize that they are really the power behind their healing, not the therapist. That is much more empowering, and real healing is an empowering process, an opportunity for personal evolution.
Knowledge of self-healing capacities goes back over the millennia. That is a fundamental way dreamhealing differs from the ancient technique, or for that matter, most modern medical or new age healing practice. Common to shamanism, psychology, and the medical approaches are their implications that the healing power is outside of the person seeking healing. Somehow it is the doctor or his medicines and techniques, the shaman or the God -- someone, something, or somepower outside of the self who provides the healing. That disempowers.
Dreams provide a missing feminine element as contrasted with the characteristically masculine approach in the medical healing model. It is an intuitive one where the person needing healing is acted on from the outside by therapists, chemicals, surgery, or technology.
Dreams, on the other hand, are a personal inner healing, a non-intrusive one that arises from within, a creative healing of faith. Healing can happen at the physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual levels of soul, in different combinations.
The ancients, and later C.G. Jung, understood that dreams carry a profound message from the transcendent. Modern approaches to working with dreams tend to overlook their archetypal a priori nature, and attempt to understand these impersonal, archetypal images through the lens of the conscious, subjective mind. Archetypes cannot be muted by conscious intent, but will reveal their true nature when we strive to step into their world, habits, and tendencies. -Conforti
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/130083
DREAM QUEST
A "dream journey" uses the mind, in the broader concept of mind, to enter one's healing states. States of mind or consciousness can manifest, for example, as the "placebo effect" in medical terminology -- or in the evangelist's terms, faith healing. It is a journey to our ultimate creative state of mind which is the source of our dreams and imagination.
If you are so minded you might even consider this state to be "the Creator," "Higher Power," or "God force" within. In Jungian terms it would mean an experience of the healing power of the Self. Healing is an act of creation, and that part of us, our creative spirit or the god within, speaks most vividly through dreams and imagination.
Even Einstein considered imagination more important than knowledge. It is not an anti-scientific approach to dream. A dream is a mystical expression of imagination and creative mind which is what ritual and ceremony help invoke. There is safety in ritual and ceremony -- a secureness in it. It is another symbolic act of commitment to an inner faith. Ceremony by-passes the mind or intellect; it boggles it. It is a way of opening to a state of grace or faith, and these are integral aspects of mystical healing.
Ceremony reminds you of something you already have within you, but don't usually notice. It brings it to surface awareness. Because ceremonies are not rational, they confuse the rational mind. They appeal to the senses and take us outside of our usual ego experiences and beyond the experience of the rational or intellectual ego mind. This is where you find these healing states of consciousness, beyond the rational ego mind, in the mystic. Any time you turn your attention within and become receptive to yourself you enter a whole new world of experience, which is just as real in effects as the outer world.
You can facilitate change within yourself and cooperate with your personal growth or evolution. The only problem is getting around the habitual ego identity with its resistances to change. Many techniques of hypnotherapy have been used for years to accomplish this. One of the more famous, the "confusion" technique was popularized by therapist Milton Erickson, a pioneer in modern hypnotic therapy.
Any momentary disequilibrium of either the mind or body can induce a trance state which by-passes the conscious censoring ego and creates receptivity in the subconscious. The ego mind is formed from the sum accumulation of our life's experiences and our reactions to them. It sets the limits or boundaries of our usual thing-feeling-behaving patterns.
Based on our experiences, at deep levels of mind we form multi-sensory images of self and world -- images that capture their essence and shape our belief systems which in turn shape our ego and personality. Not only do these primal sensory energy images and beliefs limits us, they also contain the "psychic" distortions which form the nuclei of our dis-eases.
This structure is the ego-mind. It is limited, but what lies beyond is infinite mind or consciousness. It is our source of energy for re-imagining ourselves and healing. New or unfamiliar experiences, irrational ones like ancient dream rituals that don't compute or match with your normal experiences cause confusion and disorientation in the ego-mind, and can even turn it off.
In fact, most of the techniques used in dream guiding are based on fooling this part of the mind. In ceremony, the ego either automatically or voluntarily steps aside and becomes willing to relinquish its fantasy of "control." It becomes more vulnerable and open, particularly if the environment is safe and supportive. This is when the deep wisdom, the collective infinite consciousness tapped into through dreams and visions helps transform the old beliefs and images into more ease-ful, less limiting ones. Then one opens to free and easy states of mind.
A healing retreat creates a different world image, one in which the inner mystical experiences, dreams and visions, are held to be equally, if not more important than outer processes. With sanctuary one is free to explore them -- the permission is there in the environment.
Virtually all religious traditions throughout recorded history held that the deities communicated with mortals through dreams and visions. Yet, direct communication with deity is a new, unsettling thought for many people. These experiences are neither encouraged nor allowed in our culture by its healing and religious institutions.
DREAMHEALING
Healing doesn't happen with a one or two time workshop, nor will one dream accomplish it entirely. Great progress comes in the initial stages occasionally, but it is not probable and most likely will only be symptomatic healing. Deep healing or restructuring takes a full commitment of self, time, and energy. Most disease has taken years, perhaps a lifetime to develop and permeate all levels of our organism.
By the time it takes on physical or emotional symptoms, it has been around for awhile and involves the whole person and most of their life patterns. There is a momentum to each life and that is not usually changed overnight. It might not take three months, or it may take longer. Still, a retreat gives a person time and sanctuary and a better chance to explore themselves thoroughly to make deep physical and mental changes, to change the momentum.
In ancient Greece, the dream priest would look for a sign of the god in dreams. If they saw a sign of the god, then that was a sign that the healing had already occurred. Then you simply paid your fee for the upkeep of the temple, and left.
As therapists, we can't say, "Oh, there is a snake in your dream--you've been healed--see you later." The ancient healings may have been conducted in this manner, but it is not necessarily enough for the modern ego, because it is a surrender of personal power to an external force which only visits in certain dreams. Dreamhealing participants learn to realize that they are really the power behind their healing, not the therapist. That is much more empowering, and real healing is an empowering process, an opportunity for personal evolution.
Knowledge of self-healing capacities goes back over the millennia. That is a fundamental way dreamhealing differs from the ancient technique, or for that matter, most modern medical or new age healing practice. Common to shamanism, psychology, and the medical approaches are their implications that the healing power is outside of the person seeking healing. Somehow it is the doctor or his medicines and techniques, the shaman or the God -- someone, something, or somepower outside of the self who provides the healing. That disempowers.
Dreams provide a missing feminine element as contrasted with the characteristically masculine approach in the medical healing model. It is an intuitive one where the person needing healing is acted on from the outside by therapists, chemicals, surgery, or technology.
Dreams, on the other hand, are a personal inner healing, a non-intrusive one that arises from within, a creative healing of faith. Healing can happen at the physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual levels of soul, in different combinations.
Dream Quotations:
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego. Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304
No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325
The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476
A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24
Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad" qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
"On the Nature of Dreams" (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532
Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317
As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
"The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304
The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317
As against Freud's view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123
Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483
I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48
To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485
Much may be said for Freud's view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312
It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502
Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not - as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream's causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows: What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why" and the "wherefore" may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465
The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail. Only in the latter case can we speak of "prophecy." That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
"General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493
Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple.
"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503
Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself.
"Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer's consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one's own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122
On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced.
"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199
The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327
It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?
"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324
"Floater", Io Miller
Langer (Schilpp 1949:387) points out that language and myth are twin functions. She quotes Cassirer that the earliest product of mythic thinking "are dream elements, objects endowed with daemonic import, haunted places" and identifies the quality common to early myth and language as numinous. Abell describes the origin of the tension-imagery process as due to the accumulation of psychic energy encountered when there are difficulties in usual action procedures. (Hamlet's vacillation is a good example). He continues, (1966:60):
These tensions stimulate our imaginations to form images embodying their emotional essence. The mental activity through which psychic tensions are translated into mental imagery we shall call the tension imagery process (i.o.). This process is the dynamic agency behind both individual fantasies and forms of cultural expression.
Because of his discovery of the archetypes, Jung had an excellent intuition about the numinous aspects of parataxic images (1964:4):
Thus a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider "unconscious" aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained. Nor can one hope to define or explain it. As the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason.
Jung (1964:6) explains the reason for this as follows:
There are historical reasons for this resistance to the idea of an unknown part of the human psyche. Consciousness is a very recent acquisition of nature, and it is still in an "experimental" state. . . . One of the most common mental derangements that occur among primitive people is what they call loss of soul, which means, as the name indicates, a noticeable disruption (or more technically a dissociation) of consciousness. One might compare these quotations from Jung with what Rogers said (Kepes 1966:242): "The image is always and of necessity the work of an ordering will."
But perhaps the clearest statement on the subject is that of Cassirer (1925:1125-6) who says of the procedures of the parataxic mode:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated ... The concrescence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might well be illustrated: striking examples: name tabus. But as language develops ... distinct from all merely physical existence . . . the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely significatory function. Arid art leads us to still another stage of detachment . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely imminent validity and truth . . . Thus for the first time the world of the image becomes a self-contained cosmos ... In severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy, which constitute the world of magic and myth, it embodies a new step toward the truth.
These tensions stimulate our imaginations to form images embodying their emotional essence. The mental activity through which psychic tensions are translated into mental imagery we shall call the tension imagery process (i.o.). This process is the dynamic agency behind both individual fantasies and forms of cultural expression.
Because of his discovery of the archetypes, Jung had an excellent intuition about the numinous aspects of parataxic images (1964:4):
Thus a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider "unconscious" aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained. Nor can one hope to define or explain it. As the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason.
Jung (1964:6) explains the reason for this as follows:
There are historical reasons for this resistance to the idea of an unknown part of the human psyche. Consciousness is a very recent acquisition of nature, and it is still in an "experimental" state. . . . One of the most common mental derangements that occur among primitive people is what they call loss of soul, which means, as the name indicates, a noticeable disruption (or more technically a dissociation) of consciousness. One might compare these quotations from Jung with what Rogers said (Kepes 1966:242): "The image is always and of necessity the work of an ordering will."
But perhaps the clearest statement on the subject is that of Cassirer (1925:1125-6) who says of the procedures of the parataxic mode:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated ... The concrescence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might well be illustrated: striking examples: name tabus. But as language develops ... distinct from all merely physical existence . . . the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely significatory function. Arid art leads us to still another stage of detachment . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely imminent validity and truth . . . Thus for the first time the world of the image becomes a self-contained cosmos ... In severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy, which constitute the world of magic and myth, it embodies a new step toward the truth.
3.3 DREAMS
3.31 Introduction
If the stars only appeared once in a hundred years instead of every night, they would be considered a magical phenomenon of surpassing beauty. If dreams were as infrequent, they would be accorded the same awe. Insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that all human beings spend one third of their lives in the two altered states of consciousness known as sleep and dreaming, Both states appear necessary for physical and mental health, and they are generally distinguished physiologically by the rapid-eye movements (REM) of dreams which are absent in deep sleep.
Krippner (1970) and Buck (1971) describe and distinguish about twenty different states of consciousness, several associated with sleep and dreaming. Among the latter are the hypnagogic (falling asleep) and the hypnopompic (waking up) states with their special openness to suggestibility, vivid imagery, and the collective preconscious. Tart also distinguishes the "high dream" or the "lucid dream" (1969:169ff) where the dreamer "witnesses" the fact that he is indeed dreaming.
Dreaming is also associated with its two contiguous procedures in the parataxic mode - archetypes and myth. Dreaming relates to archetypes, because they usually only appear in dreams. Dreaming indeed, contributes to mental health because it "ventilates" the archetypes and expresses psychic tension which would otherwise be bottled up. Research studies have shown that when volunteer subjects are kept from dreaming for prolonged periods their mental health suffers. Campbell, the great explicator of myth, states the fundamental relationship between myth and dream as follows (1956:11-14):
It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbolic thrust that carries the human spirit forward. ... In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has a private, unrecognized and yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams. . . . There is something in these initiatory messages so necessary for the psyche that if they are not supplied from without through myth and ritual, they have to be announced again through dreams . . . .
Sullivan (1953:342) adds:
Both the myth and the dream represent a relatively valid parataxic operation for the relief of insoluble problems of living. ... In the myth the problems concern many people, and it is this fact which keeps the myth going and refines and polishes it. . . . The dream has that function for a person in an immediate situation. . . . The schizophrenic illness . . . is the situation into which one falls, when for a variety of reasons the intense handicaps of living are so great that they must be dealt with during a large part of one's waking life in the same dream-myth sort of way. . . . In all these cases the psychiatrist is dealing with the type of referential material which is not in the syntaxic mode, and one merely stultifies himself, to my way of thinking, by trying to make this kind of report syntaxic.
Following this introduction, section 3.32 will discuss the physiology of sleep and dreaming, section 3.33 the various theories about dreaming, 3.34 nightmares, 3.35 the hypnotic investigation of dreams, 3.36 dreams and creativity, including fantasy, 3.37 dreams and the paranormal, 3.38 high and lucid dreams, programming one's dreams, and 3.39 conclusion.
3.32 Physiology of Sleep and Dreaming
Jouvet (1967) in a review of the subject points to Klaue's pioneer work in distinguishing sleep from dreaming by brain wave analysis. Kleitman and Dement correlated this activity with eye movements, showing that REM activity coincided with periods of dreaming, and with paradoxical deep sleep. Both emerge from a delicate balance between the raphe system which (apparently fueled by serotonin) puts the individual to sleep, and the reticular formation which sustains wakefulness. Paradoxical (deep) sleep seems to occur only in the higher mammals, and appears to facilitate some chemical restoration necessary for human consciousness.
Dement (1974) points out that the REM state "occurs in every human six or seven times in each sleep period and takes two or three hours in every adult's day. It is a highly elaborate fantastic window into a hallucinatory world." However, Dement is convinced that "the dream world is a real world." In his view the process consists of (1) a hypnagogic period, (2) light sleep, (3) deep or paradoxical sleep, (4) several periods of REM sleep or dreaming, alternating with (3) but with sleep becoming lighter, and finally (5) the hypnopompic state which just precedes wakening. Kleitman (1960) traced these stages in detail.
There has been a great deal of progress in sleep and dreaming research since 1960. The effect of stress on dreams was well researched by Breger, Hunter, and Lane in 1971 in a book of the same title in which they found that dreams were the primary means by which the individual deals with stress in his environmental life. Peterfreund and Schwartz (1972) presented a unified approach to the phenomena of sleep and dreaming in which differences were explained in terms of activation and deactivation of certain programs in the brain. Williams (1970) reviewed sleep and dream research, and concluded that the subject was complex and not fully understood. Ephron and Carrington (1971) did a similar study on sleep phases. French (1957) continued an early paper on the reticular formation as the physiological means of keeping us awake, something like the little dog that wakes up the big dog of the cortex. Stoyva and Kamiya (1968) recognized electrophysiological studies of dreaming as a new strategy in the study of consciousness. Bourguignon (1973) discusses REM dreaming, sleep, trance, and hallucinations in the cultural aspects of her research.
Hadfield (1954:117) quotes LeGros Clark on the group of cells in the thalamus and mid-brain which:
... comprises a series of relay stations through which most sensory impulses must pass before they reach the cerebral cortex. . . . These groups of cells are more than simply relay stations; they are sorting stations which allow for the sorting and resorting of the incoming impulses so that they are projected on to the cerebral cortex in a new kind of pattern.
The physiological function described is very nearly that assigned by psychiatrists such as Kubie to the preconscious.
3.33 Theories of Dreaming
Virgil told us that dreams came through two gates of horn and ivory, and that the former were fantasy and the latter true. Since Virgil's time there have been many theories about dreams:
1. that they represent a somatic response (too much food)
2. that they outlet repressions (Freudian)
3. that they are required for mental health to restore proper brain function (physiological)
4. that they involve some kind of symbolization (parataxic)
5. that they open the door to the preconscious (ESP, creativity)
6. that they come from outside (collective unconscious or precognitive warning).
(page 188)
Hadfield (1954:5-12) enumerates various theories of dreaming as follows:
a. the physiological or "heavy supper" theory
b. the personal reminiscence theory
c. the theory of racial reminiscence
d. the premonitory theory.
He also (1954:67ff) sees specific functions for dreams
a. to reproduce worrying situations through perseveration
b. to serve as a form of ideation
c. to stand for experience by the reproduction of the problem
d. to warn of the consequences of action
e. to point to the causes of our troubles, often by rehearsing them
f. to make us face a situation we are trying to avoid
g. to point to the solution to a problem
h. to relieve hidden potentials and repressed emotions so that we may be restored to health.
He points out (1954:104) that "whatever we worry about, we dream about." But the helpfulness of dreams (since they are parataxic) is hindered by their being characterized by primitive thinking (Hadfield, 1954:140)
a. which is concrete not abstract, and therefore takes the form of image or symbol;
b. which takes place on the plane of sensation and perception rather than idea; and
c. which is characterized by lack of ability to relate cause and effect.
Hartman (1973:13-17) cites research showing the large percentage of dream-time in sleep found in young animals and humans, leading to the belief that newborn primates need more stimulation to the cortex than can be provided by sensory stimulation during waking hours. He also cites research (1973:14) that dream-time has a role in dealing with learning and memory, and another theory that it is associated with reprogramming the brain. Other research (1973:15) holds that dreaming bears a special relationship to intellectual ability. Elsewhere Hartman (1973:30) cites research suggesting that "D-sleep is an especially primitive state," and he notes (1973:38) that "during D much of the forebrain is in a state similar to that of alert waking." Studies in D deprivation suggest (1973:48) that it produces interference with memory and learning, but the amount of time required for D-sleep is "far from constant" (1973:62).
Hartman (1973:67) notices personality relationships with dreaming. Worriers require more D-time sleep. But this is also true of "tortured geniuses" (1973:68) for "certain very creative, concerned persons, both
(page 189)
in art arid science, often are long sleepers." Psychotherapy and Transcendental Meditation appear to reduce sleep requirements by 1-2 hours (1973:77), especially D-time sleep, whereas "an increased sleep need is associated with intellectual and emotional work" (1973:78).
Hartman's own hypothesis is then given (1973:116):
. . . that there may be a feedback mechanism connecting catecholamines and D-sleep such that conditions characterized by low catecholamines produces increased D-time, and that D-time in some way restores the integrity of the catecholamine brain systems, which, as we have seen, play important roles during wakefulness ...
Hartman (1973:134ff) also points out some neglected characteristics of dreams: (1) they unfold a story, (2) with bizarre or unusual events, (3) which are accepted without question by the dreamer. This leads him (1973:136ff) to analyze what is not in the dream: higher emotions, free will, logical thinking, and reality testing. He suggests (1973:138) that these systems are being repaired during D-sleep, and that "the dream can show us the functioning of the brain when the catecholamine influence is removed."
Jones (1962:43) (from a psychoanalytic stance) views a dream as the product of several psychodynamic forces:
1. a motivating repressed wish of infantile origin;
2. the defense ego which discharges the energy of the repressed wish so as to maintain a healthy state of sleep;
3. the synthesis ego which governs the setting, style, and rhythm ... as a preconscious process of redifferentiation and reintegration of pre-adaptive epigenetic successes and failures . . . under the . . . pressure of phase-specific readaptive crises.
Langs (1972) reviews (a) Freud's writings and subsequent literature regarding day residues and their relationship to the dream, (b) the recall of forgotten dreams, and (c) the concept of the "recall residue." Based on this review, a series of hypotheses are offered describing the relationship between day and recall residues and the dreams to which they are related. Clinical material is presented to illustrate these hypotheses, and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
Another mental health implication of dreaming is brought out by Moss (1967:57-8):
Psychoanalytic theory postulates that dreaming is a safety valve and that failure of this outlet can result in a compulsion to dream (hallucinate) in the waking state. Fenichel (1945:432) aptly represents this psychoanalytic viewpoint that because the unconscious has become conscious, the psychotic is dominated by archaic modes of thinking. He writes: "The schizophrenic shows an intuitive understanding of symbolism. Interpretation of symbols, for instance, which neurotics find so difficult to accept in analysis, are made spontaneously and in a matter of course by the schizophrenic." The verbalizations of the schizophrenic are similar to the unconscious repressed thoughts of the normal or neurotic. Symbolic thinking for them is not merely a method of defensive distortion; it is an archaic pictorial mode of thinking that occurs in all regressive states.
Dream symbols appear to allow repressed impulses to be expressed in disguised form. Sweetland and Quay (1952, 1953) and Moss (1967:167ff) made a series of studies on the content of dreams, arranged by personality patterns in conscious waking life. Well adjusted subjects produced "integrated" dreams with a minimum of emotional affect and considerable elaboration of the motif, whereas maladjusted subjects produced less structured dreams with high emotional content. The MMPI was used as a measure of adjustment. Surprisingly, the K score (until then considered a defensive suppressor variable) had the highest correlation with mental health and integrated dreams. In one of his earlier efforts the author (1955) who was then studying the high K factor found in effective teachers, connected these studies of Sweetland and Quay, and concluded that the K score was a measure of ego-strength. Apparently the creative impulse in mentally healthy dreamers results in innovation and elaboration of their dreams as well as their waking thoughts.
Jung (1964:37) says;
For the sake of mental stability and even physiological health the unconscious and the conscious must be integrally connected and then move on parallel lines. If they are split apart or dissociated, psychological disturbance follows. In this respect, dream symbols are the essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so that it learns to understand again the forgotten language of the instincts.
Jung (1964:41) in noting the difference between a sign and a symbol, says:
The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.
Kubie (1953:59) sees the symbolic function as bridging man's inner and outer world. Symbolism represents a continuity of conscious and unconscious mental activity, in which the unconscious extends beyond the boundary of the individual.
Jung (1964:33) reinforces this when he says of dreams:
That is what dream language does; its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.
Langer (1942) feels that thought and symbolism may extend beyond discursive forms. She says (1942:82):
So long as we admit only discursive symbolism as a bearer of ideas, thought in this restricted sense must be regarded as our only intellectual activity.
But she sees (1942:81) "an unexplored possibility of genuine semantics beyond the limits of discursive language." She declares (1942:82-2):
In this physical space-time world of our experience there are things which do not fit the grammatical schema of expression. But they are not necessarily blind, inconceivable mystical affairs; they are simply matters which require to be conceived through some symbolic schema other than discursive language ...
Tauber and Green (1959:27) point up the difficulty of conveying the presentational form of a dream in the discursive language of everyday life when they say:
Dreams, as we know, are usually presented in the form of visual imagery. Therefore, in order to communicate a dream to a listener, one has to translate its visual imagery into a language. They continue that since a large proportion of man's experience in the dream is presentational, the psychotherapeutic session can be greatly handicapped by such a restriction as verbal discourse only.
Tauber and Green (1959:33) echo this concept when they say:
There is a fallacy in identifying the prelogical processes with infancy, a chronological condition. Prelogical thinking is part of the basic endowment of man throughout his life.
Jones (1962:19-20) declares:
The psychological function of dreaming for Jung is that of compensation- for a kind of conscious myopia by a kind of unconscious vision. Each life, says Jung, is guided by a "private myth" grounded in both individual instinctual patterns, and the history of mankind, and mediated by the "archetypes" which are deployed by both. The function of dreaming is to restore connection between the profound awarenesses of the unconscious and the conscious with its "lopsided attention to superficialities."
Silberer is noted by Jones (1970:23) as believing that dreams perform a restorative function in permitting the (parataxic) symbolization of psychic tensions.
Tauber and Green (1959:ix) say:
Our general thesis will be that these prelogical processes are an inherent part of man's symbolizing equipment and that they illuminate and present his inner experience of himself and his relation to others. . . .
Hadfield (1954:120) points out:
Dreams are the manifestations in consciousness, during sleep, of the workings not only of the unconscious ... but of the subconscious mind. They are more than the mere reproductions of problems left during the day; they sift out the material and work out the problems by their own methods, and on principles different from those of the conscious mind ... instead ... they use the function of analogy, of simile, or parable, and of symbolism. It is for that reason ... that the subconscious mind is manifested in dreams and is able to solve problems which the conscious mind by its reasoning has failed to solve.
But not only are dreams "restorative" to the individual in that they permit the outletting of psychic tension from the subconscious, and idiosyncratic in that, as Jung (1964:viii) notes: "The dreamer's unconscious is communicating with the dreamer alone, and is selecting symbols which have meaning to the dreamer and no one else . . ."' they also involve the collective unconscious whose expressions may be social rather than personal.
As Deveraux says in the introduction of Lincoln (1970:vi):
He highlighted with great clarity a process which might be called the "socialization" of the dream; its integration into the institutional culture of the dreamer. . . . Expanding a hypothesis . . . that certain supernaturalistic beliefs are derived from dream experiences, Dr. Lincoln shows that other culture elements too ... may be inspired by dreams. In this connection he cites not only ritual acts, political decisions, and works of art, but three examples of scientific activity.
The psychological significance of this concept is that dreams may be interpreted equally well as due to the culture pattern of the collective preconscious, as well as the tensions in the individual unconscious.
This conclusion is reached by Lincoln (1970:26) when he says:
The structure of dreams and myths . . . in primitive cultures, can be regarded, therefore, as similar manifestations of the unconscious mind.
3.34 Nightmares
Nightmares (the word derives from a spirit not a horse) evoke the uncanny dread of an early and prototaxic exposure to the numinous. They are, hence, characteristic of rather immature individuals (children) or regressed and mentally unhealthy adults. They can be looked upon as severe "unstressing" experiences which are traumatic to the conscious ego,
As Hadfield (1954:176) explains:
The distinctive features of a nightmare in the more restricted sense of the term is that of a monster, whether animal or subhuman, which visits us during sleep and produces a sense of dread.
Hadfield (1954:177) quotes Ernest Jones that there are:
...three cardinal features of the malady: (a) agonizing dread, (b) a sense of oppression or weight at the chest which alarmingly interferes with respiration, (c) a conviction of helpless paralysis, together with other subsidiary symptoms such as palpitation.
Hadfield (1954:177) comments:
But all of these are the accompaniments of any intense fear; any severe enough dread will affect our respiration, produce sweating and palpitation, and the sense of paralysis as when we say we are paralyzed by fear.
Regarding dreams of devouring animals such as wolves, Hadfield (1954:195) says:
So too with the nightmare and myths of "devouring wolves" where the emphasis is upon the same sadistic desires in relation to food.We are the devouring wolves. In the stories of the werewolf, men turn into wolves, this being a reproduction and representation of what happens to a man under the dominance of an overwhelming passion. . . .
3.35 Hypnotic Investigation of Dreams
One of the favorite (though not the most fruitful) methods of psychological study of dreams has been through hypnotic investigation. The most comprehensive material on this is the book by Moss (1967) of the same title as the heading. It is both a book of facts, and a compendium of readings.
As Moss tells us (1967:3-4):
The central proposition of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is that dream formation is an unconscious event.... It was in his attempt to understand the language of the dream that Freud first differentiated between a primary and a secondary mode of thinking. . . . Thus in psychoanalysis the dream has both a manifest content, and a latent or repressed meaning, and the interpretation of the latter appears to be resisted by powerful forces. . . . Dreams were regarded as a distorted, perceptual-hallucinatory form of direct wish fulfillment, vis-a-vis the logical orderly manner of thinking of normal waking life. In later formulations Freud recognized the dream as a regressive or primitive mode of thought.
And Moss adds (1967:5):
Freud, then, did not regard symbols as exclusively or even primarily a problem of dream interpretation, but basically a problem of the understanding of unconscious or primary thought processes. . . .
Besides Moss' (1967) book, two reviews of the subject of hypnotic dreams, one by Barber (1962a), and the other by Tart (1965) are worthy of note. Both have continued their investigations since then. Barber's work is well represented in the Aldine Annuals Biofeedback and Self Control(1970,1971, 1972). Whereas Barber tends to a position which discredits the genuineness of hypnotism and the hypnotic dream, Tart (1969), using new techniques, tends to support the reality of the phenomena.
Honorton (1971) discusses a number of methodological problems, and suggests that future studies in the area should be directed toward:
(a) further exploration of electrophysiological concommitants of nocturnal and induced dreams, and
(b) comparison of nocturnal and hypnotic dreams from the same Ss.
Silberer, the pioneer researcher on hypnagogic phenomena, analyzed the image-making ability of the dreamer and concomitant conditions. As Tauber and Green (1959:42) tell us:
In analyzing this experience Silberer states that it consisted really of two conditions - drowsiness and an effort to think. Silberer called this effect "the autosymbolic phenomenon."
Moss (1967:2-3) points out that the central proposition of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is that dream formation is an unconscious event in which the dream is a distorted, hallucinatory form of wish-fulfillment, and a regressive, or primitive mode of thought. Furthermore, dreams involve symbolization which, in Freudian terms, disguise meaning as well as represent it.
The structure and function of hypnotically induced dreams has been a general method of focus in research. Schnek (1967) reviewed the literature on this subject. Brady and Bosner (1967) investigated rapid eye movement during such dreams. Sacerdote (1968) discussed induced dreams and pointed out their therapeutic value.
Some miscellaneous studies deserve mention. Suttcliffe and others (1971) found a curvilinear relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and vividness of imagery. Stross and Seevrin (1967) did an interesting study which connected recall of dreams with susceptibility to hypnosis, thereby verifying that hypnosis opens up the recall channel in some manner. Tart and Dick (1971) reported on the posthypnotic dream.
One of the peculiar aspects of hypnotic research on dreams is that there is lots of it, but no clarifying overall theories. It almost looks as though this method, while appealing to the psychologist, is not in the main stream of the underlying variables. Perhaps this situation is due to the fact that generally hypnosis does not give enough weight to dreams as the avenue to the numinous.
3.36 Dreams and Creativity
If creativity results from psychological openness to the preconscious, then dreams, reveries, and fantasies should be prime channels to creative insight. There are, in fact, many testimonies from creative people that this is the manner by which they have made their discoveries, (see below). Dreaming still seems to be one of the easiest methods of contact with the numinous through the preconscious. This encounter usually results in an image, not always clear at first, capable of different interpretations, and presentational not verbal, hence a symbol in its emergent sense.
Silberer's "autosymbolic phenomena" closely approximate creative intuition. Both are products of the hypnagogic state when the contact
(page 196)
between the conscious mind and the generalized preconscious is most easily effected. Since this juncture is fraught with some dissociation of the ego and loss of command over ideas, images or signs are used as a substitute. Silberer notes the corresponding process in the development of the race (Rapaport 1951:217):
Generation after generation, man pursues knowledge through a series of images and mythologies - then the symbol as a substitute for ideas of which humanity has no command as yet. . . .
One of the functions of dreams, according to Lincoln (1970:27), is that "the soul wanders while the body sleeps and undergoes experiences in a supposedly real world." The dream experience is regarded as having a reality of its own, cognate with the reality of waking. Dreams are especially important in this view as they furnish experience for the spirit in sleep, as nature does for the body while awake.
In many cultures dreams are accounted to be communications from on High to the individual, giving knowledge important for his safety or welfare. This concept leads to the modern psychological view of the dream as irruptions of internal psychic tensions from the personal unconscious. Dreams may also concern social as well as personal problems, and such dreams, which tap the collective unconscious, are not (as Sir Edward Tylor first noted) the womb of creativity in the individual, but of collective myth and religion in the tribe. Cures, magic, totems, ritual, ceremonies, and many other aspects of culture result from such information. As Lincoln (1970:95) notes:
Much of primitive culture is derived from the ancestor spirit who communicated through the culture pattern dream, the dream image being accepted as the real ancestor (i.i.o.).
Tauber and Green (1959:34) glimpse the parataxic and syntaxic stages of reification of thought when they say:
In the creative activity of individual man, as in the creative activity of the race, the image plays an equally significant role. Poets and artists throughout the ages have told of the image that comes as a step in the creative experience.... Language itself has its origin in man's inherent tendency to give form and appearance to his feelings and thoughts. . . .
In the last few years there has been considerable research connecting dreaming and fantasy with creativity. Krippner and Hughes (1971) believe that dreams measure human potential and are a helpful agency in integrating creativity. F. Dreistact (1971) has analyzed how dreams
are used in creative behavior. Hamilton (1971) studied dreams in the creativity of the poet Keats. Garcia-Barroso (1972) discusses the relationship between dreams, reveries, and unconscious fantasies, noting that they are all aspects of desire which may or may not be explicated in creative performance.
Several systems have been developed to use dreams and fantasy to solve creatively problems too baffling for the conscious mind. Mention may be made of the autogenic system of Shultz, the dream programming for creative response of Cora Flagg (sect.3.38) the hypnoprojective technique of Moss, the guided fantasy of Desoille, and several others.
Dreams also constitute an excellent avenue to projection. The hypnoprojective fantasy technique, as Moss (1967:25) reminds us, bears a close resemblance to the waking guided dream or fantasy of Desoille (1961), developed in France and popularized in the U.S.A. by Gil Repaille at the Buffalo Creative Problem-Solving Workshop. The subject after being relaxed, is given the suggestion that he "prepare for imaginary trips into the realm of creative imagination: an object may be presented, and the person is then asked, "What might you do with it?" This quickly allows the healthy subject to exhibit creative innovation, which is the aim of the fantasy technique. Van Berg (1962) points out that whereas under these conditions, the healthy person can cooperate in these descents into the preconscious, the neurotic always encounters hindrances, embodied in a figure (the keeper of the threshold) which prohibits exploration. These activities are similar to the Jungian technique of "active imagination."
Moss (1967:27) reports that Desoille believes that his client is in a hypnagogic state intermediate between true hypnosis and dreaming: "In this hypnagogic state ... the imagination, accompanied by imagery of a hallucinatory intensity is dissociated from the critical facilities."
And Moss (1967:26-7) concludes his analysis by pointing out that like "Jung, Desoille believes that when the patient can relate himself to the archetypes of the "Collective Unconscious" he has attained an appropriate basis for resolving the problems of life."
Moss (1970) has since developed a new study on dreams, images, and fantasy using the Semantic Differential technique.
In commenting on this matter, Green et. al. (1971a) say:
From these experiments it appears that there is a relationship or link between alpha and theta rhythms, reverie, and hypnagogic-like imagery. That there is also a link between (them) and creativity is revealed by the many true creative or intuitive creative ideas and solutions (in contradistinction to logical problem-solving solutions) that have come to consciousness out of or during reverie and dream-like states.
After a discussion of this type of creative experience of Cocteau, Stevenson, Kekule, Loewi, and others, they go on:
There are literally hundreds of anecdotes that show in some way not yet clearly understood, hypnagogic imagery . . . dreaming, and creativity are associated. The terminology used to describe the state we have called reverie is extremely varied, as for instance the "fringe" of consciousness (James 1959), the "preconscious" (Kubie 1958), the off-conscious and the transliminal mind: (Rugg, 1963), and the "transliminal experience" (MacKinnon 1964).
Lincoln (1970:90) quotes Seafield as follows:
The Divina Comedia was inspired by a dream; Hermas wrote his "Pastor" to the dictation of a voice heard in sleep; Condorcet saw in a dream the final stages of a difficult calculation, and Condillac frequently developed and finished a subject in his dreams.
But the most complete summary of the use of dreams for discoveries and inventions by scientists is by Krippner (1972):
There are records of many instances of artistic, scientific, and philosophical insights occurring during dreams. However, an important question has never been resolved: Does the creative dream represent a consolidation of ideas attained while one is awake (and in ordinary reality), or does it represent insights gained from experiences attained within the non-ordinary reality of the dream itself?
Robert Louis Stevenson (cited by Woods, 1947:871-879) wrote that he learned early in his life that he could dream complete stories and that he could even go back to the same dreams on succeeding nights to give them a different ending. Later he trained himself to remember his dreams and to dream plots for his books. He wrote that his dreams were produced by "little people" who "labor all night long," and set before him "truncheons of tales upon their lighted theatre." Stevenson described how he obtained the plot for his short story, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:"
For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterwards split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously ... All that was given me was the matter of three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary . . . "
Jean Cocteau (1952) dreamed he was watching a play about King Arthur; he later noted that it was "an epoch and characters about which I had no documentary information." The dream was so challenging that Cocteau was led to write his "The Knights of the Round Table". He concluded, "The poet is at the disposal of his night. He must clean his house and await its visitation."
Do these creative dreams of artists consolidate old material or do they find and explore a new reality? It appears that these dreams do both; they find and give expression to non-ordinary reality by giving better insight into people and events, and they do so by consolidating or integrating past material. Conversely, we can also say that by giving expression to a non-ordinary reality these dreams synthesize a great deal of material.2
3.37 Dreams and the Paranormal
Since the most ancient times dreams are reputed to have paranormal associations. Examples are found in the Bible, (e.g. Moses, Joseph) and in the sacred writings of nearly every high culture. Impressively, precognition is frequent in such dreams, which indicates a reality outside time, that is, the numinous element. Telepathic dreams are also found, as are dreams of monition and advice, and even those of assurance from beyond the grave. A dream may incorporate several or all aspects.
Hill (1968) has compiled accounts of precognitive dreams. Cicero dreamt that a fair young man would become emperor, and later recognized Octavius as the lad when he was introduced (p. 7). William II of England had a precognitive death warning the night before he was shot (p. 9). A Kentish father wrote his son at Oxford about a coming robbery, which was instrumental in the culprit's apprehension (p. 14). A British M.P. dreamed about the coming assassination of Lord Perceval, the Chancellor (p. 21). Lincoln dreamed of his own assassination (pp. 28-9). Dickens dreamed of a certain woman the day before he met her (p. 30). Similar material can also be found in Prince (1963). Ullman, Krippner, and Vaughan (1973:178-189) devote an entire chapter to precognitive dreams.
Hadfield (1954:218ff) discusses three types of precognitive dreams:
a. those apparently precognitive but capable of a simpler explanation;
b. veridictical information of contemporary events explainable by telepathy;
c. apparently precognitive dreams, explainable by neither of the above.
Jung (1964:36) notes the precognitive aspect of such dreams in declaring:
Thus dreams may sometimes announce certain situations long before they actually happen. This is not necessarily a miracle. ... Many crises in our lives have a long unconscious history. We move toward them step by step unaware of the dangers that are accumulating. But what we consciously fail to see is frequently perceived by our unconscious, which can pass the information on through dreams.
Research on precognitive dreams, besides that of Krippner and Ullman includes that of Bender (1967) who made an extensive study of the many precognitive dreams of one subject. Paleski (1972) analyzed prophetic dreams, and Krippner (1970) points out the validity of precognitive dreams even though they offend man's present concept of temporality. Satprem (1968:133) points out that precognitive dreams become a recurrent experience to persons in the higher syntaxic states.
Precognitive dreams have been baffling because until now there has been no rationale to explain the time distortion. Most people find this distortion difficult to accept because to them it demands a deterministic universe. But contact with the numinous (sect. 1.32, 4.13, 4.72) evokes its posture of being outside time and space, and this concept should help us to see the reasons for these stubborn and unusual facts. If precognitive dreams are monitions of a probable but not certain future, which may be avoided if we take action (as did Scrooge), they are precognitive only if we ignore them.
Telepathic dreams are easier to understand, although what is a time distortion in precognition has become a space distortion in telepathy. The most common telepathic dream is death-bed telepathy which is sometimes experienced in a dream, and sometimes in a waking vision. Both Hill (1968) and French (1963) are full of such accounts in which a person wakes up in the morning and announces that a distant relative or friend is dead, only receiving verification of the matter later. Our earlier book (1974:12-25) has several such accounts which are rather common even in the general literature. Apparently the lapse of the agent into the hypnagogic state preceding death brings his mind (still freighted with the desire to communicate his plight) into contact with the numinous element, and that is all that is required.
Unfortunately, research on telepathic dreams must be content with much less motivated circumstances than death-bed agonies: what usually results is the calling of Zener cards or the targeting of pictures from a distance. Of all the research in this area the best and most extensive in this country has been done at the Maimonides Hospital Dream Study Laboratory by Ullman, Krippner, and their associates. In general, results have been evidential, but rationale hard to find. Honorton (1973) investigating dream recall and ESP reported results at p = .002; Krippner (1970) reported transmission of artistic stimuli telepathically during sleep (p - .004). Krippner (1971) investigated sex differences; and he (1972) also reported a long distance (fourteen miles) dream telepathic success (p - .004). Krippner, Honorton and Ullman (1972) reported on the dream telepathy of art prints. Previously Krippner and Ullman showed that telepathic communication can appear in dreams. (See Table II, page 112.)
Ullman (1968) reported early on the dream laboratory research. In 1972 he recounted some of the studies suggesting telepathy in dreaming. Ullman, Krippner and Feldstein earlier (1967) demonstrated that dream telepathy was feasible. Ullman and Krippner (1970) reported three studies indicating the effect; in 1971 they did a popular article on ESP in dreams; in 1972, using REM monitoring techniques, they were able to prove dream telepathy (p = .001). Ullman, Krippner, and Vaughan (1973) finally published the bulk of the dream laboratory studies in a book Dream Telepathy.
The explanation, of course, for this well-designed and replicated research is that contact with the numinous element during the REM dream state allows the transmission of the message through space, as well as through time.
Several other kinds of paranormal dreams certainly suggest a beneficent view of the cosmos. One is the accident warning precognitive dream, which indicates the possibility of an accident and contains information which, if properly used, can help to prevent it. (A precognitive dream of a determined future would not have this feature). Another kind of dream has assurance or hope purportedly communicated from a dead agent who passes knowledge which can be of advantage but is unknown to anyone living. Hill (1968:33) gives a classic example of a dead father appearing in a dream to tell where he has secreted money unknown to anyone alive. Note that the hypothesis that this knowledge is in the numinous element does not require the belief in a returning spirit.
3.38 High Dreams, Lucid Dreams, Programming Dreams
It is now time to look at some anomalous types of dreams whicha lso appear to have relationships with the numinous. First is the "high dream" described by Tart (1970) as "a new state of consciousness." The abstract reads:
Three distinct types of mental activity are described as occurring during sleep:
(a) dreaming associated with a Stage 1, EEG pattern with intense effects, visual imagery and activity;
(b) sleep thinking, associated with a Stage 2, 3, or 4 pattern somewhat resembling the waking reverie; and
(c) the lucid dream in which a sort of overlap occurs, during which the dreamer seems to possess normal waking consciousness interwoven with the sleeping phase of his dream.
Tart (1969:169) also describes similar unusual dreams, which can hardly be distinguished from a waking revery or vision. They are psychedelic in that the sensations are intensely strong, - colors vivid, sounds vibrant. Satprem (1964:122) distinguishes between dreams and "vivid experiences" of a dream-like nature, which are "infinitely more real than physical scenes."
Similar experiences are recounted in the nature mystic experiences of section 4.71.
The "lucid dream" is an interesting phenomenon that appears more often with those advanced in the syntaxic stages. It consists of "witnessing" to the fact that one is dreaming. Such persons begin to acquire will about dreaming, which hitherto has been absent from this ASC. Some authors posit that this achievement represents the gradual purification of the subconscious as a side effect of meditation or the higher jhanas.
In regard to programming of dreams, the late Kilton Stewart did extensive study of the dream training of Senoi children (Tart 1969:159ff) in which he showed how the Senoi improved the mental health of their children by systematic training in removing the traumatic aspects from children's dreams. This consisted in hearing a recitation of the night's dreams at breakfast, in which the father might say to the child: "The monster who chased you was just your friend in a disguise; next time step up to him and be friendly, and all will be well." Stewart's interesting work is comparatively unknown, the most accessible article (other than Tart) being one in 1962. But even this piece does not give the full flavor of his teaching about programming dreams to accomplish whatever we wish, such as "Tomorrow, I will wake up with a new, creative idea about how to solve this problem." This work is now carried on by Stewart's widow,
Clara Flagg, at the Kilton Stewart Foundation for Creative Psychology 144 E 36th St. New York.
Stewart writes: "The sleep mind is the total mind, and the "I" of the dream is the primary central self"; in further writing, he equates this self to the Kahuna "low mind" (section 4.54) or to the collective preconscious, attributing to it thereby powers verging on the numinous. His thesis is that by a kind of autogenic training we can program this "computer" to work for us while we are asleep. Stewart's work in this field was ahead of his time; consequently his research was ignored; we are now beginning to see that it deserves much more attention.
3.39 Conclusion
This section has given careful attention to an important and neglected subject - dreaming - which is the most natural altered state of consciousness in which the numinous element can be contacted. Dreaming is common, safe, cheap, usually not scary or traumatic, neither addictive nor fattening, and can easily be practiced in bed. It is a wonder that more people have not payed more attention to it. But few of us keep a record of our dreams; fewer still attempt a scientific study of them. Dreams are, however, the road to creativity, and the genie of the Aladdin's lamp who can disclose the hidden cave of treasure. When people ask how they can become psychic, there is no better response than to reply "First examine your dreams, then use them to become creative." For as we become more aware of our dreams, preconscious material becomes more accessible to the ego; hence we become more spontaneous and as a result, more creative.
Dreams also have a mental health and restorative function. They contain the symbolization of feelings, ideas, memories, and experiences in the preconscious. They provide access to these elements as a result of which creative ideas can express themselves. They also offer an entrance toward the paranormal, and by virtue of this easy contact with the numinous, they offer both intuitive experiences with this primary source of energy and its initial non-traumatic relationship with the ego.
Dreams can be considered the highest form of the prototaxic mode, for they are the last procedure which takes place in an altered state of consciousness from the prototaxic end. As the highest procedure they have unique functions which already have become greatly humanized in comparison with some of the earlier prototaxic effects of Chapter 11. But having paid our respects here, we must now move to consider myth, - the first procedure in the normal state of consciousness.
THE DREAM GUIDE:
NAVIGATING THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
by Iona Miller, 1989
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/whats_new_9.html
ABSTRACT: The dream guide is one who has navigated the river of consciousness many times before. Aware of the nuances of the territory (s)he can invite others into that deep world, providing a sense of confidence and safety. Preparation for being a dream guide includes experience on both sides of the process. It involves working through one's own issues and letting go of personal agendas. Along with the DREAM JOURNEY GUIDELINES here is the basic "how to" for intuition to play with. These are not strict protocols, but guidelines or suggestions for moving through the levels of the psyche as described in the ego model. He will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters. --Hippocrates
As a dream guide, it helps to empty yourself of knowing, let the dreamer choose the image that opens the work and leads the way. A good dream guide does not lead but rather follows the dreamer's process to the dreamer's own definition of satisfaction. --Ann Sayre Wiseman, DREAMS AS METAPHOR
NAVIGATING THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
by Iona Miller, 1989
http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/whats_new_9.html
ABSTRACT: The dream guide is one who has navigated the river of consciousness many times before. Aware of the nuances of the territory (s)he can invite others into that deep world, providing a sense of confidence and safety. Preparation for being a dream guide includes experience on both sides of the process. It involves working through one's own issues and letting go of personal agendas. Along with the DREAM JOURNEY GUIDELINES here is the basic "how to" for intuition to play with. These are not strict protocols, but guidelines or suggestions for moving through the levels of the psyche as described in the ego model. He will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters. --Hippocrates
As a dream guide, it helps to empty yourself of knowing, let the dreamer choose the image that opens the work and leads the way. A good dream guide does not lead but rather follows the dreamer's process to the dreamer's own definition of satisfaction. --Ann Sayre Wiseman, DREAMS AS METAPHOR
ANATOMY OF A DREAM
A dream is a stream of chaos, a river of undifferentiated consciousness and creativity, flowing through the self-scape of the psyche. It is shaped by the frozen states of consciousness, the existential images, that define and mold the self and the reality of our perceptions. And, when it finally emerges into awareness, the images and plots that are presented to our almost-waking self are reflections of these states. They are another way of seeing the self and the reality we create, except one less prejudiced by our ego. When we are asleep the ego is asleep.
The ego is turned off and free consciousness has reign. Awake we order all we sense into the conformations of our "pre-ceptions"; but asleep, chaos reigns, and the structure that emerges as the dream is like a holographic image (in multi-dimensions) of the deeper self. As has been speculated about the brain and its functioning, a dream too is very much like a hologram.
A hologram is a three-dimensional image that is created by bouncing a laser light off an object and recording on a negative the interference wave pattern as the source light waves interact with the ones reflected from the object. The image of the object is reproduced by passing the original laser through the negative. Unlike a regular photographic image, if you walk around the back of a hologram, it is also reproduced. This is because it is the interference pattern that is recorded, and it contains all the 3-D information needed to reproduce a whole image of the subject. If, for example, you were to drop a rock into a pond, the waves produced would soon reach the shore and reflect back. As the source waves and the reflected waves interact, they create an interference pattern. This pattern contains all the information about the original event, from the shape of the shore, to the the weight, shape and speed of the rock as it entered the water. So does the pattern recorded on a holgraphic negative.
Interestingly, the entire image is in any part of the negative. If you cut the negative in half, the whole image is recorded in each half, just somewhat fuzzier. The whole image is in any part of the negative, the universe in a grain of sand. The dream is also just like the hologram. The passage of the consciousness stream through the psyche, and its encounter with the frozen consciousness states, cause ripples and patterns that when they reach our awareness, create images of the deeper self that formed them. The whole is in any part of the dream.
FLOWING WITH THE DREAMSTREAM
To the shaman/therapist, nature repeats at all levels and in all ways. In chaos theory, this principle is expressed in the self-similarity of fractals. Like the hologram, fractals repeat the basic conformation of their "parent" pattern. They repeat that same basic form over-and-over on different scales. The broad-strokes of nature appear at all levels. A guiding metaphor of dreamhealing is the concept that a river and the stream of consciousness have much in common. Guiding a dream journey is like guiding a white water river adventure, except on the river of inner consciousness (dreamstream) that flows through the dream-scape and self-scape. Both are full of rapids and turbulence, back eddies that trap one in circles going nowhere. There are calm, deep, peaceful and serene stretches and unexpected twists that open new vistas.
Both the river and dreamstream inexorably flow to the primal ocean, the sea from which all life has arisen, the ocean of chaotic consciousness. Water always seeks its own level through flow along the path of least resistance. In the river the flow of water is part of a cycle. It is a process--and that is what the stream of consciousness is--it is a flow. Within the river what makes rapids are the rocks, the obstructions. They are the hazards. They create turbulance around them. The psychic equivalent are frozen states of consciousness, the frozen existential images, which obstruct the free flow of creative consciousness. They are what create the turbulence within our psyches. Each dream journey is like running one set of rapids, and each rapid is different from the last or the next one. Basically, a rapids is a turbulence, where the flowing system is far-from-equilibrium.
Of course, that is where all the excitement is on a river trip, and also on the dream journey. You have to get into the turbulence to get the benefit. In a river, eddies or backcurrents are created around rocks. If you get into these eddies you just spin in a circle, going around and around. You remain trapped until you can get back into the flow.
In creative consciousness work it is the same. Rather than eddies, there are fantasy loops. They are always right in the middle of the crises, the rapids, and always reflecting this rock or this frozen consciousness right in the middle of the river. This is where the idea of being imaginative as a guide comes in within the dream journeys. Typically, people will come for help when they are in a crisis. In dreamhealing the eddies are the games they play, the patterns they get into, their self-serving fantasies, their wish-fulfilling daydreams, or excursions in the "heavens" of their belief system. These basic "go in circle" patterns appear at all levels in the dream journey. A river is always the same, yet totally different in every moment. It is constantly changing, becoming different than it has ever been or ever will be again. It is virtually random. The water you see moving past in this instant will not be the same as the next.
That complex, dynamic flow is also the description of the consciousness flow--always changing, yet always in essence the same.
And it is also the description of chaos--determinate indeterminacy or indeterminate determinacy. Always the same, yet ever-changing also describes fractal programs which model natural processes. They are self-similar, self-generating, and self-iterating. The source of a river's water and its goal are the same--the ocean. The source of the creative consciousness flow is the vast sea of consciousness, that primal field of pure potential.
We seek immersion in that creative consciousness for renewal and healing. The creative consciousness or dream guide and the river guide are also much the same. No river guide can learn the skill from a book. Training is as much visceral as intellectual, and best learned from those who are experienced themselves. Guides learn from other guides whose voices are rich with experience. They go down the river themselves, hands on, running the rapids. Again and again, they repeat the process until it becomes second nature and a matter of intuition as much as intellect. They are themselves guided by an experienced guide the first few times to teach them the river fundamentals, but they constantly learn by doing.
That is also how the dream guide learns, by experiencing both sides of the process, by experiencing first-hand the flow of the dreamstream. Facing their own fear and pain means that any sense of anxiety is personally transformed into a sense of excitement. The essence of the psychic rapids becomes familiar, even in its ever-changing appearance. The training needs to be a total experiential training--not a rule-book training. Yet there are some guidelines (guide's lines) for river running which parallel the creative consciousness or dreamhealing process. Good consciousness guides are intuitive.
They intuit their way through rapids sometimes, reading the river and responding instantaneously with the right moves, easily and automatically. That is what the guide does in the dream journeys. The whole idea of going down the river, if you are a river-runner, is to "stay in the current." It is when you get out of the current that you get into trouble. If you are in the current you miss the rocks, and flow through most rapids. You've got to learn how to flow in the current.
There are some rules that river guides use, such as "follow the bubbles." Bubbles usually indicate where the current flows. This is also an essential aspect of being the dream guide, being in the flow of consciousness, and staying in the current. Any good river guide knows that how you "set up" determines how you go through a rapids. Setting up is the key to a successful run. You've got to set up where the flow is the greatest, where the most water goes. That is the best place (most of the time). It is exactly the same with the dream guide, who also has foreknowledge of some possible obstructions, based on the interview, and his/her knowledge of the personality of the one being guided.
Guiding includes preparing the self and the client for the journey, listening to and healing the whole dream, sensing/intuiting which symbol or event in the dream represents the flow that leads to the dis-ease state, and providing a safe, relaxed environment for the consciousness journey. The point where you enter is important, and depends on your intuition, your imagination. Once in a river's rapids you always keep your bow pointing toward the trouble. You always face the danger.
In river running you can power-pull away from the rock and avoid a problem. In creative consciousness guiding you always face the fearful things, the danger, the pain, the frozen consciousness that appears in the journey as fearsome or uncomfortable images. You always face the frightening moment, the dangers, as in the rule of river-running. We wouldn't send anyone down the lower Rogue River without a guide. They might get trapped in those back eddies, spinning in circles. In the creative consciousness process they might get caught in a fantasy loop instead of the consciousness flow, because they don't know how to set up. Guides look at where the bubbles are to set up for the run.
That is like the intuition in dreamhealing, and not a bad way of describing the sometimes effervescent feeling of intuition. Reading the patterns and the hidden variables in the river becomes automatic to a river guide. The dream guide reads the shapes of the frozen images, of the feedback loops, and from that he senses the patterns of the stream of consciousness, of the fluid psyche. Yet, the rules are not set, for either a river guide or dream guide. They use them, but let go of them in any particular situation. Each journey is different, unique. That is what makes a guide, sensing and instantly responding to changing conditions. In a sense you can't have a textbook for either profession. You just have to listen to the river, the River Teacher, and see what she is telling you. The river always teaches about life and flowing, dynamic process.
The river provides apt metaphors of life, which encapsulate life's patterns. The river teaches without doing or acting, like the Tao. So too does the river of consciousness; just letting go and flowing with it is a healing experience. When we accompany people down the lower Rogue, or some other river, the experiences on the river teach, change, and heal as much as do the nightly consciousness journeys around the fire.
You run a river of consciousness with a dream guide for re-creation. Dreamhealing is for re-creation, and the difference is only a hyphen. Re-creation is deep play in the most profound sense, and it is healing. By re-creating, re-forming ourselves we access new potentials, new possibilities, new vistas. If someone is running some rapids and gets in trouble, it is the role of the guide to intervene.
The river guide is always prepared to leap in if he or she has to. They have to be prepared to jump into whatever river is there if necessary and deal with whatever comes up. The river guide or dream guide will often go through first to show how it is done.
The guides never push, rather they invite or beckon others through. "Come on, let's go; I've been here; it's O.K." There is a need for trust; if you're going to be a guide you've got to be trustable. The guide can't say "I've been there," when they haven't. They can say, "I've been through lots like it; let's go." The guide lets you know when there is danger, and admits that it is scary, yet OK.
The guide always has that sense of scared excitement in the most challenging runs, but still gets through. Both the river guide and dream guide prepare the client with this awareness. In terms of the journey itself, the river guide tells people what is coming up. Before they even leave he will teach about safety. "If you fall in the water float on your back and keep your feet pointing downstream; trust your vest. If your feet are out you can fend off or push off any rocks. Keep your feet pointed toward the danger."
In terms of preparation, for the dream journeys the dream guide might say something like, "If you get in trouble, I'll remind you to breath," or "Use your out-breath." In preparing for a creative consciousness or dream journey, the guide lets go of any ideas that they have about what this particular journey is going to be like. Its the same with the river guide--they know that river is always different. One never goes through rapids just the same way twice. They know that. It's always a new experience and one lets go of what one knows to experience it anew.
The chaotic nature of a river itself assures that. The good river guide doesn't go into the rapids with a preconception at all--"Well, I came through here last time like this." Instead, they still keep their bow pointed to the danger, they still have to pull off from rocks, they still have to stay with the current. Its the same with the dream guide. They must let go of anything they ever thought they knew. Each journey, no matter how many, is on a new river. The unexpected is expected, and is what defines the imagination process. This is where the dual-consciousness is important to a dream guide. They are in the flow of consciousness but there is still a dual-awareness of participating in this adventure, yet remaining outside it, too. They don't take the trip for the client who experiences it for himself, but facilitate or expedite the journey.
NAVIGATING THE RIVER OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Preparation:
What goes into preparing to guide people through their dreams and into the river of consciousness? There are just a few basic directions, but the finesse with which they are applied makes all the difference in keeping the process moving. When preparing for such an expedition the first step for the guide is to talk to the dreamer in an exchange of information. This is in part getting acquainted and a trust-building exercise, but the information exchanged is also important.
The guide here is getting information to help in forming internal intellectual and sensory images of the nature of the dis-ease or problem and the nature of the ego structure itself. Using T.A. for example, or exploring a symptom, (s)he defines the disease operationally as a system or pattern.
The guide is getting an overview of the shape of the frozen consciousness states or patterns that will be encountered in various guises at the various levels of consciousness they will pass through. This helps provide direction and identifies the psychic rocks that form the disturbances and turbulence within the consciousness flow. Understanding the psychic terrain helps in identifying openings to the next levels of consciousness, and also helps in identifying fantasy loops that support the disease.
Similarly the guide is becoming acquainted with the dreamer's personality and sensory patterns. This information may become useful in various ways later in the journey. This information process is not limited to the preparations but continues throughout the journey in one way or another. To a first-time journeyer, the guide is also giving information that will be useful in the journey itself -- preparing them for what might lie ahead.
Some of the most important points the guide gives about the upcoming journey, and again this may also be done at appropriate times during it, might include some of the following: * It is a journey of the imagination; don't discount that. In the words of Albert Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." It is the voice of creativity. *
Each aspect of the dream, symbol or action, is really a part of the dreamer and shaped by deep as well as recent memory and experience. It is these memories that also shape the dis-eases. * The dreamer will be moving towards fear and discomfort, but with reassurances that the guide will be right there and will not take the dreamer where they haven't been themselves. *
Dreamers learn to trust themselves and the process. There is nothing inside that will really hurt them. * The guide speaks about not letting the intellectual process or interpretation interfere with or take over in the journey. The dreamers can communicate what is going on but don't need to worry if they can't find words. They will probably be experiencing senses beyond the ones normally encountered. *
Guides will understand from their own experiencing of these states where they are. If the dreamer gets stuck, it is because they are holding on. Letting go and trusting is the act of faith that will carry them through the stuck place no matter how scary it is to let go, or what the mind predicts may happen. * The guide may ask permission to touch during the journey. It is very important to get this permission and not assume it is OK even if the permission has been given on previous journeys. *
Experience and intuition will teach the guide the kind of information each journeyer needs and when to give it. Each guide's personal preparation is just as crucial. This is a case of centering and breathing fully. It includes emptying the mind of any preconceived prejudices about the dreamer, the dream and its symbols, or where the journey might lead. The guide doesn't want their own personality to get in the way of the process.
They create a neutrality within themselves and paradoxically by not being there are more totally there. Contemplation of blankness or chaos, deep breathing and meditation can help shed any attachments to the meaning of the dreams or the outcomes of the process. To arbitrarily assign a particular meaning to a dream before the dream journey, and before hearing all of the dreamer's personal associations to the imagery or deciding where some particular journey may lead is comparable to "mind rape."
A dream guide lets the drama and the journey have all the time it needs to unfold before venturing any amplifications from their own stores of knowledge and wisdom. Another important reason for emptying the mind and the self is that the journey is a co-conscious one, that is one in which the guide enters and shares the consciousness states of the journeyer.
Dr. Laurence LeShan, in his book, THE MEDIUM, THE MYSTIC, AND THE PHYSICIST, identifies that it is becoming one with, sharing consciousness with the client that is the key to healing phenomena. Dr. Milton Erikson identified co-consciousness as the state in which his most powerful work and the most significant leaps in his therapy occurred, (see THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF MILTON H. ERICKSON, edited by Ernest L. Rossi, 1980).
And the key to entering this co-consciousness state is: first to empty one's own mind of the self, and then to fully attend to the client using all the senses to do so. This is the purpose, for example, of touching the client. It is not to heal or manipulate energy, but to better sense the client. Scanning, passing the hand several inches over the body of the client, can also help with this.
The palm of the hand may pick up pressure or temperature sensations and changes as it passes over certain areas of the body. This is not interpreted, but merely serves to help the guide enter more into the oneness and co-consciousness state with his charge. Sometimes matching breathing rates and depths, or eye blinking frequency, can help the guide enter co-consciousness, although forcing this won't really work.
More often, an outside observer would be able to notice that the guide and guided one were naturally breathing and blinking at the same rate. This is natural rapport. One trick that can be useful is the "putting myself into their place" game. In this scenario, the guide imagines being the client by seeing and sensing the scenes described by the client.
If this is painted on the blank mind of the guide, it leaves them open to an entrainment process in which they begin to experience what the client is experiencing, perhaps in the context of their own sensory system, but in all important ways, the same state. Using techniques like this, Graywolf has noticed that sometimes he senses what state lies ahead in the journey and later that they arrive there. It is just as important for the guide to help the dreamer to empty his or her mind of what their intellect and emotions want to make of the dream.
Relaxation and deep breathing techniques can help with this. "Breath deeply and let the out-breath empty you," or "Notice the empty space at the bottom of your breath, and let your mind empty into it each time you pass through it," are examples of some of the ways the guide might invite the dreamer to do this. The environment in which the journey is to occur is also important.
The guide should provide a pleasant, quiet, and safe place in which they will not be disturbed. The journeyer and guide should both have a comfortable place to sit or lie. Graywolf often lies beside the journeyer during the process as he finds it can help him enter the co-consciousness state more easily.
Our experience is that the journey is usually facilitated by the prone position, but not in all cases. Soft lighting is more conducive to the process than harsh or florescent lights and candles may also help set a mood. Remember as a guide one is dealing with soft night-time phenomena in which the emphasis is on internal rather than external sensings. Absence of extraneous cues from outside the therapeutic setting will help keep their attention inside. So time spent readying the abation (name of the cell in Aesculapian Dream Healing where the supplicant slept to dream and heal) is well spent.
Demonstration journeys have often been led in sterile classroom workshop environments with success, but these demonstrations are by intent superficial, and deeper expeditions are enhanced by safer more pleasant environments. In summary then, preparation is a time of trust building and information sharing. But most important is the emptying of the mind of intellectual and emotional interpretations and shadings for both the dreamer and the guide.
It is this preparation that sets the "tone" of the journey and is as important as the journey itself. Launching into the Consciousness Stream through the Dream: Once both are relaxed and emptied, the guide invites the dreamer to recall their dream. Borrowing from the Gestalt techniques, they are invited to share it in the first-person present-tense as if they are "experiencing the dream now."
Often this will induce R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) and this is an ideal condition although not necessary. If this occurs the dreamer is in altered consciousness re-experiencing the dream but on the waking side of that state. This is similar to but not exactly what has been described as lucid dreaming, the difference being that the dream experience has been brought into waking awareness rather than the ego entering into dream awareness.
This is a subtle but important distinction. It is more important to bring the dream's healing energy into waking reality for it to manifest than it is to enter the dream space with the ego. The absence of rapid eye movement does not necessarily mean that the dreamer is not in altered consciousness. The very recall of a dream with eyes closed in a state of deep relaxation is a non-ordinary state.
It is both the guide and dreamer working in this altered consciousness that makes this work different from other psychotherapeutic work. Here, the guide is totally attending to the recounting of the dreamer's experience of the dream. They are listening with dual consciousness, that is, part of their awareness is entering a co-consciousness state and sharing the dreamer's experiences and sensations, while a part of their awareness is also observing the dreamer and themselves. The client is usually in this dual consciousness too, with part of them being in the dream while part stands outside of it and describes the experience.
Here, or later in the journey, the journeyer might become confused by this duality of awareness and interrupt their journey as they try to reconcile it. If this happens, a few words from the guide can help, such as "You may find that this is like watching a movie; part of you is actually experiencing it and fighting as the hero(ine), but another part of you is sitting in the audience and capable of commenting on or describing what is happening. We'll communicate verbally as the audience but don't let that remove you from the movie's action."
A symbol may appear in this initial description which the guide thinks is "fraught with meaning," maybe a personally charged images comes up such as the guide himself or the guide's totem animal, if they have one. As tempting as this image can be, it may or may not be the best doorway for the dreamer to enter. When opening to what they are drawn to in the dream, guides keep their personal likes or expectations out of the process. They remember that the dreamer is doing this work for their own benefit. This is a danger area for the guide, and simply put is a case of separating one's intuition from one's personal issues. A digression and discussion of this topic is appropriate here.
THE DREAM GUIDE'S PERSONAL ISSUES -- THE WOUNDED HEALER
As has been observed and noted by Dr. Stanley Krippner and many others who have studied shamans, initiation into being a shaman is often through the healing of their own affliction. It is also a well known phenomena that many psychotherapists enter the profession because of their own disturbances and as an attempt to better understand and deal with them. In the field of addiction work, many, if not most counsellors come from the ranks of those who have had to deal with their own addictions.
The individual who has worked out all their own issues is indeed a rare phenomena and may be a mythical creature, particularly in the healing profession. We all have our personal wounds. Inside of us all are unresolved issues based on our life experiences which we have not quite worked out yet. Most therapists know when they are touching their own "stuff" because they are drawn to it. When your "stuff" is up you are drawn to it in another person. The same mechanism operates in romantic relationships where people with the same or complimentary issues, even though deeply hidden in the subconscious, couple up.
Different than "true love," this forms the basis of co-dependence or symbiotic relationship which exerts a strong draw on both. In the important work of consciousness guiding, one does not want such co-dependence or symbiosis to develop. Therefore, the issue of making a clear distinction between the draw of intuition and the draw of one's unresolved "stuff" is crucial. It reflects in therapy at each choice or decision-making point. After all, intuition is very important in this work and is in fact "the guide's guide." A knack for this discrimination can be developed. The issue of whether or not the consciousness guide has worked out all of their issues is not the point.
The point is that the guide has developed means of doing so and is aware of personal unresolved issues. It is a therapeutic or counseling axiom that therapy will get stuck when the client gets to the therapist's issues. By one of the corollaries of Murphy's Law, this will happen with about the same frequency as "if anything can go wrong, it will."
As with the client, the guide's dis-ease is hidden behind fear and pain, and if the guide has not been through that or faced it in themselves, they will not likely be able to guide the client through. An example from one of Graywolf's training sessions illustrates the point: In this instance a student was leading a dream journey and kept avoiding the client's dark place, a shadowy place of deep blackness that seemed ominous and full of hidden dangers.
Very quickly each time this image came up in the journey, she guided the client into some other aspect of the sensory experience that eventually led to very beautiful fantasy images of flying, lightness and freedom. It was a very pleasant experience for both, but no real transformation happened because the ominous shadow was still lurking, once again ignored and relegated to the obscurity of the dungeons of the subconscious. The student's life experiences had exposed her to abuse by addicted co-dependent parents and mate.
She had come to a "Pollyanna" way of dealing with this using affirmations and other superficial thought and emotional techniques as ways to create a safe and comfortable fantasy for herself. But positive thinking is not necessarily healthy thinking. She had not dealt with the pain and darkness at her deeper levels of memory and consciousness states such as those typically reached in creative consciousness process journeys. The client was facing similar issues and so in this case what the guide felt was her intuition was in reality her own avoidance mechanisms for escaping, or perhaps one might say "flighting" into lightness and the illusions of freedom.
But the darkness was still there, untouched and unresolved for both. And this is the danger: unresolved personal issues appearing disguised as intuitive feelings, hunches or attractions that fool the guide and lead only to fantasy loops or mutual self deception. The guide does little more here than teach the client a new fantasy for avoiding the issue. This illustration emphasizes the necessity for guides to have, themselves, been guided by one more experienced who has taken them into their own "forbidden territory."
With this experience, novice guides develop attitudes of courage so that when other unknown and frightening territories are encountered in a journey with a client, they will enter the scary places with faith in themselves and the process knowing that they can win through, rather than avoiding and digressing from them. On the other hand, a novice guide may again be attracted to the client's darkness, one that is like the unresolved darkness in themselves.
In good faith, in spite of their fear, they may even guide themselves and the client into that place. But since it is "in spite of," rather than a full embracing of the fear, they may panic and bolt. Because they have not yet "funded" themselves with the experience, courage and visceral trust in the process, they seek escape and pull the dreamer with them.
Again we emphasize the importance of the guide having personally experienced their own deep journeys to develop trust in the process. You only learn about going down a river by going down the river. We are not implying that the guides need to be perfect and have worked out all their own issues. Yet they must know themselves well enough and have enough personal experience with the process that they are prepared to resolve whatever of their own dark places, fears and pains might be induced by the client's experiences.
The guide must willingly enter this unknown common territory, embracing the fears with their fund of courage and experience if the client is willing to do so under those terms. Beyond this unresolved stuff however, lies the most profound level of internal processing for the guide which comes from genuine intuition or intuitiveness.
The question is how does one identify it. It is relatively easy to discriminate intellectual process from it, but it is not easy to tell the difference between intuition and personal unresolved stuff. Both have an essence of attraction and seem to come from deep within. There are some important distinctions, however.
The difference is a qualitative one and not easily quantified. Being in the co-consciousness state is more likely to invoke intuitive process since it is based in an internal letting go of the self. Like imagination, intuition is often very surprising, for the guide perhaps a new experience or perception not previously encountered. But personal "stuff" takes place within a context, it is quasi-logical, and develops in a cause-effect based way.
Yet we cannot always use this touchstone since the mind can often take intuitive insight and place it in a context of cause and effect. The surprising, acausal, or "does not follow" nature of the insight is the most reliable clue. There is really no objective "every time is true" answer to the question, but if the guide knows him or her self well enough, that and experience will help them develop a sense of the qualitative difference between genuine intuition and their own "stuff." Much of the dreamhealing process involves making such subjective choices and distinctions and acting on them with faith, courage, and trust.
Back to the Stream and the Dream:
Where we left off before our digression, the guide had invited the dreamer to share their dream. After attending this and looking at the attractions in the dream on the first time through, the guide then invites the dreamer to recall or share the dream a second time. The guide may at this time want to help deepen the dreamer's relaxation even further, or may just proceed with the second telling. This time, however, the guide is prepared to open a doorway into the deeper consciousness stream. How does the guide pick the doorway to the next level? Following are some general guide's lines.
Keep in mind, however, that there are no "cookbook" instructions. The dreamer and the guide are in a process of mutual co-creation and this process is best characterized by its lack of rules or consistency. Like running rapids, the route is as much determined by seemingly random variations in the currents of the consciousness flow, and they are usually subjective and intuitive calls as to riding these currents.
In retelling the dream, the guide may notice that the dreamer has left out or added some symbol or component of the dream from the first telling. The omission or addition is usually important and may be the way the dreamer's deeper self has of alerting the guide to the best doorway. A color, sound or some other sensory component of the dream may "leap out" at the guide and be the doorway they are seeking. During the retelling, the guide is sensitive to nuances in the body language, tone of voice, or other artifacts such as a "Freudian slip" which may also provide arrows for entries.
Sometimes entry is through one of the dream's actions, or perhaps the intense emotion that it or some symbol evokes, it is not always necessarily through a symbol. Sometimes Graywolf uses what he calls "the drone technique." In this technique the guide uses "soft ears," which is the equivalent of "soft eyes" or looking at something without a focus.
The sound of the dreamer's words becomes in essence a drone, but out of this background of white noise certain words, symbols, feelings or some other aspect of the dream will emerge. Standing out in their clarity, perhaps emphasized by a tone or body language, they are again a message from the dreamer's wiser self to the guide indicating a possible entry into the dream's deeper levels.
Often, as with Gestalt dreamwork, inanimate objects or symbols in the dream are good launching ramps. The more inanimate the symbol, the more the dreamer has disassociated from this aspect of consciousness, and so the more likely it is to be out of awareness, control, and ease. Discomfort and fear mark dis-eased states, and the dreamer will often experience these feelings more intensely as they get closer to it.
So symbols or images in the dream and later in the journey that cause discomfort or fear are like arrows pointing the way to the dis-eased consciousness pattern. Sometimes fear and discomfort are so intense that no matter how reassuring or supportive the guide is, the client will not venture into this area. So while providing direction, they may or may not be the doorway actually taken to the next level. In this case other doorways may be used and the nature of the fear or discomfort noted. It is perhaps useful here to state what may by now be an obvious fact.
THE GUIDE IS IN REALITY BEING GUIDED BY THE CLIENT, BY THE DEEPER SELF OF THE CLINET FROM A COMMON CONSCIOUSNESS AND CO-CREATIVE RELATIONSHIP THEY SHARE DURING THE JOURNEY.
The messages and clues are often very subtle or obscure. What goes on at the verbal and ego levels is often of minor importance. The guide realizes that a very wise and powerful part of the client -- the healer, soul, or whatever name is given this reality -- is directing the work and journey. It is the part that wrought the dream and brought it to awareness. It does not speak with words, nor necessarily openly. It is the guide's job to look beyond the obvious and the superficial, which are often ego constructs and self-serving to the client's and guide's ego and fantasy structures, to the deeper and wiser Self of the client who knows exactly where to go and what to do.
The guide is a mirror, reflecting back and translating this part of the journeyer to themselves. Once the guide selects the launching ramp, they invite the dreamer to enter into the consciousness and experience it directly. They may invite the dreamer to "Become that symbol, and re-experience the dream as it," or to "Imagine what it would be like, how you would experience yourself as the ..."
They invite the dreamer to fully explore that part of the dream as the self, and as before the guide listens, intuits and observes both the client's and their own co-consciousness experiencing of this state to find the next clue, the next doorway into even deeper levels. Thus, step-by-step, from consciousness state to consciousness state, from level to level until it eventually becomes a flow, the dreamer is led deeper and deeper into their imagination to confront their dis-eased primal consciousness self images.
As noted in an earlier chapter, the deeper one gets, the less definable the imagery becomes and the more multi-sensory its nature. Visual stimulation and auditory stimulation are among the last to develop discrimination. Pure color or sound indicate deeper and earlier experience and memory. tuck places in the journey, like on a river, indicate to the guide they are hung up on a rock of frozen consciousness.
Changing the sensory experience from say emotion to color, or visual to tactile, will often help the guide take the journeyer past stuck places and on to deeper levels. (S)he may remind them that they, the guide, are there with them, know this place, and will accompany the journeyer into it. They might provide reassurance by reminding them that there is nothing that will hurt them and that the fear is illusion.
They might suggest flowing into the place of fear with the outbreath, or to imagine breathing in the color and filling the insides with it as they immerse themselves in it on the outside. Changing the focus from a visual image to sound or taste is another possibility.
The guide naturally develops a repertoire of tactics over time to help the journeyer beyond the stuckness. Fantasy loops is another form of stuckness that may sidetrack a journey. Like back eddies in a river's flow, psychic fantasy loops are caused by the solid rocks of frozen consciousness.
The current is disturbed by the blockage, and flows back on itself, moving upriver against the flow and back again in circles. They represent the game, racket, and script patterns that we get caught in within our lives. In essence, the loop is an ego phenomena, a means by which it sustains itself and its identity in the familiarity of its known experiences. In these loops the imagery leads in a circle, in fact, often this is the first awareness the guide has.
They find themselves back at the same essential imagery they noticed earlier. They will notice that the loop's patterns of imagery, although more primal, mirror the behavioral, thought, and emotional patterns noticed in the earlier information-gathering part of the preparations. Getting out of a loop is often quite tricky. They can be tenacious and hold the travelers trapped and going around and around but nowhere in particular, just like back eddies do in rivers.
Often the hardest rowing a river guide has, is pulling out of a back eddy, and the same is true for the consciousness guide. Several doorways will be noticed and tried, but each leads back to the loop. It is here that both the patience and ingenuity of the guide are most exercised. And there are no rules other than persistence.
On occasion Graywolf has guided people back into more surface aspects of the dream journey and opened other doorways. Sometimes the loop itself becomes the lesson of this particular journey and provides fuel for future dreams and journeys. But usually the guide can find a new aspect or essence in the imagery experiences reported by the journeyer, or may intuitively pick up on some aspect the journeyer has neglected to mention. The guidelines for getting out of any stuck place apply in general to breaking out of a fantasy loop. As indicated earlier in this chapter, the stuck place may also indicate the guide's own unresolved "stuff."
We come back to this point because it is very important to realize it is the most likely reason for a consciousness journey to be limited or ineffective. The guide must remain unattached to the outcome of the journey. Experienced guides avoid controlling the process, flowing instead with the dreamer's imagination and imagery. Above all they must be prepared to venture with the dreamer into the very jaws of dismemberment, dissolution, or death. It is only the guide's unresolved issues and fears that will interfere with this, and this is a necessary step that leads into the healing and creative consciousness.
RUNNING THE PSYCHE'S RAPIDS
The crux of creative consciousness process is reaching this creative state of undifferentiated or chaotic consciousness. It is in this state that the old primal self images dissolve, and it is the consciousness from which the new ones form. Yielding to a process of ego death leads to this consciousness. It is a death because at the deepest levels we define ourselves by this image and what it has created and frozen into our lives. We are it and it is our death when it dissolves into the infinite possibilities of chaotic consciousness.
We suggest as a useful motto for the dream guide, "Know thyself well, and be prepared to enter into the jaws of death with deep-funded faith in the creative process." This unformed consciousness is the essence of our vitality and life force. It is really a consciousness field from which we create and recreate our reality every instant of time. It is a complexity of infinite consciousness possibilities and forms and is the essence of our ability to adapt, change, transform, and evolve.
It exists deep within us, hidden behind the opacity of what we know, and what we cling to. It reaches into our awareness through dreams, and in the flow of our imaginations. This is the essence of our being; it is the essence of all being. To become aware of it, to get there, we must navigate through the psychic rapids caused by the rocks of our dis-eased states and our knowings. It is on these rocks of frozen ego that we get stuck. No matter how scary the imagery, the guide realizes that this is the true nature of the journey. It is in her faith and nature, in faith in nature.
She knows the flow is found in her imagination and intuition. She invites the dreamer into this river. They will float it together. As guide she will navigate them past the rocks, helping the dreamer to find the flow to carry him through. She will help him to dissolve into his imagination, knowing it is the flow. She knows this last dissolving is a death but that it also opens into a field of unformed consciousness with infinite recreative possibilities. She has learned to let go and trust the healing nature of this state. She knows that from it will emerge an evolved new state of being and that this is the process of healing. It is in her own experience to trust this.
GUIDES AND STRANGE ATTRACTORS:
"MAGNETIC PERSONALITY"
An important question in learning to trust creative consciousness process is how do we know new images and consciousness structures emerging from the chaotic consciousness are always improvements over old; that indeed they do lead to healing. It is, in fact, the crux of this process. In all our work the new primal state indeed represents a remarkable improvement over the old dis-eased state that it replaces, and continues to break things loose and manifest changes in the journeyer far into the future.
In this sense the creative consciousness journey ends more in the opening of a process rather than the attainment of a state. It is not unusual for us to hear from people six months or a year after a journey reporting that whatever they did in their journey has changed their old patterns completely for the better in a seemingly permanent way and is still somehow working on them and changing them in yet more profound ways. Here chaos theory provides food for thought both metaphorically and mathematically.
Although answers as to how new consciousness structure emerges from the chaotic consciousness field are speculative, chaos theory offers some ideas. For example, it is known that "certain complex systems tend toward self organization and are marked by the capacity to evolve," (Kauffman, 1991).
Indeed the process of evolution is a statement of the healing process we are outlining. An organism or species faced with a threat to its survival, goes into crisis. Out of the chaos, this disruption, new forms emerge which have better survival potential. A system must go through a period of chaos or loss of structure in order to change, even a psychic system or consciousness system.
Chaos theory goes on to describe a force, an energy, or perhaps a principal, known as the Strange Attractor. These attractors operate on chaotic systems and influence the shape of the pattern that emerges. In a sense they are magnets drawing structure from chaos. We can speculate about the consciousness journey and the nature of the strange attractor that draws the new primal images from chaotic consciousness. At the inaugural 1991 meeting of the Association for Chaos Theory in Psychology, the idea of a therapist being such an attractor was discussed.
Based on observation, this is true, and indeed is an accurate description of the role of the guide in a consciousness journey. The shape or nature of the new image emerging from the nothingness of chaotic consciousness is influenced by its environment. In this sense the environment is the strange attractor. The environment a person was conceived in, born into, and developed in provides the strange attractor that shapes the ego or personality. Experiences of pain and fear, experiences of dis-ease, in this environment shape free consciousness energy into its form. There are of course other factors that influence how the environment was sensed, for example genetic factors. S
till the organism's experiences and the nature of the environment act on the emerging consciousness structure much as the strange attractor acts on a chaotic system. In the consciousness or dream journey the guide influences the environment and the experience by which these old images are brought into awareness and dissolved into chaos. Except in the journey the environment is one of ease and flow. Fear and pain are transformed by courage and imagination into a flow of creativity. The guide's image of the client is as a powerful being with all the resources needed for healing. The therapist in a state of co-consciousness is sharing this image as well as the experience of the journey and will very much influence the new consciousness process that emerges.
It will be more creative and courageous and flowing if that has been the experience of the journey itself, and it is the example (s)he sets and the image (s)he holds. There are also other influential factors; it is not all the guide as the attractor. There may, for example, be other consciousness structures in the client's ego that may exert magnetic influence on the emerging consciousness. These may be other unresolved issues, images, or other dis-eased consciousness structures. They may also be healthy flowing states that are not affected by the disease.
We are all a mixture and provide our own strengths and creativity to influence our evolution. But, in so far as the dis-eased states, we emphasize the benefit of deeper journeys, since the more primal the imagery, the more symptoms of dis-ease it is responsible for. The corollary to this, however, is that the deeper the journey, the more influential the guide is as a strange attractor. This is a very considerable responsibility, one the guide does well to consider carefully. It brings us back to earlier discussions of the importance of the guide's preparation and state of mind. It is crucial to have worked out, or have a means of working out, their own issues.
The guide's attitudes and process will be as important in the shaping of the new being, not through any manipulation or intent on their part, but by the very essence of their being. The unconscious absorption of the guide's traits happens automatically to a greater or lesser extent as both the self image and the worldview of the client is changed, broadened, and enlarged. In the process of therapy, the client is clearing emotional blocks, reclaiming frozen feelings, and lost or abandoned parts of the self. This is experienced in creative consciousness process largely through images and sensate experience which fuse mind, imagination, and feelings into a gestalt. The training process of the guide grants access to a deeper experience of the self which is contagious.
The therapeutic personality has the emergent capacity for curing dis-ease because the mere presence of a healthy personality acts as a tonic or general medicine for those who contact it. In other words, if you are truly individuated, you can trigger off the same process in other people. To be individuated as a therapist or guide means you express your unique essence most fully, rather than learning and practicing by rote.
It means you have and still are exploring the heights and depths of your own inner world, integrating that into the context of your life, and freeing up your creativity. The process is contagions because when a person meets someone whose worldview is more expansive, their limitations begin to dissolve too, provided they don't get threatened and run.
It is the guide's obligation to conduct themselves and the journey in a non-threatening manner. There is a tendency in the helping professions for people to consider themselves "healers." This is an especially popular term among alternative health practitioners whose practices range from body work, to crystal healing, to channeling, breathwork, rebirthing, naturopathic medicine, and ghostbusting, to transpersonal psychology, and more.
Each "healer" or system speaks of the myth, magic, and mystery that characterize their model, and offer this up as their healing balm. Thus they are likely to capture and contain the projections of others. Their unique personalities act as a "hook" for archetypal projection of the client's inherent healing resources.
This projection mobilizes healing. There is great responsibility which comes with declaring oneself a healer. For those who depend on them, it is their task to carry that projection for a while, until the client can re-own it and develop a relationship to the inner healer. All too often this is not done.
If the ego of the "healer" needs reinforcement of its grandiose self image, the illusion of being "healer" needs to be seen through for what it is -- an ego trip. In fact, it is really the inner healer which truly does all regenerative work in therapy. The therapist simply helps the client access it, provides the environment, as it were, for the client to evolve. The therapist as a strange attractor functions as the nucleus of an unpredictable yet deterministic process of growth and healing within the personality of the client. The guide does this without doing it.
GETTING INTO AND OUT OF CHAOS
As stated earlier, the crux of the creative consciousness journey is to enter into chaotic consciousness with the old existential primal self images so that they might be transformed. The closer one is to the chaos consciousness field, the more undifferentiated the imagery is. At these levels of consciousness, there seem to be two kinds of chaotic imagery. Here we are in a very cloudy area, so the question of whether one really experiences chaotic consciousness or merely the archetypal states defining its borders, has no clear answer.
In the descriptions we get and our own experiences, one could argue either way. However, there seem to be two types of imagery that we can associate with entering into chaotic consciousness. One is total blankness or lack of any form, the other is an overwhelmingness of sensation.
The first type is characterized, for example, by black space. Sometimes there is a black hole within the blackness. This is a black blacker than the blackest black imaginable. Sometimes it is a grayness or a gray cloud. There are usually sensations of falling or falling-floating experienced within this emptiness out of which eventually the new images emerge. The other type is characterized by, for example, a spiral or a vortex. It exerts a magnetic draw and the journeyers are drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause the journeyer to report intense dizziness and disorientation. Often there are feelings of flying apart, limbs and eventually all parts of the self flying off in the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex. This dissolution sometimes leads into the first type of imagery.
Sometimes other solid colors, laser-like in their purity might be presented. For example, a deep red might lead into a magma-like flowing sensation in which intense heat melts or dissolves the journeyer. We are not really sure they are different. Rather they are probably just different sides of the same circle seen from different perspectives. On the one side it tends to zero, and on the other, infinity.
It is not unlike the Gnostic concept of the plenum and the void being one paradoxical union of opposites. A plenum is the opposite of a vacuum, being fully occupied in this case by the imagery swirling in a chaotic way so it is not differentiated. So much information is there, it is chaotic and overwhelms the senses. It is a fullness rather than emptiness.
It is also like the Yin (feminine principle of yielding and emptiness) Yang (masculine principle of seeking and filling) creating the complete circle. Yet within each is the seed of the other. Indeed, in journeys the dismemberment in the spiral often leads to a sense of being "no thing," while the empty blackness is often found to be full of swirling colors. The imagery is far broader in scope than the examples given, but the guide learns to identify this step by its essence. There are feelings of transformative forces at work, and a feeling of almost palpable relief at this final stage.
The guide encourages the journeyer to enter these patterns and to yield to them. "Let go and let this vortex suck you in...What are you experiencing?" Or, "Go ahead, fall into this black hole, even if you're afraid. I'm with you and I've been here many times before. Come with me!"
The healthier new states and primal images that emerge from the chaotic consciousness tend to share some common characteristics. The new images are much more flexible, free and flowing. It naturally becomes easier to let go and face things with more courage even if afraid. There is an essence of deep peace and ease. Indeed this sense of peacefulness and security is the essence of the journey itself and what the guide brings to it. Many other aspects of this "right brain" state have been described such as feelings of dimensionlessness, timelessness, and boundarylessness.
Many senses are involved such as the experience of bubbles or effervescence and tingling sensations in the body, often at the site of a symptom. We usually let people know that "this is a healing state; stay in it and let it work on you now," we invite. "Stay in it as long as necessary...when it is time to come back, you'll notice that your eyes are opening. Just let that happen and you'll be back."
If the guide has any insights that might help the client find order or connections in the work, this is the time for those to be shared. For example, "I noticed that the red color you saw was throbbing and pulsing. That sounds almost like how a fetus experiences being in the womb. And the throbbing led to that queasy sensation in your abdomen. That might tie in with what you told me about your mother's heavy drinking and smoking while she was pregnant." The journeyer may be assured here that what they experienced were in reality memories, but sensory, cellular, or genetic memories of how they experienced their forming.
Much information can be exchanged at this phase while the client is still relaxed and close to the journey. But again we advocate caution about rampant interpretation or analysis. This may impose too much structure and direction on an emerging free consciousness pattern and define its limits too soon. In general the guide is content to allow this unfolding to freely develop as he did the rest of the journey. Sharings at this time are as likely to be counterproductive as helpful.
The guide operates from the principle that the guided one is really the healer and has the intelligence and deep wisdom to become aware of what they need to be aware of. It is a delicate balance. The guide does not want to control the emerging new structure, yet sometimes a piece of information or a connection may be a useful piece to which the guide can steer the journeyer. Once again these are subjective calls and as much, if not more intuitive than rational.
A DIFFERENT REALITY: ITS ALL IN THE PERCEPTION
Our perceptual systems, our sensory systems have as a prime function the task of creating some kind of order out of an otherwise totally random, confusing morass of information that is available at any moment of time. We actually have trillions of bits of information bombarding us at a given time. Our senses and perceptual patterns create some type of reality structure out of that. In this sense you can consider our perceptions and our senses, our genetic makeup, how our senses operate, as a strange attractor. Because this is essentially what creates some kind of order out of totally overwhelming input. IN OTHER WORDS, WE LIVE IN A TWILIGHT ZONE, IN ESSENCE, BETWEEN ORDER AND DISORDER.
What creates order is our presence, our being, our perceptual patterns, our own sensory systems. As we share common genetic backgrounds, we tend to have senses which are very similar. Maybe we taste things a little differently than someone else, but basically, unless medically impaired, we taste vinegar about the same. We taste sugar about the same. And so we create similar realities. We come to a consensus about reality. Yet our common agreements about reality are conditioned by our shared cultural trance (Tart, 1992).
They may be based on that essence of strange attractor. Deep down inside what holds our view of the world together? What makes it consistent? How we store that information then becomes important -- and more fundamentally, how it forms. The reality we form basically emerges from how we are living. How do we get that view of reality? When we begin to form we don't have any consistent prepared pattern. Yet almost everyone has seen that babies have distinct personalities even as newborns.
Formative experience begins in the womb. We've got all our perceptual mechanisms; we've got the senses. But we form our existential position, or view of reality, our beliefs about self and world, essentially from our experiences. They are based on how we perceive, and how our senses react to those experiences. That stores inside of us. Especially in the preverbal stage, it is stored as images. The nucleus of that memory, that position, that consciousness, is a multi-sensual imagery which describes the nature of the self and the world. If the world is a really threatening place, and Mom and Dad are terrible, and they beat me a lot, I grow up with the existential belief that the world is a dangerous place, and is going to hurt me all the time. I'm somehow deficient or unlovable. It's more than words. It is an image, and not the normal image you might think of. It is a multi-sensual image and is stored as a sensory memory rather than an intellectual or thought memory. It might just be colors; it might be a swamp!
Who knows what that image is like in the dream? When you get down to it, it may surprise you first how complete it is, and how utterly alien it is to any thing you think of as an image of the world. And that essentially is the order that has been created out of chaos at a very formative stage, a young age.
The strange attractor has been essentially a combination of a person's sensory patterns, perceptual patterns, and the environment and what is happening to them. It forms the basis of an individual's personal mythology, which forms the basis of the belief system, which forms the basis of how we think and feel about things. This in turn determines how we behave, which then feeds back in a circular way from our belief system to our behavior. The circular pattern makes sure everything, positive or negative, gets confirmed. This circle is a reflection of the deeper dis-eased image. If you go deep beneath that belief system, down to the deepest existential image, then you are at a place where very profound change can happen.
We've noticed in dream journeys and other consciousness journeys, that WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO THAT EXISTENTIAL IMAGE -- THE VERY BASIS OF THE IMAGE OF SELF -- IT IS USUALLY SURROUNDED BY FEAR AND PAIN, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT USUALLY FREEZES STUFF IN PLACE.
When you get deep down to that image, there is always a doorway to another deeper level. At the level where the existential image is formed, at the boundary where order and disorder dance the dance of creation, profound changes can occur. At that level the existential images that we use to order our reality can change through the dance. We can change our most fundamental perceptions of reality and in this new reality we can be at ease rather than diseased. It's really all in how we perceive it.
A dream is a stream of chaos, a river of undifferentiated consciousness and creativity, flowing through the self-scape of the psyche. It is shaped by the frozen states of consciousness, the existential images, that define and mold the self and the reality of our perceptions. And, when it finally emerges into awareness, the images and plots that are presented to our almost-waking self are reflections of these states. They are another way of seeing the self and the reality we create, except one less prejudiced by our ego. When we are asleep the ego is asleep.
The ego is turned off and free consciousness has reign. Awake we order all we sense into the conformations of our "pre-ceptions"; but asleep, chaos reigns, and the structure that emerges as the dream is like a holographic image (in multi-dimensions) of the deeper self. As has been speculated about the brain and its functioning, a dream too is very much like a hologram.
A hologram is a three-dimensional image that is created by bouncing a laser light off an object and recording on a negative the interference wave pattern as the source light waves interact with the ones reflected from the object. The image of the object is reproduced by passing the original laser through the negative. Unlike a regular photographic image, if you walk around the back of a hologram, it is also reproduced. This is because it is the interference pattern that is recorded, and it contains all the 3-D information needed to reproduce a whole image of the subject. If, for example, you were to drop a rock into a pond, the waves produced would soon reach the shore and reflect back. As the source waves and the reflected waves interact, they create an interference pattern. This pattern contains all the information about the original event, from the shape of the shore, to the the weight, shape and speed of the rock as it entered the water. So does the pattern recorded on a holgraphic negative.
Interestingly, the entire image is in any part of the negative. If you cut the negative in half, the whole image is recorded in each half, just somewhat fuzzier. The whole image is in any part of the negative, the universe in a grain of sand. The dream is also just like the hologram. The passage of the consciousness stream through the psyche, and its encounter with the frozen consciousness states, cause ripples and patterns that when they reach our awareness, create images of the deeper self that formed them. The whole is in any part of the dream.
FLOWING WITH THE DREAMSTREAM
To the shaman/therapist, nature repeats at all levels and in all ways. In chaos theory, this principle is expressed in the self-similarity of fractals. Like the hologram, fractals repeat the basic conformation of their "parent" pattern. They repeat that same basic form over-and-over on different scales. The broad-strokes of nature appear at all levels. A guiding metaphor of dreamhealing is the concept that a river and the stream of consciousness have much in common. Guiding a dream journey is like guiding a white water river adventure, except on the river of inner consciousness (dreamstream) that flows through the dream-scape and self-scape. Both are full of rapids and turbulence, back eddies that trap one in circles going nowhere. There are calm, deep, peaceful and serene stretches and unexpected twists that open new vistas.
Both the river and dreamstream inexorably flow to the primal ocean, the sea from which all life has arisen, the ocean of chaotic consciousness. Water always seeks its own level through flow along the path of least resistance. In the river the flow of water is part of a cycle. It is a process--and that is what the stream of consciousness is--it is a flow. Within the river what makes rapids are the rocks, the obstructions. They are the hazards. They create turbulance around them. The psychic equivalent are frozen states of consciousness, the frozen existential images, which obstruct the free flow of creative consciousness. They are what create the turbulence within our psyches. Each dream journey is like running one set of rapids, and each rapid is different from the last or the next one. Basically, a rapids is a turbulence, where the flowing system is far-from-equilibrium.
Of course, that is where all the excitement is on a river trip, and also on the dream journey. You have to get into the turbulence to get the benefit. In a river, eddies or backcurrents are created around rocks. If you get into these eddies you just spin in a circle, going around and around. You remain trapped until you can get back into the flow.
In creative consciousness work it is the same. Rather than eddies, there are fantasy loops. They are always right in the middle of the crises, the rapids, and always reflecting this rock or this frozen consciousness right in the middle of the river. This is where the idea of being imaginative as a guide comes in within the dream journeys. Typically, people will come for help when they are in a crisis. In dreamhealing the eddies are the games they play, the patterns they get into, their self-serving fantasies, their wish-fulfilling daydreams, or excursions in the "heavens" of their belief system. These basic "go in circle" patterns appear at all levels in the dream journey. A river is always the same, yet totally different in every moment. It is constantly changing, becoming different than it has ever been or ever will be again. It is virtually random. The water you see moving past in this instant will not be the same as the next.
That complex, dynamic flow is also the description of the consciousness flow--always changing, yet always in essence the same.
And it is also the description of chaos--determinate indeterminacy or indeterminate determinacy. Always the same, yet ever-changing also describes fractal programs which model natural processes. They are self-similar, self-generating, and self-iterating. The source of a river's water and its goal are the same--the ocean. The source of the creative consciousness flow is the vast sea of consciousness, that primal field of pure potential.
We seek immersion in that creative consciousness for renewal and healing. The creative consciousness or dream guide and the river guide are also much the same. No river guide can learn the skill from a book. Training is as much visceral as intellectual, and best learned from those who are experienced themselves. Guides learn from other guides whose voices are rich with experience. They go down the river themselves, hands on, running the rapids. Again and again, they repeat the process until it becomes second nature and a matter of intuition as much as intellect. They are themselves guided by an experienced guide the first few times to teach them the river fundamentals, but they constantly learn by doing.
That is also how the dream guide learns, by experiencing both sides of the process, by experiencing first-hand the flow of the dreamstream. Facing their own fear and pain means that any sense of anxiety is personally transformed into a sense of excitement. The essence of the psychic rapids becomes familiar, even in its ever-changing appearance. The training needs to be a total experiential training--not a rule-book training. Yet there are some guidelines (guide's lines) for river running which parallel the creative consciousness or dreamhealing process. Good consciousness guides are intuitive.
They intuit their way through rapids sometimes, reading the river and responding instantaneously with the right moves, easily and automatically. That is what the guide does in the dream journeys. The whole idea of going down the river, if you are a river-runner, is to "stay in the current." It is when you get out of the current that you get into trouble. If you are in the current you miss the rocks, and flow through most rapids. You've got to learn how to flow in the current.
There are some rules that river guides use, such as "follow the bubbles." Bubbles usually indicate where the current flows. This is also an essential aspect of being the dream guide, being in the flow of consciousness, and staying in the current. Any good river guide knows that how you "set up" determines how you go through a rapids. Setting up is the key to a successful run. You've got to set up where the flow is the greatest, where the most water goes. That is the best place (most of the time). It is exactly the same with the dream guide, who also has foreknowledge of some possible obstructions, based on the interview, and his/her knowledge of the personality of the one being guided.
Guiding includes preparing the self and the client for the journey, listening to and healing the whole dream, sensing/intuiting which symbol or event in the dream represents the flow that leads to the dis-ease state, and providing a safe, relaxed environment for the consciousness journey. The point where you enter is important, and depends on your intuition, your imagination. Once in a river's rapids you always keep your bow pointing toward the trouble. You always face the danger.
In river running you can power-pull away from the rock and avoid a problem. In creative consciousness guiding you always face the fearful things, the danger, the pain, the frozen consciousness that appears in the journey as fearsome or uncomfortable images. You always face the frightening moment, the dangers, as in the rule of river-running. We wouldn't send anyone down the lower Rogue River without a guide. They might get trapped in those back eddies, spinning in circles. In the creative consciousness process they might get caught in a fantasy loop instead of the consciousness flow, because they don't know how to set up. Guides look at where the bubbles are to set up for the run.
That is like the intuition in dreamhealing, and not a bad way of describing the sometimes effervescent feeling of intuition. Reading the patterns and the hidden variables in the river becomes automatic to a river guide. The dream guide reads the shapes of the frozen images, of the feedback loops, and from that he senses the patterns of the stream of consciousness, of the fluid psyche. Yet, the rules are not set, for either a river guide or dream guide. They use them, but let go of them in any particular situation. Each journey is different, unique. That is what makes a guide, sensing and instantly responding to changing conditions. In a sense you can't have a textbook for either profession. You just have to listen to the river, the River Teacher, and see what she is telling you. The river always teaches about life and flowing, dynamic process.
The river provides apt metaphors of life, which encapsulate life's patterns. The river teaches without doing or acting, like the Tao. So too does the river of consciousness; just letting go and flowing with it is a healing experience. When we accompany people down the lower Rogue, or some other river, the experiences on the river teach, change, and heal as much as do the nightly consciousness journeys around the fire.
You run a river of consciousness with a dream guide for re-creation. Dreamhealing is for re-creation, and the difference is only a hyphen. Re-creation is deep play in the most profound sense, and it is healing. By re-creating, re-forming ourselves we access new potentials, new possibilities, new vistas. If someone is running some rapids and gets in trouble, it is the role of the guide to intervene.
The river guide is always prepared to leap in if he or she has to. They have to be prepared to jump into whatever river is there if necessary and deal with whatever comes up. The river guide or dream guide will often go through first to show how it is done.
The guides never push, rather they invite or beckon others through. "Come on, let's go; I've been here; it's O.K." There is a need for trust; if you're going to be a guide you've got to be trustable. The guide can't say "I've been there," when they haven't. They can say, "I've been through lots like it; let's go." The guide lets you know when there is danger, and admits that it is scary, yet OK.
The guide always has that sense of scared excitement in the most challenging runs, but still gets through. Both the river guide and dream guide prepare the client with this awareness. In terms of the journey itself, the river guide tells people what is coming up. Before they even leave he will teach about safety. "If you fall in the water float on your back and keep your feet pointing downstream; trust your vest. If your feet are out you can fend off or push off any rocks. Keep your feet pointed toward the danger."
In terms of preparation, for the dream journeys the dream guide might say something like, "If you get in trouble, I'll remind you to breath," or "Use your out-breath." In preparing for a creative consciousness or dream journey, the guide lets go of any ideas that they have about what this particular journey is going to be like. Its the same with the river guide--they know that river is always different. One never goes through rapids just the same way twice. They know that. It's always a new experience and one lets go of what one knows to experience it anew.
The chaotic nature of a river itself assures that. The good river guide doesn't go into the rapids with a preconception at all--"Well, I came through here last time like this." Instead, they still keep their bow pointed to the danger, they still have to pull off from rocks, they still have to stay with the current. Its the same with the dream guide. They must let go of anything they ever thought they knew. Each journey, no matter how many, is on a new river. The unexpected is expected, and is what defines the imagination process. This is where the dual-consciousness is important to a dream guide. They are in the flow of consciousness but there is still a dual-awareness of participating in this adventure, yet remaining outside it, too. They don't take the trip for the client who experiences it for himself, but facilitate or expedite the journey.
NAVIGATING THE RIVER OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Preparation:
What goes into preparing to guide people through their dreams and into the river of consciousness? There are just a few basic directions, but the finesse with which they are applied makes all the difference in keeping the process moving. When preparing for such an expedition the first step for the guide is to talk to the dreamer in an exchange of information. This is in part getting acquainted and a trust-building exercise, but the information exchanged is also important.
The guide here is getting information to help in forming internal intellectual and sensory images of the nature of the dis-ease or problem and the nature of the ego structure itself. Using T.A. for example, or exploring a symptom, (s)he defines the disease operationally as a system or pattern.
The guide is getting an overview of the shape of the frozen consciousness states or patterns that will be encountered in various guises at the various levels of consciousness they will pass through. This helps provide direction and identifies the psychic rocks that form the disturbances and turbulence within the consciousness flow. Understanding the psychic terrain helps in identifying openings to the next levels of consciousness, and also helps in identifying fantasy loops that support the disease.
Similarly the guide is becoming acquainted with the dreamer's personality and sensory patterns. This information may become useful in various ways later in the journey. This information process is not limited to the preparations but continues throughout the journey in one way or another. To a first-time journeyer, the guide is also giving information that will be useful in the journey itself -- preparing them for what might lie ahead.
Some of the most important points the guide gives about the upcoming journey, and again this may also be done at appropriate times during it, might include some of the following: * It is a journey of the imagination; don't discount that. In the words of Albert Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." It is the voice of creativity. *
Each aspect of the dream, symbol or action, is really a part of the dreamer and shaped by deep as well as recent memory and experience. It is these memories that also shape the dis-eases. * The dreamer will be moving towards fear and discomfort, but with reassurances that the guide will be right there and will not take the dreamer where they haven't been themselves. *
Dreamers learn to trust themselves and the process. There is nothing inside that will really hurt them. * The guide speaks about not letting the intellectual process or interpretation interfere with or take over in the journey. The dreamers can communicate what is going on but don't need to worry if they can't find words. They will probably be experiencing senses beyond the ones normally encountered. *
Guides will understand from their own experiencing of these states where they are. If the dreamer gets stuck, it is because they are holding on. Letting go and trusting is the act of faith that will carry them through the stuck place no matter how scary it is to let go, or what the mind predicts may happen. * The guide may ask permission to touch during the journey. It is very important to get this permission and not assume it is OK even if the permission has been given on previous journeys. *
Experience and intuition will teach the guide the kind of information each journeyer needs and when to give it. Each guide's personal preparation is just as crucial. This is a case of centering and breathing fully. It includes emptying the mind of any preconceived prejudices about the dreamer, the dream and its symbols, or where the journey might lead. The guide doesn't want their own personality to get in the way of the process.
They create a neutrality within themselves and paradoxically by not being there are more totally there. Contemplation of blankness or chaos, deep breathing and meditation can help shed any attachments to the meaning of the dreams or the outcomes of the process. To arbitrarily assign a particular meaning to a dream before the dream journey, and before hearing all of the dreamer's personal associations to the imagery or deciding where some particular journey may lead is comparable to "mind rape."
A dream guide lets the drama and the journey have all the time it needs to unfold before venturing any amplifications from their own stores of knowledge and wisdom. Another important reason for emptying the mind and the self is that the journey is a co-conscious one, that is one in which the guide enters and shares the consciousness states of the journeyer.
Dr. Laurence LeShan, in his book, THE MEDIUM, THE MYSTIC, AND THE PHYSICIST, identifies that it is becoming one with, sharing consciousness with the client that is the key to healing phenomena. Dr. Milton Erikson identified co-consciousness as the state in which his most powerful work and the most significant leaps in his therapy occurred, (see THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF MILTON H. ERICKSON, edited by Ernest L. Rossi, 1980).
And the key to entering this co-consciousness state is: first to empty one's own mind of the self, and then to fully attend to the client using all the senses to do so. This is the purpose, for example, of touching the client. It is not to heal or manipulate energy, but to better sense the client. Scanning, passing the hand several inches over the body of the client, can also help with this.
The palm of the hand may pick up pressure or temperature sensations and changes as it passes over certain areas of the body. This is not interpreted, but merely serves to help the guide enter more into the oneness and co-consciousness state with his charge. Sometimes matching breathing rates and depths, or eye blinking frequency, can help the guide enter co-consciousness, although forcing this won't really work.
More often, an outside observer would be able to notice that the guide and guided one were naturally breathing and blinking at the same rate. This is natural rapport. One trick that can be useful is the "putting myself into their place" game. In this scenario, the guide imagines being the client by seeing and sensing the scenes described by the client.
If this is painted on the blank mind of the guide, it leaves them open to an entrainment process in which they begin to experience what the client is experiencing, perhaps in the context of their own sensory system, but in all important ways, the same state. Using techniques like this, Graywolf has noticed that sometimes he senses what state lies ahead in the journey and later that they arrive there. It is just as important for the guide to help the dreamer to empty his or her mind of what their intellect and emotions want to make of the dream.
Relaxation and deep breathing techniques can help with this. "Breath deeply and let the out-breath empty you," or "Notice the empty space at the bottom of your breath, and let your mind empty into it each time you pass through it," are examples of some of the ways the guide might invite the dreamer to do this. The environment in which the journey is to occur is also important.
The guide should provide a pleasant, quiet, and safe place in which they will not be disturbed. The journeyer and guide should both have a comfortable place to sit or lie. Graywolf often lies beside the journeyer during the process as he finds it can help him enter the co-consciousness state more easily.
Our experience is that the journey is usually facilitated by the prone position, but not in all cases. Soft lighting is more conducive to the process than harsh or florescent lights and candles may also help set a mood. Remember as a guide one is dealing with soft night-time phenomena in which the emphasis is on internal rather than external sensings. Absence of extraneous cues from outside the therapeutic setting will help keep their attention inside. So time spent readying the abation (name of the cell in Aesculapian Dream Healing where the supplicant slept to dream and heal) is well spent.
Demonstration journeys have often been led in sterile classroom workshop environments with success, but these demonstrations are by intent superficial, and deeper expeditions are enhanced by safer more pleasant environments. In summary then, preparation is a time of trust building and information sharing. But most important is the emptying of the mind of intellectual and emotional interpretations and shadings for both the dreamer and the guide.
It is this preparation that sets the "tone" of the journey and is as important as the journey itself. Launching into the Consciousness Stream through the Dream: Once both are relaxed and emptied, the guide invites the dreamer to recall their dream. Borrowing from the Gestalt techniques, they are invited to share it in the first-person present-tense as if they are "experiencing the dream now."
Often this will induce R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) and this is an ideal condition although not necessary. If this occurs the dreamer is in altered consciousness re-experiencing the dream but on the waking side of that state. This is similar to but not exactly what has been described as lucid dreaming, the difference being that the dream experience has been brought into waking awareness rather than the ego entering into dream awareness.
This is a subtle but important distinction. It is more important to bring the dream's healing energy into waking reality for it to manifest than it is to enter the dream space with the ego. The absence of rapid eye movement does not necessarily mean that the dreamer is not in altered consciousness. The very recall of a dream with eyes closed in a state of deep relaxation is a non-ordinary state.
It is both the guide and dreamer working in this altered consciousness that makes this work different from other psychotherapeutic work. Here, the guide is totally attending to the recounting of the dreamer's experience of the dream. They are listening with dual consciousness, that is, part of their awareness is entering a co-consciousness state and sharing the dreamer's experiences and sensations, while a part of their awareness is also observing the dreamer and themselves. The client is usually in this dual consciousness too, with part of them being in the dream while part stands outside of it and describes the experience.
Here, or later in the journey, the journeyer might become confused by this duality of awareness and interrupt their journey as they try to reconcile it. If this happens, a few words from the guide can help, such as "You may find that this is like watching a movie; part of you is actually experiencing it and fighting as the hero(ine), but another part of you is sitting in the audience and capable of commenting on or describing what is happening. We'll communicate verbally as the audience but don't let that remove you from the movie's action."
A symbol may appear in this initial description which the guide thinks is "fraught with meaning," maybe a personally charged images comes up such as the guide himself or the guide's totem animal, if they have one. As tempting as this image can be, it may or may not be the best doorway for the dreamer to enter. When opening to what they are drawn to in the dream, guides keep their personal likes or expectations out of the process. They remember that the dreamer is doing this work for their own benefit. This is a danger area for the guide, and simply put is a case of separating one's intuition from one's personal issues. A digression and discussion of this topic is appropriate here.
THE DREAM GUIDE'S PERSONAL ISSUES -- THE WOUNDED HEALER
As has been observed and noted by Dr. Stanley Krippner and many others who have studied shamans, initiation into being a shaman is often through the healing of their own affliction. It is also a well known phenomena that many psychotherapists enter the profession because of their own disturbances and as an attempt to better understand and deal with them. In the field of addiction work, many, if not most counsellors come from the ranks of those who have had to deal with their own addictions.
The individual who has worked out all their own issues is indeed a rare phenomena and may be a mythical creature, particularly in the healing profession. We all have our personal wounds. Inside of us all are unresolved issues based on our life experiences which we have not quite worked out yet. Most therapists know when they are touching their own "stuff" because they are drawn to it. When your "stuff" is up you are drawn to it in another person. The same mechanism operates in romantic relationships where people with the same or complimentary issues, even though deeply hidden in the subconscious, couple up.
Different than "true love," this forms the basis of co-dependence or symbiotic relationship which exerts a strong draw on both. In the important work of consciousness guiding, one does not want such co-dependence or symbiosis to develop. Therefore, the issue of making a clear distinction between the draw of intuition and the draw of one's unresolved "stuff" is crucial. It reflects in therapy at each choice or decision-making point. After all, intuition is very important in this work and is in fact "the guide's guide." A knack for this discrimination can be developed. The issue of whether or not the consciousness guide has worked out all of their issues is not the point.
The point is that the guide has developed means of doing so and is aware of personal unresolved issues. It is a therapeutic or counseling axiom that therapy will get stuck when the client gets to the therapist's issues. By one of the corollaries of Murphy's Law, this will happen with about the same frequency as "if anything can go wrong, it will."
As with the client, the guide's dis-ease is hidden behind fear and pain, and if the guide has not been through that or faced it in themselves, they will not likely be able to guide the client through. An example from one of Graywolf's training sessions illustrates the point: In this instance a student was leading a dream journey and kept avoiding the client's dark place, a shadowy place of deep blackness that seemed ominous and full of hidden dangers.
Very quickly each time this image came up in the journey, she guided the client into some other aspect of the sensory experience that eventually led to very beautiful fantasy images of flying, lightness and freedom. It was a very pleasant experience for both, but no real transformation happened because the ominous shadow was still lurking, once again ignored and relegated to the obscurity of the dungeons of the subconscious. The student's life experiences had exposed her to abuse by addicted co-dependent parents and mate.
She had come to a "Pollyanna" way of dealing with this using affirmations and other superficial thought and emotional techniques as ways to create a safe and comfortable fantasy for herself. But positive thinking is not necessarily healthy thinking. She had not dealt with the pain and darkness at her deeper levels of memory and consciousness states such as those typically reached in creative consciousness process journeys. The client was facing similar issues and so in this case what the guide felt was her intuition was in reality her own avoidance mechanisms for escaping, or perhaps one might say "flighting" into lightness and the illusions of freedom.
But the darkness was still there, untouched and unresolved for both. And this is the danger: unresolved personal issues appearing disguised as intuitive feelings, hunches or attractions that fool the guide and lead only to fantasy loops or mutual self deception. The guide does little more here than teach the client a new fantasy for avoiding the issue. This illustration emphasizes the necessity for guides to have, themselves, been guided by one more experienced who has taken them into their own "forbidden territory."
With this experience, novice guides develop attitudes of courage so that when other unknown and frightening territories are encountered in a journey with a client, they will enter the scary places with faith in themselves and the process knowing that they can win through, rather than avoiding and digressing from them. On the other hand, a novice guide may again be attracted to the client's darkness, one that is like the unresolved darkness in themselves.
In good faith, in spite of their fear, they may even guide themselves and the client into that place. But since it is "in spite of," rather than a full embracing of the fear, they may panic and bolt. Because they have not yet "funded" themselves with the experience, courage and visceral trust in the process, they seek escape and pull the dreamer with them.
Again we emphasize the importance of the guide having personally experienced their own deep journeys to develop trust in the process. You only learn about going down a river by going down the river. We are not implying that the guides need to be perfect and have worked out all their own issues. Yet they must know themselves well enough and have enough personal experience with the process that they are prepared to resolve whatever of their own dark places, fears and pains might be induced by the client's experiences.
The guide must willingly enter this unknown common territory, embracing the fears with their fund of courage and experience if the client is willing to do so under those terms. Beyond this unresolved stuff however, lies the most profound level of internal processing for the guide which comes from genuine intuition or intuitiveness.
The question is how does one identify it. It is relatively easy to discriminate intellectual process from it, but it is not easy to tell the difference between intuition and personal unresolved stuff. Both have an essence of attraction and seem to come from deep within. There are some important distinctions, however.
The difference is a qualitative one and not easily quantified. Being in the co-consciousness state is more likely to invoke intuitive process since it is based in an internal letting go of the self. Like imagination, intuition is often very surprising, for the guide perhaps a new experience or perception not previously encountered. But personal "stuff" takes place within a context, it is quasi-logical, and develops in a cause-effect based way.
Yet we cannot always use this touchstone since the mind can often take intuitive insight and place it in a context of cause and effect. The surprising, acausal, or "does not follow" nature of the insight is the most reliable clue. There is really no objective "every time is true" answer to the question, but if the guide knows him or her self well enough, that and experience will help them develop a sense of the qualitative difference between genuine intuition and their own "stuff." Much of the dreamhealing process involves making such subjective choices and distinctions and acting on them with faith, courage, and trust.
Back to the Stream and the Dream:
Where we left off before our digression, the guide had invited the dreamer to share their dream. After attending this and looking at the attractions in the dream on the first time through, the guide then invites the dreamer to recall or share the dream a second time. The guide may at this time want to help deepen the dreamer's relaxation even further, or may just proceed with the second telling. This time, however, the guide is prepared to open a doorway into the deeper consciousness stream. How does the guide pick the doorway to the next level? Following are some general guide's lines.
Keep in mind, however, that there are no "cookbook" instructions. The dreamer and the guide are in a process of mutual co-creation and this process is best characterized by its lack of rules or consistency. Like running rapids, the route is as much determined by seemingly random variations in the currents of the consciousness flow, and they are usually subjective and intuitive calls as to riding these currents.
In retelling the dream, the guide may notice that the dreamer has left out or added some symbol or component of the dream from the first telling. The omission or addition is usually important and may be the way the dreamer's deeper self has of alerting the guide to the best doorway. A color, sound or some other sensory component of the dream may "leap out" at the guide and be the doorway they are seeking. During the retelling, the guide is sensitive to nuances in the body language, tone of voice, or other artifacts such as a "Freudian slip" which may also provide arrows for entries.
Sometimes entry is through one of the dream's actions, or perhaps the intense emotion that it or some symbol evokes, it is not always necessarily through a symbol. Sometimes Graywolf uses what he calls "the drone technique." In this technique the guide uses "soft ears," which is the equivalent of "soft eyes" or looking at something without a focus.
The sound of the dreamer's words becomes in essence a drone, but out of this background of white noise certain words, symbols, feelings or some other aspect of the dream will emerge. Standing out in their clarity, perhaps emphasized by a tone or body language, they are again a message from the dreamer's wiser self to the guide indicating a possible entry into the dream's deeper levels.
Often, as with Gestalt dreamwork, inanimate objects or symbols in the dream are good launching ramps. The more inanimate the symbol, the more the dreamer has disassociated from this aspect of consciousness, and so the more likely it is to be out of awareness, control, and ease. Discomfort and fear mark dis-eased states, and the dreamer will often experience these feelings more intensely as they get closer to it.
So symbols or images in the dream and later in the journey that cause discomfort or fear are like arrows pointing the way to the dis-eased consciousness pattern. Sometimes fear and discomfort are so intense that no matter how reassuring or supportive the guide is, the client will not venture into this area. So while providing direction, they may or may not be the doorway actually taken to the next level. In this case other doorways may be used and the nature of the fear or discomfort noted. It is perhaps useful here to state what may by now be an obvious fact.
THE GUIDE IS IN REALITY BEING GUIDED BY THE CLIENT, BY THE DEEPER SELF OF THE CLINET FROM A COMMON CONSCIOUSNESS AND CO-CREATIVE RELATIONSHIP THEY SHARE DURING THE JOURNEY.
The messages and clues are often very subtle or obscure. What goes on at the verbal and ego levels is often of minor importance. The guide realizes that a very wise and powerful part of the client -- the healer, soul, or whatever name is given this reality -- is directing the work and journey. It is the part that wrought the dream and brought it to awareness. It does not speak with words, nor necessarily openly. It is the guide's job to look beyond the obvious and the superficial, which are often ego constructs and self-serving to the client's and guide's ego and fantasy structures, to the deeper and wiser Self of the client who knows exactly where to go and what to do.
The guide is a mirror, reflecting back and translating this part of the journeyer to themselves. Once the guide selects the launching ramp, they invite the dreamer to enter into the consciousness and experience it directly. They may invite the dreamer to "Become that symbol, and re-experience the dream as it," or to "Imagine what it would be like, how you would experience yourself as the ..."
They invite the dreamer to fully explore that part of the dream as the self, and as before the guide listens, intuits and observes both the client's and their own co-consciousness experiencing of this state to find the next clue, the next doorway into even deeper levels. Thus, step-by-step, from consciousness state to consciousness state, from level to level until it eventually becomes a flow, the dreamer is led deeper and deeper into their imagination to confront their dis-eased primal consciousness self images.
As noted in an earlier chapter, the deeper one gets, the less definable the imagery becomes and the more multi-sensory its nature. Visual stimulation and auditory stimulation are among the last to develop discrimination. Pure color or sound indicate deeper and earlier experience and memory. tuck places in the journey, like on a river, indicate to the guide they are hung up on a rock of frozen consciousness.
Changing the sensory experience from say emotion to color, or visual to tactile, will often help the guide take the journeyer past stuck places and on to deeper levels. (S)he may remind them that they, the guide, are there with them, know this place, and will accompany the journeyer into it. They might provide reassurance by reminding them that there is nothing that will hurt them and that the fear is illusion.
They might suggest flowing into the place of fear with the outbreath, or to imagine breathing in the color and filling the insides with it as they immerse themselves in it on the outside. Changing the focus from a visual image to sound or taste is another possibility.
The guide naturally develops a repertoire of tactics over time to help the journeyer beyond the stuckness. Fantasy loops is another form of stuckness that may sidetrack a journey. Like back eddies in a river's flow, psychic fantasy loops are caused by the solid rocks of frozen consciousness.
The current is disturbed by the blockage, and flows back on itself, moving upriver against the flow and back again in circles. They represent the game, racket, and script patterns that we get caught in within our lives. In essence, the loop is an ego phenomena, a means by which it sustains itself and its identity in the familiarity of its known experiences. In these loops the imagery leads in a circle, in fact, often this is the first awareness the guide has.
They find themselves back at the same essential imagery they noticed earlier. They will notice that the loop's patterns of imagery, although more primal, mirror the behavioral, thought, and emotional patterns noticed in the earlier information-gathering part of the preparations. Getting out of a loop is often quite tricky. They can be tenacious and hold the travelers trapped and going around and around but nowhere in particular, just like back eddies do in rivers.
Often the hardest rowing a river guide has, is pulling out of a back eddy, and the same is true for the consciousness guide. Several doorways will be noticed and tried, but each leads back to the loop. It is here that both the patience and ingenuity of the guide are most exercised. And there are no rules other than persistence.
On occasion Graywolf has guided people back into more surface aspects of the dream journey and opened other doorways. Sometimes the loop itself becomes the lesson of this particular journey and provides fuel for future dreams and journeys. But usually the guide can find a new aspect or essence in the imagery experiences reported by the journeyer, or may intuitively pick up on some aspect the journeyer has neglected to mention. The guidelines for getting out of any stuck place apply in general to breaking out of a fantasy loop. As indicated earlier in this chapter, the stuck place may also indicate the guide's own unresolved "stuff."
We come back to this point because it is very important to realize it is the most likely reason for a consciousness journey to be limited or ineffective. The guide must remain unattached to the outcome of the journey. Experienced guides avoid controlling the process, flowing instead with the dreamer's imagination and imagery. Above all they must be prepared to venture with the dreamer into the very jaws of dismemberment, dissolution, or death. It is only the guide's unresolved issues and fears that will interfere with this, and this is a necessary step that leads into the healing and creative consciousness.
RUNNING THE PSYCHE'S RAPIDS
The crux of creative consciousness process is reaching this creative state of undifferentiated or chaotic consciousness. It is in this state that the old primal self images dissolve, and it is the consciousness from which the new ones form. Yielding to a process of ego death leads to this consciousness. It is a death because at the deepest levels we define ourselves by this image and what it has created and frozen into our lives. We are it and it is our death when it dissolves into the infinite possibilities of chaotic consciousness.
We suggest as a useful motto for the dream guide, "Know thyself well, and be prepared to enter into the jaws of death with deep-funded faith in the creative process." This unformed consciousness is the essence of our vitality and life force. It is really a consciousness field from which we create and recreate our reality every instant of time. It is a complexity of infinite consciousness possibilities and forms and is the essence of our ability to adapt, change, transform, and evolve.
It exists deep within us, hidden behind the opacity of what we know, and what we cling to. It reaches into our awareness through dreams, and in the flow of our imaginations. This is the essence of our being; it is the essence of all being. To become aware of it, to get there, we must navigate through the psychic rapids caused by the rocks of our dis-eased states and our knowings. It is on these rocks of frozen ego that we get stuck. No matter how scary the imagery, the guide realizes that this is the true nature of the journey. It is in her faith and nature, in faith in nature.
She knows the flow is found in her imagination and intuition. She invites the dreamer into this river. They will float it together. As guide she will navigate them past the rocks, helping the dreamer to find the flow to carry him through. She will help him to dissolve into his imagination, knowing it is the flow. She knows this last dissolving is a death but that it also opens into a field of unformed consciousness with infinite recreative possibilities. She has learned to let go and trust the healing nature of this state. She knows that from it will emerge an evolved new state of being and that this is the process of healing. It is in her own experience to trust this.
GUIDES AND STRANGE ATTRACTORS:
"MAGNETIC PERSONALITY"
An important question in learning to trust creative consciousness process is how do we know new images and consciousness structures emerging from the chaotic consciousness are always improvements over old; that indeed they do lead to healing. It is, in fact, the crux of this process. In all our work the new primal state indeed represents a remarkable improvement over the old dis-eased state that it replaces, and continues to break things loose and manifest changes in the journeyer far into the future.
In this sense the creative consciousness journey ends more in the opening of a process rather than the attainment of a state. It is not unusual for us to hear from people six months or a year after a journey reporting that whatever they did in their journey has changed their old patterns completely for the better in a seemingly permanent way and is still somehow working on them and changing them in yet more profound ways. Here chaos theory provides food for thought both metaphorically and mathematically.
Although answers as to how new consciousness structure emerges from the chaotic consciousness field are speculative, chaos theory offers some ideas. For example, it is known that "certain complex systems tend toward self organization and are marked by the capacity to evolve," (Kauffman, 1991).
Indeed the process of evolution is a statement of the healing process we are outlining. An organism or species faced with a threat to its survival, goes into crisis. Out of the chaos, this disruption, new forms emerge which have better survival potential. A system must go through a period of chaos or loss of structure in order to change, even a psychic system or consciousness system.
Chaos theory goes on to describe a force, an energy, or perhaps a principal, known as the Strange Attractor. These attractors operate on chaotic systems and influence the shape of the pattern that emerges. In a sense they are magnets drawing structure from chaos. We can speculate about the consciousness journey and the nature of the strange attractor that draws the new primal images from chaotic consciousness. At the inaugural 1991 meeting of the Association for Chaos Theory in Psychology, the idea of a therapist being such an attractor was discussed.
Based on observation, this is true, and indeed is an accurate description of the role of the guide in a consciousness journey. The shape or nature of the new image emerging from the nothingness of chaotic consciousness is influenced by its environment. In this sense the environment is the strange attractor. The environment a person was conceived in, born into, and developed in provides the strange attractor that shapes the ego or personality. Experiences of pain and fear, experiences of dis-ease, in this environment shape free consciousness energy into its form. There are of course other factors that influence how the environment was sensed, for example genetic factors. S
till the organism's experiences and the nature of the environment act on the emerging consciousness structure much as the strange attractor acts on a chaotic system. In the consciousness or dream journey the guide influences the environment and the experience by which these old images are brought into awareness and dissolved into chaos. Except in the journey the environment is one of ease and flow. Fear and pain are transformed by courage and imagination into a flow of creativity. The guide's image of the client is as a powerful being with all the resources needed for healing. The therapist in a state of co-consciousness is sharing this image as well as the experience of the journey and will very much influence the new consciousness process that emerges.
It will be more creative and courageous and flowing if that has been the experience of the journey itself, and it is the example (s)he sets and the image (s)he holds. There are also other influential factors; it is not all the guide as the attractor. There may, for example, be other consciousness structures in the client's ego that may exert magnetic influence on the emerging consciousness. These may be other unresolved issues, images, or other dis-eased consciousness structures. They may also be healthy flowing states that are not affected by the disease.
We are all a mixture and provide our own strengths and creativity to influence our evolution. But, in so far as the dis-eased states, we emphasize the benefit of deeper journeys, since the more primal the imagery, the more symptoms of dis-ease it is responsible for. The corollary to this, however, is that the deeper the journey, the more influential the guide is as a strange attractor. This is a very considerable responsibility, one the guide does well to consider carefully. It brings us back to earlier discussions of the importance of the guide's preparation and state of mind. It is crucial to have worked out, or have a means of working out, their own issues.
The guide's attitudes and process will be as important in the shaping of the new being, not through any manipulation or intent on their part, but by the very essence of their being. The unconscious absorption of the guide's traits happens automatically to a greater or lesser extent as both the self image and the worldview of the client is changed, broadened, and enlarged. In the process of therapy, the client is clearing emotional blocks, reclaiming frozen feelings, and lost or abandoned parts of the self. This is experienced in creative consciousness process largely through images and sensate experience which fuse mind, imagination, and feelings into a gestalt. The training process of the guide grants access to a deeper experience of the self which is contagious.
The therapeutic personality has the emergent capacity for curing dis-ease because the mere presence of a healthy personality acts as a tonic or general medicine for those who contact it. In other words, if you are truly individuated, you can trigger off the same process in other people. To be individuated as a therapist or guide means you express your unique essence most fully, rather than learning and practicing by rote.
It means you have and still are exploring the heights and depths of your own inner world, integrating that into the context of your life, and freeing up your creativity. The process is contagions because when a person meets someone whose worldview is more expansive, their limitations begin to dissolve too, provided they don't get threatened and run.
It is the guide's obligation to conduct themselves and the journey in a non-threatening manner. There is a tendency in the helping professions for people to consider themselves "healers." This is an especially popular term among alternative health practitioners whose practices range from body work, to crystal healing, to channeling, breathwork, rebirthing, naturopathic medicine, and ghostbusting, to transpersonal psychology, and more.
Each "healer" or system speaks of the myth, magic, and mystery that characterize their model, and offer this up as their healing balm. Thus they are likely to capture and contain the projections of others. Their unique personalities act as a "hook" for archetypal projection of the client's inherent healing resources.
This projection mobilizes healing. There is great responsibility which comes with declaring oneself a healer. For those who depend on them, it is their task to carry that projection for a while, until the client can re-own it and develop a relationship to the inner healer. All too often this is not done.
If the ego of the "healer" needs reinforcement of its grandiose self image, the illusion of being "healer" needs to be seen through for what it is -- an ego trip. In fact, it is really the inner healer which truly does all regenerative work in therapy. The therapist simply helps the client access it, provides the environment, as it were, for the client to evolve. The therapist as a strange attractor functions as the nucleus of an unpredictable yet deterministic process of growth and healing within the personality of the client. The guide does this without doing it.
GETTING INTO AND OUT OF CHAOS
As stated earlier, the crux of the creative consciousness journey is to enter into chaotic consciousness with the old existential primal self images so that they might be transformed. The closer one is to the chaos consciousness field, the more undifferentiated the imagery is. At these levels of consciousness, there seem to be two kinds of chaotic imagery. Here we are in a very cloudy area, so the question of whether one really experiences chaotic consciousness or merely the archetypal states defining its borders, has no clear answer.
In the descriptions we get and our own experiences, one could argue either way. However, there seem to be two types of imagery that we can associate with entering into chaotic consciousness. One is total blankness or lack of any form, the other is an overwhelmingness of sensation.
The first type is characterized, for example, by black space. Sometimes there is a black hole within the blackness. This is a black blacker than the blackest black imaginable. Sometimes it is a grayness or a gray cloud. There are usually sensations of falling or falling-floating experienced within this emptiness out of which eventually the new images emerge. The other type is characterized by, for example, a spiral or a vortex. It exerts a magnetic draw and the journeyers are drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause the journeyer to report intense dizziness and disorientation. Often there are feelings of flying apart, limbs and eventually all parts of the self flying off in the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex. This dissolution sometimes leads into the first type of imagery.
Sometimes other solid colors, laser-like in their purity might be presented. For example, a deep red might lead into a magma-like flowing sensation in which intense heat melts or dissolves the journeyer. We are not really sure they are different. Rather they are probably just different sides of the same circle seen from different perspectives. On the one side it tends to zero, and on the other, infinity.
It is not unlike the Gnostic concept of the plenum and the void being one paradoxical union of opposites. A plenum is the opposite of a vacuum, being fully occupied in this case by the imagery swirling in a chaotic way so it is not differentiated. So much information is there, it is chaotic and overwhelms the senses. It is a fullness rather than emptiness.
It is also like the Yin (feminine principle of yielding and emptiness) Yang (masculine principle of seeking and filling) creating the complete circle. Yet within each is the seed of the other. Indeed, in journeys the dismemberment in the spiral often leads to a sense of being "no thing," while the empty blackness is often found to be full of swirling colors. The imagery is far broader in scope than the examples given, but the guide learns to identify this step by its essence. There are feelings of transformative forces at work, and a feeling of almost palpable relief at this final stage.
The guide encourages the journeyer to enter these patterns and to yield to them. "Let go and let this vortex suck you in...What are you experiencing?" Or, "Go ahead, fall into this black hole, even if you're afraid. I'm with you and I've been here many times before. Come with me!"
The healthier new states and primal images that emerge from the chaotic consciousness tend to share some common characteristics. The new images are much more flexible, free and flowing. It naturally becomes easier to let go and face things with more courage even if afraid. There is an essence of deep peace and ease. Indeed this sense of peacefulness and security is the essence of the journey itself and what the guide brings to it. Many other aspects of this "right brain" state have been described such as feelings of dimensionlessness, timelessness, and boundarylessness.
Many senses are involved such as the experience of bubbles or effervescence and tingling sensations in the body, often at the site of a symptom. We usually let people know that "this is a healing state; stay in it and let it work on you now," we invite. "Stay in it as long as necessary...when it is time to come back, you'll notice that your eyes are opening. Just let that happen and you'll be back."
If the guide has any insights that might help the client find order or connections in the work, this is the time for those to be shared. For example, "I noticed that the red color you saw was throbbing and pulsing. That sounds almost like how a fetus experiences being in the womb. And the throbbing led to that queasy sensation in your abdomen. That might tie in with what you told me about your mother's heavy drinking and smoking while she was pregnant." The journeyer may be assured here that what they experienced were in reality memories, but sensory, cellular, or genetic memories of how they experienced their forming.
Much information can be exchanged at this phase while the client is still relaxed and close to the journey. But again we advocate caution about rampant interpretation or analysis. This may impose too much structure and direction on an emerging free consciousness pattern and define its limits too soon. In general the guide is content to allow this unfolding to freely develop as he did the rest of the journey. Sharings at this time are as likely to be counterproductive as helpful.
The guide operates from the principle that the guided one is really the healer and has the intelligence and deep wisdom to become aware of what they need to be aware of. It is a delicate balance. The guide does not want to control the emerging new structure, yet sometimes a piece of information or a connection may be a useful piece to which the guide can steer the journeyer. Once again these are subjective calls and as much, if not more intuitive than rational.
A DIFFERENT REALITY: ITS ALL IN THE PERCEPTION
Our perceptual systems, our sensory systems have as a prime function the task of creating some kind of order out of an otherwise totally random, confusing morass of information that is available at any moment of time. We actually have trillions of bits of information bombarding us at a given time. Our senses and perceptual patterns create some type of reality structure out of that. In this sense you can consider our perceptions and our senses, our genetic makeup, how our senses operate, as a strange attractor. Because this is essentially what creates some kind of order out of totally overwhelming input. IN OTHER WORDS, WE LIVE IN A TWILIGHT ZONE, IN ESSENCE, BETWEEN ORDER AND DISORDER.
What creates order is our presence, our being, our perceptual patterns, our own sensory systems. As we share common genetic backgrounds, we tend to have senses which are very similar. Maybe we taste things a little differently than someone else, but basically, unless medically impaired, we taste vinegar about the same. We taste sugar about the same. And so we create similar realities. We come to a consensus about reality. Yet our common agreements about reality are conditioned by our shared cultural trance (Tart, 1992).
They may be based on that essence of strange attractor. Deep down inside what holds our view of the world together? What makes it consistent? How we store that information then becomes important -- and more fundamentally, how it forms. The reality we form basically emerges from how we are living. How do we get that view of reality? When we begin to form we don't have any consistent prepared pattern. Yet almost everyone has seen that babies have distinct personalities even as newborns.
Formative experience begins in the womb. We've got all our perceptual mechanisms; we've got the senses. But we form our existential position, or view of reality, our beliefs about self and world, essentially from our experiences. They are based on how we perceive, and how our senses react to those experiences. That stores inside of us. Especially in the preverbal stage, it is stored as images. The nucleus of that memory, that position, that consciousness, is a multi-sensual imagery which describes the nature of the self and the world. If the world is a really threatening place, and Mom and Dad are terrible, and they beat me a lot, I grow up with the existential belief that the world is a dangerous place, and is going to hurt me all the time. I'm somehow deficient or unlovable. It's more than words. It is an image, and not the normal image you might think of. It is a multi-sensual image and is stored as a sensory memory rather than an intellectual or thought memory. It might just be colors; it might be a swamp!
Who knows what that image is like in the dream? When you get down to it, it may surprise you first how complete it is, and how utterly alien it is to any thing you think of as an image of the world. And that essentially is the order that has been created out of chaos at a very formative stage, a young age.
The strange attractor has been essentially a combination of a person's sensory patterns, perceptual patterns, and the environment and what is happening to them. It forms the basis of an individual's personal mythology, which forms the basis of the belief system, which forms the basis of how we think and feel about things. This in turn determines how we behave, which then feeds back in a circular way from our belief system to our behavior. The circular pattern makes sure everything, positive or negative, gets confirmed. This circle is a reflection of the deeper dis-eased image. If you go deep beneath that belief system, down to the deepest existential image, then you are at a place where very profound change can happen.
We've noticed in dream journeys and other consciousness journeys, that WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO THAT EXISTENTIAL IMAGE -- THE VERY BASIS OF THE IMAGE OF SELF -- IT IS USUALLY SURROUNDED BY FEAR AND PAIN, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT USUALLY FREEZES STUFF IN PLACE.
When you get deep down to that image, there is always a doorway to another deeper level. At the level where the existential image is formed, at the boundary where order and disorder dance the dance of creation, profound changes can occur. At that level the existential images that we use to order our reality can change through the dance. We can change our most fundamental perceptions of reality and in this new reality we can be at ease rather than diseased. It's really all in how we perceive it.
Dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity (p. 2).
The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly (p. 5).
It is the way of dreams to give us more than we ask (p. 5).
[B]ringing to light the parts of the personality that were previously unconscious and subjecting them to conscious discrimination . . . is . . . a call to arms that must be answered by the whole personality (p. 10).
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. . . . It is imperative that we do not pare down the meaning of a dream to fit some narrow doctrine (p. 11).
Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of [the dreamer's] personality. . . . There must be a thorough-going, conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. By "assimilation" I mean a mutual interpenetration of conscious and unconscious contents (p. 16).
The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in equilibrium, as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth a compensatory activity. Without such adjustments a normal metabolism would not exist, nor would the normal psyche. . . . The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This fact . . . affords a rule for dream interpretation. It is always helpful, when we set out to interpret a dream, to ask, "What conscious attitude does it compensate?" (p. 17).
The dream content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us. . . . Every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation; . . . dreams are our most effective aids in building up the personality (p. 18).
Theoretically, there do exist relatively fixed symbols . . . . If there were no relatively fixed symbols, it would be impossible to determine the structure of the unconscious (p. 21).
I . . . regard the symbol as the announcement of something unknown, hard to recognize, and not to be fully determined (p. 22).
It is only through comparative studies in mythology, folk-lore, religion, and language that we can determine these symbols in a scientific way. The evolutionary stages through which the human psyche has passed are more clearly discernible in the dream than in consciousness. The dream speaks in images and gives expression to instincts that are derived from the most primitive levels of nature. Consciousness all too easily departs from the law of nature, but it can be brought again into harmony with the latter by the assimilation of unconscious contents. By fostering this process, [one comes to] the rediscovery of the law of one's own being (p. 26).
The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly (p. 5).
It is the way of dreams to give us more than we ask (p. 5).
[B]ringing to light the parts of the personality that were previously unconscious and subjecting them to conscious discrimination . . . is . . . a call to arms that must be answered by the whole personality (p. 10).
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. . . . It is imperative that we do not pare down the meaning of a dream to fit some narrow doctrine (p. 11).
Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of [the dreamer's] personality. . . . There must be a thorough-going, conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. By "assimilation" I mean a mutual interpenetration of conscious and unconscious contents (p. 16).
The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in equilibrium, as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth a compensatory activity. Without such adjustments a normal metabolism would not exist, nor would the normal psyche. . . . The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This fact . . . affords a rule for dream interpretation. It is always helpful, when we set out to interpret a dream, to ask, "What conscious attitude does it compensate?" (p. 17).
The dream content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us. . . . Every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation; . . . dreams are our most effective aids in building up the personality (p. 18).
Theoretically, there do exist relatively fixed symbols . . . . If there were no relatively fixed symbols, it would be impossible to determine the structure of the unconscious (p. 21).
I . . . regard the symbol as the announcement of something unknown, hard to recognize, and not to be fully determined (p. 22).
It is only through comparative studies in mythology, folk-lore, religion, and language that we can determine these symbols in a scientific way. The evolutionary stages through which the human psyche has passed are more clearly discernible in the dream than in consciousness. The dream speaks in images and gives expression to instincts that are derived from the most primitive levels of nature. Consciousness all too easily departs from the law of nature, but it can be brought again into harmony with the latter by the assimilation of unconscious contents. By fostering this process, [one comes to] the rediscovery of the law of one's own being (p. 26).
Online Book here: http://dreamhealing.iwarp.com/
(c)2013; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
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Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
