Dreams Jungian Perspective

Dreams- Jungian Perspective

Saturday, 03 July 2004

A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth.

Joseph Campbell

There is so much to say about dreams form a Jungian psychological perspective, so many different ways of approaching them, that I can but provide a scant introduction here within the constraints of my typing abilities. I should also add that I am not a Jungian (“Thank God I’m not a Jungian!” said Jung) but rather a “Jamesian”. That is, like many psychotherapists, I have developed my own way of seeing things, which is heavily indebted to certain traditions or schools, but not exclusively true to any of them.

Thus my approach to dreams is largely Jungian but also informed by Buddhism, evolutionary psychology, certain philosophers and my own unquantifiable predilections and antipathies. At the end of this disquisition I will recommend texts that can be sought for further, purer exposition of Jungian dream psychology.

James Strohfeldt

Theory

When Jung consulted, he often acquired an understanding of the presenting problem and then, as a prelude to seeking dream material, said “Now lets see what the two million year old man has to say about the situation.” What he meant was that dreams are expressions of the phylogenetic psyche, the ancient instinctual part of ourselves to which we are largely unconscious and which nevertheless, as the unconscious, constitutes the vast majority of our psyche and heavily influences our experiences and behaviour.

Insofar as we are animals, this part of ourselves will respond to our situation with the accumulated repertoire acquired throughout the evolution of our species. This instinctual response is directed at survival and flourishing and often can be understood as seeking to reinstate homeostasis. Thus, just as a hundred other physiological homeostatic mechanisms redress imbalance in the body, the unconscious will seek to do the same to imbalance in the psyche. Imbalance in the psyche is characterized by a one-sided attitude or habitual behaviour or mode of relating that is not optimal for the current problem. So, dreams provide a compensatory mechanism within the psyche.

Make sense so far? There is now a lot of neurophysiological and ethological (arising from the behaviour of species in their natural habitat) evidence emerging to support this theoretical model. For example, dreams originate in the paleoencephalon- the mammalian part of the brain- and rise to the neocortex where most of the activity is in the right brain- the less rational, nonlinear, non-temporal part of our thinking, that seeks synthesis and overview. This provides clues as to how to approach dreams and why they are expressed in the language of images. To seek to understand them in a concrete or definitive way is usually to impose the onesidedness that is the problem in the first place so will render them useless. This is the problem with most dream interpretation manuals available in popular print- more about this later if I have time (dreams and the underworld).

The Structure of the Psyche

A word about this. Imagine U represents the Unconscious. When you are born this is pretty much all there is. Through the years the ego (E) gradually develops as an outgrowth from the pluripotential unconscious as it interacts with the environment. The above schematic represents an optimal situation where the ego is autonomous but still has a conduit of communication with the unconscious. Of course this often does not pertain— the ego can be just a blip on the surface or separated but with very poor communication to the unconscious, in which case it is all at sea. I use this metaphor because, contrary to the diagram, the relative proportions are as a boat to the ocean. (These are what this two symbols might represent in dreams.)

If, then, you are "listening" to the unconscious you have at your disposal all the archetypalmaterial stored in the collective psyche. I am not going to go into the meaning of these important terms, except to say that there is now considerable evidence that we genetically inherit patterns of behaviour and thought as well as brain structure and physiology. Simplest example- the baby’s very early response to mothers face or a facsimile thereof and the reflex smile that promotes bonding (see Bowlby).

So with this in mind let us move to the dream itself as it arises in the analytic work.

Dream meaning

As I have said, dreams speak in the language of images, not surprising since they precede speech phylogenetically (animals dream, as do babies in the womb). They are a symbolic language. It is the coolest language to learn. You probably know quite a bit of it- for example you can look at a work of art, even an abstract one, and feel something has been communicated. Jung spent a large part of his life researching and documenting this language. In so doing he learnt Greek and Latin, studied anthropology and comparative religion and all the mythologies and philosophical traditions in the world (which of course have repetitive essential elements since they arise from our common species evolutionary history). Later in his life he found alchemy to be a rich vein of symbolism particularly pertinent to our Western psyche.

The more that is read in these areas the better one’s lexicon, but beyond that intuition and imagination play a big role in working with dreams. For example, it is pretty obvious that if a patient dreams of flying, and given that we humans are supposed to dwell on the surface of the earth, one can conclude certain things about the direction of the one-sidedness present in this particular person. Furthermore there may be information about how the return to the surface of the earth, as experienced in the person’s outer life, may occur. That is, they might be in for a nasty crash landing (which would be experienced as a crisis or indeed a depression-see below) or alternatively they might be descending in a much more orderly fashion.

Dreams of flying or falling are widespread in our culture, a reflection of the one-sidedness imposed by our patriarchal culture with its rejection of the feminine (earth) and attachment to the soaring spirit (bigger, better, faster, more, more, more), and the realm of thought and ideas rather than feeling . The relevant myth is the Fall of Icarus.

I remember in my analysis I spent at least the first year coming down, in all sorts of ways- falling, crashing planes, driving down roads, climbing down buildings etc. There was then the great night where in a dream I dug a scummy little hole and so for the first time got down into the realm of matter, of soul.

The descent is also into the unconscious and so is often represented by a relationship to water. Almost everyone in the start of their analysis dreams of water in a threatening way- tidal waves, black inky depths with sharks, threatening seaside cliffs. As over the years a dreamer becomes more related to the unconscious they often get to a much more benign or harmonious relationship to aqua (scuba gear maybe!). To return to our theme of balance, the best place to be is on the beach with one foot in, one out— the littoral, liminal place where both realms are available.

The Underworld

I want to say something about the shadow. Think of the myths and stories about the underworld, the depths. Odysseus, Orpheus and Euridyce, Dante, Psyche (a critical and very important myth for women), de profundus by Oscar Wilde, Tolkien, Ursula le Guin. In all cases the journey to hell has a purpose and is necessary in order to obtain something or complete something that can not be done in any other way.

Everything has a shadow, everyone, every culture, every discovery, every attainment. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Christianity banished this to the nether regions and forbade discourse with it; think paedophilic priests as an example of the consequences of this. In analysis it must be acknowledged and incorporated as an ineradicable part of the psyche. So when the dreams start to go there it is a special phase. It is usually accompanied by a depression of the affect, even suicidality- this is often what brings the person to analysis in the first place.

This calls in to question the medical idea that seeks to eradicate the depression with a chemical- not a good strategy from a moral perspective.

It also permits a very important point to be made about dreamwork. That is that the underworld does not exist for we mere mortals- as the myths illustrate, we can not go there and return unscathed unless we are fortunate and aided by the gods— and they’ll not do this unless we honour them. Understand the gods as the forces that throw us around in life despite ourselves- like the College.

So in dreams it is wrong to take the position that the dream is there for us- which we as acquisitive Westerners are liable to do. Rather we should treat the dream as an organic entity that is not fixed in meaning (if we do this we kill it) and honour it with our attention without seeking to profit from it. This is what many African and other traditional cultures have done in the past. It is as Robert Musil said “Truth is not a stone that you can hold in your hand, it is an infinite fluid into which you fall headlong”. Or, again, recall the relative dimensions of the psyche you arose from and the ego, and maybe you can see that you don’t have a soul, the soul has you.

In relation to this, it is interesting to note that in the dreams of patients with terminal illness, as they approach death the psyche often portrays this as merely a transition- the crossing of a river or the entering of another country are common images. The dream then continues on- there may be resurrection images- wheat is a common one as in Egyptian mythology. On the flip side, to dream of death means there is a separation sought. Thus if you dream of killing your mother don’t feel bad, your psyche is just trying to enact a further separation from childhood into independent, individuated adulthood.

While we are on such fundamental themes, to dream of sex is of course to seek connection. So if you dream of sex with someone you are trying to access a quality that they represent for you- ask yourself what you have projected on to them.

Concluding remarks

There is lots more- animals, snakes, cars, left and right symbolism, monsters, fire, murderers, slow motion dreams, trees, all my patients that had dreams prefiguring Sept 11th, lucid dreaming, active imagination, jewels, babies, mandalas. I am really sorry I don’t have time to do alchemy- it’s really fascinating and so rich in contributing to understanding ourselves. But like I said, you don’t have to know all the stuff, just use your imagination. The procedure is to write down the dream and then just dwell on it- see what images and memories arise, have a conversation with a dream entity in your mind, see where you feel it in your body. If you can’t get far doing this you can paint it, and if that falls short you dance it.

If you can't remember your dreams your life is too busy and you should go part time or have a longholiday. In our rat-race lives all that is required is to make room for the psyche and it will comewho was it that said all the problems of mankind would be resolved if men just learnt to sit still anddo nothing. It's a lost art.

James Strohfeldt