In this essay, Jung explains why the dream world is as important to the psyche of an individual as is his consciousness. He begins with symbols. “What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or an image which in itself may be familiar to us, but its connotations, use, and application are specific or peculiar and hint at hidden, vague, or unknown meaning…. A term or image is symbolic when it means more than it denotes or expresses. It has a wider “unconscious” aspect—an aspect that can never be precisely defined or fully explained. This peculiarity is due to the fact that, in exploring the symbol, the mind is finally led towards ideas of a transcendent nature, where our reason must capitulate…. We also produce symbols unconsciously and spontaneously in our dreams…. Dreams are indeed the chief source of all our knowledge of symbolism…. One cannot invent symbols; wherever they occur, they have not been devised by conscious intention and willful selection.” Symbols are not mere signs. “A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and the symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight…. A symbol does not disguise, it reveals in time…. In former times men lived their symbols rather than reflected upon them.”
Jung broke away from Freud’s manner of dream interpretation by forgoing the practice of free association. Instead, he stuck to a closer reading of the dream. “I no longer followed associations that led far afield and away from the manifest dream-statement. I concentrated rather on the actual dream-text as the thing which was intended by the unconscious, and I began to circumambulate the dream itself, never letting it out of my sight…. If one wants to understand a dream it must be taken seriously, and one must also assume that it means what it manifestly says.” Jung follows and expands on Freud’s role of the archetype in dream motifs. “They are what Freud called “archaic remnants”—thought-forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual’s own life, but seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited patterns of the human mind…. The archetype is… an inherited tendency of the human mind to form representations of mythological motifs—representations that vary a great deal without losing their basic pattern.” When interpreting dreams, context also matters. “Two different individuals can have almost the same dream, yet if one is young and the other old, the problems disturbing them will be correspondingly different, and it would be absurd to interpret both dreams the same way…. Interpretation of dreams and symbols depends largely on the individual disposition of the dreamer. Symbols have not one meaning only but several, and often they even characterize a pair of opposites…. The correct interpretation depends on context, i.e., the associations connected with the image, and on the actual condition of the dreamer’s mind.”
Jung continues by assessing the dream material. Dreams can look forward, as well as back. “One must always bear in mind that dream material does not necessarily consist of memories; it may just as well contain new thoughts that are not yet conscious.” For the individual’s psyche as a whole, what one does not remember consciously can be as important as what one does. “Forgetting is a normal process, in which certain conscious contents lose their specific energy through a deflection of attention. When interest turns elsewhere, it leaves former contents in the shadow…. Consciousness can keep only a few images in full clarity at one time, and even this clarity fluctuates…. “Forgetting” may be defined as temporarily subliminal contents remaining outside the range of vision against one’s will. But the forgotten contents have not ceased to exist…. Among the lost memories we encounter not a few that owe their subliminal state (and their incapacity to be reproduced at will) to their disagreeable and incompatible nature. These are the repressed contents…. In spite of their apparent non-existence they can influence consciousness.”
Jung posits that the unconscious compliments the ego, completing the psyche. “The message of the unconscious is of greater importance than most people realize. As consciousness is exposed to all sorts of external attractions and distractions, it is easily led astray and seduced into following ways that are unsuited to its individuality. The general function of dreams is to balance such disturbances in the mental equilibrium by producing contents of a complementary or compensatory kind.” Man has become divorced from this complementary aspect of himself to his detriment. “Moral and spiritual tradition has collapsed, and has left a worldwide disorientation and dissociation…. We have stripped all things of their mystery and numinosity; nothing is holy any longer…. In reality we are confronted with anxious questions, the answers to which seem nowhere in sight.” Modern man could do worse than to take his dreams more seriously. Their symbols have not lost their meaning just because we have forgotten and ignored them in our rush to subvert what we cannot consciously understand.
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