When interpreting dreams, Freud used the method of free association, in which the dreamer free associates to the various dream images and then associates to the associations.  Jung, on the other hand, would begin with the dreamer’s associations to the dream images, but then brought the dreamer back to the dream itself until the message of the dream could be understood.  Freud’s method of free association might get at the dreamer’s complexes, but not at what the particular dream had to say about them.

 

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.

 

---

 

 

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.

 

---

 

Traumatic Dreams

 

“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.