Jung quotes shown before seminar begins
Dream from an Asclepeian dream temple
“I thought I saw Asclepius himself and that he appeared near me … Asclepius did not appear, as the statues of him are wont to do, gentle and calm, but in a lovely posture and rather frightening to behold. Serpents followed him, enormous sorts of reptiles, they too hurrying on, with their tremendous train of coils, making a whistling noise as in the wilderness and woodland glens. His associates followed him carrying boxes of drugs, tightly bound. Then the god stretched forth his hand to me. And taking it gladly I begged him to join me and not to be too late to aid me in my treatment. He replied: ‘At the moment you have no need of me at all, but this goddess here [Truth], who holds sway over mortals and immortals alike, for the present will herself guide you.’ And the god left.”
Transcript of film interview with Marie Louise von Franz about first meeting with Jung [Marie Louise von Franz, “Matter of Heart,” DVD]
I met him when I was eighteen. And I began in the year then ’34 - I began in analysis with him. We went out there to the tower, and out of the bushes suddenly we were standing around, kind of, you know, awkwardly, as one does, not knowing what was going to happen. And then out of the bushes came a man and I was deeply impressed by him. I thought he was naturally a Malthusian, because when you are eighteen you think a 58 year old is … ready for the cemetery. He told that story which you can read in the Memories, about this girl who was on the moon and had to fight the demon, and the black demon got her. And he pretended, ... he told it in a way as if she really had been on the moon, and it had happened. And I was very rationalistically trained from school, so I said indignantly, but she imagined to be on the moon, or she dreamt it, but she wasn’t on the moon. And he looked at me earnestly and said, yes, she was on the moon. I still remember looking over the lake there and thinking either this man is crazy or I am too stupid to understand what he means. And then suddenly it dawned on me – he means that what happens psychically is the real reality. And this other moon, this stony desert which goes round us, that’s illusional, that’s only pseudo-reality. And that hit me tremendously deeply. When I crawled rather drunk into bed, because he gave us a lot of Burgundy, that evening I thought it will take you ten years to digest what you experienced today.
“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.”
C.G. Jung. (1953/1966). “On the Psychology of the Unconscious.” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. CW 7, par. 24.
“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.”
C.G. Jung. (1934) “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis,” The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW Vol. 16, par, 325.
Jung's theory of the archetype
“The instincts are not vague and indefinite by nature, but are specifically formed motive forces which, long before there is any consciousness, and in spite of any degree of consciousness later on, pursue their inherent goals. Consequently they form very close analogies to the archetypes, so close in fact that there is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves; in other words, they are patterns of instinctual behavior.”
Jung, C.G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, Vol. 9i, par. 91.
Jung's theory of the complex
"Everyone knows nowadays that people 'have complexes.' What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes have us."
C. G. Jung. "A Review of of the Complex Theory." The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW, Vol. 6, par. 200.
My Stroke of Insight - Jill Bolte Taylor: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
The effects of sleep deprivation over time are:
Night 1. Most people are capable of going without sleep for a night. The experience is tolerable if uncomfortable.
Night 2. The urge to sleep is much stronger, particularly between 3-5 a.m., when the body temperature is at its lowest.
Night 3. Tasks requiring sustained attention and mental calculations become seriously impaired. This is particularly the case if the task is repetitious and boring. Again, the early hours are the most crucial to needing sleep.
Night 4. From this night onwards, periods of micro-sleep occur. People stop what they are doing and stare into space for up to three seconds. The end of micro-sleep is accompanied by a return to full awareness. Confusion, irritability, misperception and the 'hat phenomenon' occur. In this, a tightening around the head is felt as though a hat too small for the head is being worn.
Night 5. On top of the effects previously mentioned, delusions (false beliefs) may be experienced. Intellectual and problem-solving abilities are largely unimpaired.
Night 6. Symptoms of depersonalization occur and a clear sense of identity is lost. This is called sleep deprivation psychosis.
The effects of sleep deprivation are more psychological than physical. The main physical consequences seem to be hand tremors, droopy eyelids, problems in focusing the eyes and a heightened sensitivity to pain. We seem able to catch up with sleep in a much shorter time than was lost through deprivation. A person who loses three nights of sleep might only need a slighted extended sleep in order to feel fully refreshed. [Huber-Weidman, 1976 ]
Jung's dream that suggested existence of collective unconscious [C. G. Jung. (1989) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books, pp. 158-159.]
“I was in a house I did not know, which had two stories. It was “my house.” I found myself in the upper story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious paintings. I wondered that this should be my house, and thought, “Not bad.” But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older, and I realized that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole house.” I came upon a heavy door, and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths. These, too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock. Thick dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.”
Transcript of film interview between Richard Evans and Jung on subject of the Self [The Houston Films, “Second Interview,” 1957.]
Richard Evans: “Now getting back to the idea of the self, the self incorporates those unconscious factors - ”
Jung: “The self is merely a term that designates the whole personality. The whole personality of woman is indescribable. Her consciousness can be described, her unconscious cannot be described because the unconscious – and here I must repeat myself – is always unconscious. It is really unconscious, we really don’t know it, so we don’t know our unconscious personality. We have hints, we have certain ideas, but we don’t know it really. Nobody can say where woman ends. That is the beauty of it, you know; it’s very interesting. The unconscious of woman can reach God knows where. There we are going to make discoveries.”
Transcript of film interview between Richard Evans and Jung on subject of the relationship between conscious and unconscious [The Houston Films, “Second Interview,” 1957.]
"Consciousness is one factor, and there is another factor, equally important, and that is the unconscious, that can interfere with consciousness anytime it pleases. And of course I say to myself, now, this is very uncomfortable. Because I think I am the only master in my house, but I must admit that there is another. Somebody in that house that can play tricks. And I had to deal with the unfortunate victims of that interference every day in my patients."
Individuation - The Process of a Lifetime
“Like a seed growing into a tree, life unfolds stage by stage. Triumphant ascent, collapse, crises, failures, and new beginnings strew the way. It is the path trodden by the great majority of mankind, as a rule unreflectingly, unconsciously, unsuspectingly, following its labyrinthine windings from birth to death in hope and longing. It is hedged about with struggle and suffering, joy and sorrow, guilt and error, and nowhere is there security from catastrophe. For as soon as a man tries to escape every risk and prefers to experience life only in his head, in the form of ideas and fantasies, as soon as he surrenders to opinions of ‘how it ought to be’ and, in order not to make a false step, imitates others whenever possible, he forfeits the chance of his own independent development. Only if he treads the path bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and fighting shy of no experience, will he mature his personality more fully than the man who is ever trying to keep to the safe side of the road.”
"The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness." [C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, C.W. Vol. 12, par. 44.]
Transcript of interview with Mary Bancroft - Matter of Heart, DVD
I thought Jung should tell me what to do. Whether I should write a book, or I should get a divorce, what I should do. And he wouldn’t. And so I got mad at him. And I said, “Why is everybody so mean to me?” And he said, “Why are you so mean to everybody?” So I stormed out. You got what I said there. I said to him, “Why is everybody so mean to me?” and he said, “Why are you so mean to everybody?” That was the trigger. I was gone for a year. And I wrote, oh, I don’t know, every now and then I’d sit down at the typewriter and write what a son of a bitch I thought he was. How when I first got to Europe everyone thought he was a charlatan, I thought he was, too. He was the most conceited, vain man. You know, I really had a great time. [Interviewer: “And you sent all these letters?”] Sent the letters. Of course I did. And I thought, I hope he drops dead of a stroke. And I felt very good. I just felt fine. When I can get mad I can lose five pounds, just by getting mad. The adrenalin goes… You know it’s the opposite of “poor little me.” I don’t care; let the world go stuff it up…I don’t care what happens. And then one morning I woke up and I began to laugh. For God’s sake, what’s been going on here? What a jackass you… And suddenly I realized, surely, he really hit it. And so I phoned Miss Schmidt, Frau Schmidt, and I asked if I could have an appointment. And she laughed and said, “O, yes,” she said, “Professor Jung told me to save some time for you. He thought you’d be calling shortly.”
James Hall's assessment of the Self - the central organizing archetype [James A. Hall. (1986) The Jungian Experience: Analysis and Individuation. Toronto: Inner City Books, p. 43.]
“The sense of dialogue that develops in working with a series of dreams in Jungian analysis gives one an actual awareness of underlying order and meaningful process, a sense of the archetypal Self. The Self is theoretically the maker of dreams, and analysts might ask pointedly why the Self selected one sort of dream sequence rather than another, one character to represent a complex rather than another, etc. The intuitive sense is that the Self is a center of consciousness that is older and wiser than the ego, but somehow dependent upon the ego for activity in the ‘real’ world. From following thousands of dreams of many people over several decades, it is my own view that the Self is like a very wise, very compassionate friend, always concerned to help, but never coercive or excessively judgmental, and possessed of almost infinite patience.”
The Nature of the Symbol
A symbol is "an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way." C. G. Jung. The Spirit of Man, Art, and Literature. CW, Vol. 15, par. 105.
The appropriate frame of mind
“So difficult is it to understand the dream that for a long time I have made it a rule, when someone tells me a dream and asks for my opinion, to say first of all to myself: ‘I have no idea what this dream means.’ After that I can begin to examine the dream.”
CW Vol. 8, par 533. (1947/1954).
Objective and subjective interpretation
“I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the level of the object. In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself. This I call interpretation on the level of the subject [dreamer].
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW Vol. 7, par. 130. (1943).
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Compensating the dreamer's conscious attitude
“The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is one of the best-proven rules of dream interpretation. When we set out to interpret a dream, it is always helpful to ask: what conscious attitude does it compensate?”
The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW Vol. 16, par, 330. (1934).
Transcript of film interview between John Freeman and Jung on subject of the psyche not being confined by space and time [BBC Face to Face Interview, 1959 (Matter of Heart DVD)]
John Freeman (BBC): You have written, at one time and another, some sentences which have surprised me a little, about death. Now, in particular I remember you said that death is psychologically just as important as birth and like it it's an integral part of life. But surely it can't be like birth if it's an end, can it?
Jung: Yes, if it's an end, and there we are not quite certain about this end, because you know there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche, that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners, and such things. Only ignorance denies these facts, you know; it's quite evident that they do exist, and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche, in part at least, is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn't, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws, and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.
Excerpt from Traumatic Dreams about Jung dealing with a war veteran’s dream
“A British officer came to Jung because of a war nightmare that had tormented him for several years after World War II. In the dream, the man is in his home and suddenly becomes terrified. It is night. He goes to the front door and locks it. Then the back door. He locks all the windows on the first floor. But the scene of terror and panic continues to build, and he goes upstairs and locks all the windows, but just as he begins to close the last window a grenade explodes outside the window. The dream recurs again and again during three months of analysis until suddenly one night, when he goes to close the last window, a roaring lion appears and the dreamer wakes in terror.
“Jung thought, ‘Ah, that’s good. The instrument of danger has become an instinctual animal.’ And so it continues until finally one night, as the dreamer closes the last window, he sees the face of a man. Jung said to himself, ‘Now he will not have the dreams anymore.’ And that was the case. The danger had been faced and was his own reflection, and that could be analyzed.”
[Harry Wilmer. “The Healing Nightmare: War Dreams of Vietnam Veterans,” personal communication with Marie Louise von Franz, 1983. Trauma and Dreams, edited by Deirdre Barrertt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.]
The Psychological Value of Dream Interpretation [Marie Louise von Franz, "What Happens When We Interpret Dreams?" Betwixt and Between. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987, pp. 437-48.
"Each time a dream is realized, the conscious and the unconscious unite and something in us, which was autonomous before, becomes one with the rest of the personality and thus the structure of the Self."
"Though the Self always already exists, it is also 'built up' by our attending to our dreams."
"It seems to me that the unconscious is intensely interested in our interpreting dreams correctly and in our understanding what is happening when we do so. For only then do dreams turn into the 'bread of life' and the immortal structure in our soul become visible, except for that ultimate secret which may revealed to us only in death."
The Symbol of the House [Adapted from seminars given by the Guild for Psychological Studies, San Francisco]
Living Room – This is where we meet people from the outside; where we entertain. In this room we function on that edge between our private self or house and the outer world. There may be slogans written or hanging on the wall – unconscious slogans. Check them out. They are the inherited or adopted sayings we live by. What do they say and communicate? They might sound something like, “Thou shalt be…this or that. Please everybody and you won’t get into trouble. Show ‘em who’s boss. Don’t stick your neck out. Don’t be seen. Whenever they hurt you, run back into your closet. Put on a happy face. The world’s my oyster.” Get a handle on these unconscious slogans, which usually arise from being wounded. Being preoccupied with such slogans of how we ought to be, closes down other possibilities of how we could be or truly are. How often do you come in and go out of the living room? Do you rush in and out? Do you spend more time in the outer world or more in your house? We determine who comes in and who doesn’t. What are we like at the door when someone knocks? We need to determine if we are too open or too closed. This is the place where we bring things in from the outer world. What projections do you bring in from the outside?
Dining Room – This is where we eat and where we communicate. How we actually eat our food is sometimes symbolic of how we eat and ingest things psychically. How do you eat? How do you relate to others? Do you gobble and stuff yourself? Are you picky? Do you eat quickly or alone? Do you dawdle at the table? How do you set your table? Are there flowers, candles, a table cloth? How do you communicate with others around the table? Do you listen to others or do you tend to talk about yourself? Do you talk at people or with them? Do you tend to serve others or would you rather be served?
Kitchen – This is a very important place. This room symbolizes where transformation takes place; where raw materials are brought together to make something creative. How do you function in this room? What kind of cook are you? Do you burn things on the stove? Do you undercook your food? Are you constantly lifting the lid to check on things before they are ready? Do you eat TV dinners all the time? Do you have someone to cook for you? Do you seem to spend all your time in the kitchen? How’s the fire in your stove? Watch for fire in your dreams; it is a transformative presence.
Bedroom – The bedroom is a place of rest, privacy and intimacy. Do you rest or sleep too much, or not enough? How do you relate to your partner or lover? Do you dismiss them? Do you cherish them or objectify them? How do you relate to your sexuality? Do you honor or abuse sexuality? How do you relate to your own masculine or feminine nature? Jung said that when you dream about sex you are relating to the gods. How do you relate to people of the opposite sex, or the same sex? How we relate to inner figures is related to how we relate to outer figures. How do you treat your dreams? Do you dismiss them? Do you honor them?
Closets – These are places where we may stuff things or hold things hidden and repressed. Do you stuff things away? Do you tend to accumulate or to throw things away easily? Do you sort those things in your closet or throw them in haphazardly? Is you closet so stuffed that everything crashes down when you open the door? There are some things in the back of your closet, in the dark corner. What are your skeletons, your family secrets that you don’t talk about? Of what are you afraid or ashamed? You may need to explore what has been put in there, or what you think is in there.
Bathroom – This is the place for privacy, elimination and cleansing. Symbolically, it represents much of what has been repressed. Do you bathe too much or not enough? Are you always taking showers? Are you compulsive? Are you fussy about cleanliness? Can you not stand to be dirty? Do you want to make it a ritual? As a place of elimination, do you tend to be constipated or diarrheic? Do you hold things back or let go of things too much? How’s the plumbing in your bathroom? Do you look in the bathroom mirror a lot? Do you check to make sure you have the right smile, a gleam in your eye, the right mask? Who are you really? What personas do you wear?
Attic – This is the place where we store family heirlooms or junk? What’s up in the attic that came down through your family? What heirlooms are in your attic? Do they make you sad? Do you cry over those things? Do you just occasionally go up into the attic? There may be ghosts up there. Do you ever go on a “ghost walk”?
Basement – The basement is where the furnace is; where energy is generated. How does that work? Is it cold, hot, broke? Do I know how to fix the furnace? If not, do I know where to go to get it fixed? The basement is often a scary place. Spiders, rats, monsters and dark figures reside here. There are things in the unconscious which can be frightening. Are you respectful of what might be there?
Lighting – How’s the lighting in the house? How’s the atmosphere? Is it foggy, hazy or muggy? Or is it bright, well-lit, and clear? How do you relate to darkness? How do you understand the relationship between light and darkness in your house?
Doors and Thresholds – Thresholds mark the boundaries between rooms and between the house and the outside world. They symbolize transitions from one place or stage to another. Doors are related to thresholds in as much as they either permit or prohibit passage/movement from one room to another. What size are your doorways? Are they too large or too small? Is there even a door present? If not, does this imply openness or lack of privacy? If there is as door, what shape is it in? Is it solid, made of bars, or have a glass window? Are there door knobs? If so, are they on both sides of the door? Do your doors have locks? Why would you lock a door? Do you have treasures or secrets which require safekeeping? Who has or controls the keys to these locks? Do you feel differently when moving across a threshold from one room to another?
Stairs – When a house has two or more stories, there are usually stairs leading from one floor to the other? The upstairs and downstairs can represent consciousness and unconsciousness, or reason and emotion, among other things. The stairs function as the avenue by which one moves between the two levels. When dreams involve multi-storied houses, pay attention to what actions take place on each level.
Transcript of Jung speaking about dream interpretation as a life-long pedagogical or learning endeavor as well as a clinical tool [Matter of Heart DVD]
"Man's soul is a complicated thing and it takes sometimes half a lifetime to get somewhere in one's psychological development. You know it is by no means always a matter of psychotherapy or treatment of neurosis. It is also, psychology has also the aspect of pedagogical methods, in the widest sense of the word. [Interviewer - "It is an education."] It is an education. It is something like antique philosophy. And not what we understand by a technique. It is something that touches upon the whole of man. And which challenges also the whole of man, in the patient or whatever the receiving part is, as well as the doctor."
"Awareness of the projections and symbolic meanings involved [in dreams] enables us to enact rather than blindly act out." Edward Whitmont. The Symbolic Quest. Princeton Paperbacks, page 132. (1991)
Transcript from Appointment with the Wise Old Dog
Sometimes when I make a picture I find myself being led further into the dream, as if it wanted to be continued. As I was working on this picture, it seemed that Mary drew herself as a peasant woman cradling a child. I can’t fully interpret these pictures. The dreams are larger than I am. They explain me more than I can explain them. Nor can I explain their special ability to clue me in to values the conscious mind had neglected. We all know of fairy tales in which an animal mysteriously appears to help the protagonist out of danger at the critical moment. Let me introduce you to such an animal. His name is Alfonto. I acquired him when I was six. He led a peaceful life on a shelf for half a century. But after my recurrence of cancer, he started to come into my dreams, guiding me with the assurance of a wise old man, speaking with a distinctive voice of his own, with an archaic turn of phrase. Some of my doctors recommended a second major surgery; others counseled caution and further testing. I felt trapped in a medical labyrinth. One night I dreamed that I was alone in the midst of a mountain valley. To my amazement, Alfonto’s voice was heard. “Trust,” he said. “And thou shalt not be alone.” I knelt in prayer. From far off, a motorcyclist of death came roaring toward me. Alfonto appeared, raised a golden spear, and said, “God will act.” Instantly the motorcyclist was destroyed. The hand of God descended from the clouds. God will act. What a grand concept. But could I believe in it? After all, I hadn’t any idea who or what God may be, or whether God exists at all. And on whose authority was I accepting this pronouncement? That of a toy dachshund. But the dream had startled me. And it seemed inherently right to support my childhood animal when he came on my behalf to battle the forces of chaos. I’ve since learned that the wonder of Alfonto’s statement is that it can be interpreted on many levels. Healing isn’t confined to getting well physically.
The Psychological Value of Dream Interpretation
“Each time a dream is realized, the conscious and the unconscious unite and something in us, which was autonomous before, becomes one with the rest of the personality and thus the structure of the Self. Though the Self always already exists, it is also ‘built up’ by our attending to our dreams. It seems to me that the unconscious is intensely interested in our interpreting dreams correctly and in our understanding what is happening when we do so. For only then do dreams turn into the ‘bread of life’ and the immortal structure in our soul become visible, except for that ultimate secret which may be revealed to us only in death.”
Marie Louise von Franz, “What Happens When We Interpret Dreams?” Betwixt and Between. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987, pp.437-48.
Jung and Freud on Dream Interpretation
Jung had no preconceived idea of what the interpretation of a dream should be, as opposed to Freud who interpreted all dreams as wish fulfillment.
To Freud, everything in the unconscious was once conscious and then repressed. To Jung, the unconscious contains several kinds of content: that which was once conscious and then repressed; subliminal perceptions; memories too unimportant to be remembered (Freud’s pre-conscious); and contents arising independently from the collective unconscious, a stratum common to all human beings that provides the creative and healing forces which are so important to meaningful life.
Freud and Jung differed also over which “content” of the dream should be interpreted, the “manifest” (the dream images as they appear to the dreamer) or the “latent” (the dream thoughts underlying the images). Freud insisted that the meaning of a dream lies in the latent dream thoughts, which can be discovered only by the process of free association to the images. Jung, on the other hand, adhered to the interpretation of the manifest content - the images themselves - because, he insisted, the dream is not a disguise.
Freud called the interpretation of dreams “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” Jung accepted the statement at first, but then modified it to hypothesize that the complex is the royal road to the unconscious and the “architect of dreams and of symptoms.”
Like Freud, Jung was interested in what dreams reveal of the aetiology, prognosis, and possible cure of a patient’s neurosis. However, Jung saw dreams also as normal phenomenon experienced by “normal” people.
The breadth of Jung’s approach is demonstrated in that in his acceptance of the subjective analysis of dreams he did not reject the objective interpretation advocated by Freud - that dream images refer to actual persons and things.
Religion proved to be a crucial problem for Jung’s patients, especially in the second half of life (after age 35 or 40). By “religion,” Jung seemed to mean the quest for meaning and the awareness of one’s limitations, especially mortality. Jung considered religion to be an essential aspect of human life and not an optional practice. Freud saw religion as an “illusion,” in that he considered wish fulfillment to be a prominent factor in its motivation.
According to Jung, Freud used the word “symbol” for what is actually a sign (or analogue); that is, Freud assigned specific, fixed meanings to the images. The meaning of the dream was essentially a sign of something else. Jung did not assign a fixed meaning to the dream image; he looked for a meaning that exceeded the obvious and immediate appearance of the image and accorded with the dreamer’s experience. To him, a symbol was “the best possible formulation for still unknown or unconscious [psychic] facts, which could not “be reduced to anything else.”
Jung believed that the dream “expresses exactly what it means.” In this tenet he differed from Freud, who held that dream images (the manifest content) conceal the latent content (the hidden, repressed dream thought), which Freud considered to be the dream’s meaning, hidden because it is painful. It is hidden by an internal psychic censor. Jung insisted that “a dream is quite capable … of naming the most painful and disagreeable things without the least regard for the feelings of the dreamer.”
Jung’s concept of compensation can be seen as a broadening of Freud’s concept of wish fulfillment. Both concepts reflect the observation that dreams provide contents that are missing in consciousness. The two concepts differ, however, in that compensation provides what is needed for the wholeness of the individual while wish fulfillment serves merely the id or ego.
Freud was led by the idea of “enchainement” (linkage), and understood the dream as a fragment of a causally determined continuity of memories; Jung conceived the dream as a part of a goal-oriented process through which images, values and archetypal symbols became manifest.
Freud’s quest for the meaning of the dream was initially limited to uncovering repressed experiences (later, he also took into consideration fixed symbol relationships); Jung was occupied with deepening self-knowledge and self-understanding. This included grasping the current attitude of consciousness as well as throwing light on the developmental tendencies concealed in the content of the dream, that is, bringing out that which wanted to come forth and rouse the dreamer to creative production.
Resources for exploring symbolic representations
A Dictionary of Symbols by J. E. Cirlot
Dictionary of Symbols by Hans Biedermann
The Complete Dictionary of Symbols by Jack Tresidder
ARAS – Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism www.aras.org, Archetypal Symbolism by Beverly Moon