I started Jungian Dream School last fall in response to a wonderful synchronicity involving Jungian analyst Murray Stein and the This Jungian Life podcast. As a lot of you already know, dreams have been an area of interest to me ever since I had the dream I call the Spirit Dream in 2007 which changed, or possibly saved, my life.
A lot has happened since I started Jungian Dream School. I have some amazing dreams. I've learned things. I've worked with a lovely small dream group. I've finished (minus a few tweaks) my first ready-to-publish vampire novel.
I have also written my Spirit Dream / autism memoir up to the point where what I learned in those first weeks of Dream School becomes relevant. So I went back to module one and worked through it again.
I had read the extra credit reading before but not carefully. And the only way, I think, that I can read Carl Gustav Jung (CGJ)—and benefit—is by reading carefully. So this week I reread On the Nature of Dreams and tried to apply myself.
And there was so much there, I wanted to share a bit of what I learned here.
The Purpose of Dreams: Compensation
In On the Nature of Dreams Jung points out our dreams are rarely in accord with the sensibilities of our conscious mind. To Jung, this means that the unconscious (which he calls "the matrix of dreams") must have an independent function. In other words, the unconscious disobeys our egoic self, by serving up dreams that strongly oppose our waking paradigm.
This is deliberate.
The gap between our everyday attitude and the dream may be slight or great (or very occasionally absent). This relates to Jung's concept of compensation. According to Jung, the dream deviates in order to correct (or compensate for) the errors of our conscious (or egoic) self.
According to Jung there are three compensatory possibilities:
- If the conscious attitude is one-sided the dream takes the opposite position.
- If the conscious is more in the middle, the dream may deviate a little from our waking attitude.
- If the conscious attitude is correct the dream will coincide (though not mirror, because the conscious always maintains what Jung calls its autonomy).
The purpose of compensation is to restore balance. Some dreams, particularly long series of dreams, are more far-reaching but this, Jung says, is addressed in Psychology and Alchemy (which I will have to apply myself to at some point).
Who Can Interpret Dreams
According Jung you don't have to be an analyst or any sort of professional to interpret dream. Which isn't to say that anyone and everyone can do Jungian dream interpretation. The characteristics required to "diagnose dream compensation" (CGJ) are: intelligence, some knowledge of psychology and life experience.
But these alone are not enough.
Jung is adamant in saying that an understanding of mythology, folklore, indigenous cultures and comparative religion is also required.
I loved hearing that. While I have learned through Dream School that we must always explore our personal association first (when present) when approaching a dream, I find mythological themes to be very important in dreams.
On the Nature of Dreams also contains a warning for people who think that dreams predict the future or decide that the dream "knows best." Their dreams, according to Jung, may because trivial over time. This is because they are overrating the subconscious and undervaluing the conscious function.
The conscious, per Jung, must fulfil its own appointed duties. It has developed for a reason and it has an important role in our lives. The purpose of the dream is to fill in the blanks, correct our attitude or move us forward after our best attempts have failed.
In other words, it isn't superior to our conscious awareness because without that awareness we would not be able to find meaning in our lives.
Having been a person who has let dreams lead, this makes sense.
While some dreams are psychic (as Jung was well aware) most are not and we need to properly understand their role in our life.
Big Dreams
Big dreams are different than other dreams because they contain symbolic images found in the collective unconscious of the human race. These images are what Jung calls archetypes.
Archetypes have existed at all times in human history and in all places. To Jung, this proves that there is both a personal unconscious and a collective or universal unconscious accessible to all of us. Archetypal images include thing like dragons, initiation, or alchemical substances. For me personally, they tend to present as specific deities, objects and themes.
Big dreams come from the collective unconscious at critical stages of our lives. They may hard to interpret, Jung says, because of the lack of personal meaning. Often, we need to go back to the mythology in order to understand them.
This is why a knowledge of myth and folklore is so important. If we don't know these story we may fail to recognize specific elements in, and the general symbolism of, our dreams.
We may recognize big dreams by their mythic themes and their "poetic force and beauty." Often these dreams haunt us, becoming the "richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience." (CGJ)
The Stages of Dreams
Dream interpretation can be challenging and there is a lot to learn about it.
Two of the concepts that I found most helpful in On the Nature of Dreams is the idea of compensation and the idea of examining a dream through its structure.
CWJ provide four stages that describe the structure of most dreams.
- Exposition: The statement of place, introduction of key dream characters and the initial situation of the dreamer.
- Development: The plot of the dreams becomes more complicated and tension develops.
- Culmination or Peripeteia (a Greek word for an unexpected reversal or point where the situation changes dramatically): Something decisive happens or something changes completely.
- Result or Solution: While not every dream will have a fourth stage Jung considers this last stage (which he calls lysis) the solution sought be the dreamer.
I like to look at the structure of the dream and question each stage keeping in mind that every bit of dream is there for reason.
Context and Associations
It is also crucially important to do what Jung calls "taking up the context" by exploring the dreamers person association for every dream element.
Because dreams are closely tied to our lived experience, it's also helpful to think about our current situation as we try to understand how our unconscious might be trying to restore balance.
Dreams offer an immediate and crucial course correction as we journey from day to day. They do not (in the vast majority of cases) tell us what to do. Instead they help us orient ourselves in keeping with our greater purpose.
I'll be writing more about what I'm learning about dreams and Jung in future posts!
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I've had a few dreams I consider big and one that was kind of whopper. This dream figures prominently in my memoir and in my life as a whole. You can read it here: The Spirit Dream. You can read about my Murray Stein experience here: A Creation in Time. You can learn more about Jungian Dream School via the This Jungian Life website.
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