3.02 - The Practice Use of Dream-Analysis

classes ::: The Practice of Psycho therapy, Carl Jung, Psychology, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen

object:3.02 - The Practice Use of Dream-Analysis
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter

II
THE PRACTICAL USE OF DREAM-ANALYSIS 1
[294]
The use of dream-analysis in psycho therapy is still a much debated
question. Many practitioners find it indispensable in the treatment of
neuroses, and consider that the dream is a function whose psychic
importance is equal to that of the conscious mind itself. Others, on the
contrary, dispute the value of dream-analysis and regard dreams as a
negligible by-product of the psyche. Obviously, if a person holds the view
that the unconscious plays a decisive part in the aetiology of neuroses, he
will attri bute a high practical importance to dreams as direct expressions of
the unconscious. Equally obviously, if he denies the unconscious or at least
thinks it aetiologically insignificant, he will minimize the importance of
dream-analysis. It might be considered regrettable that in this year of grace
1931, more than half a century after Carus formulated the concept of the
unconscious, more than a century after Kant spoke of the illimitable field
of obscure ideas, and nearly two hundred years after Leibniz postulated
an unconscious psychic activity, not to mention the achievements of Janet,
Flournoy, Freud, and many more that after all this, the actuality of the
unconscious should still be a matter for controversy. But, since it is my
intention to deal exclusively with practical questions, I will not advance in
this place an apology for the unconscious, although our special problem of
dream-analysis stands or falls with such an hypothesis. Without it, the
dream is a mere freak of nature, a meaningless conglomeration of
fragments left over from the day. Were that really so, there would be no
excuse for the present discussion. We cannot treat our theme at all unless
we recognize the unconscious, for the avowed aim of dream-analysis is not
only to exercise our wits, but to uncover and realize those hitherto
unconscious contents which are considered to be of importance in the
elucidation or treatment of a neurosis. Anyone who finds this hypothesis
unacceptable must simply rule out the question of the applicability ofdream-analysis.
[295]
But since, according to our hypothesis, the unconscious possesses an
aetiological significance, and since dreams are the direct expression of
unconscious psychic activity, the attempt to analyse and interpret dreams is
theoretically justified from a scientific standpoint. If successful, we may
expect this attempt to give us scientific insight into the structure of psychic
causality, quite apart from any therapeutic results that may be gained. The
practitioner, however, tends to consider scientific discoveries as, at most, a
gratifying by-product of his therapeutic work, so he is hardly likely to take
the bare possibility of theoretical insight into the aetiological background
as a sufficient reason for, much less an indication of, the practical use of
dream-analysis. He may believe, of course, that the explanatory insight so
gained is of therapeutic value, in which case he will elevate dream-analysis
to a professional duty. It is well known that the Freudian school is of the
firm opinion that very valuable therapeutic results are achieved by
throwing light upon the unconscious causal factors that is, by explaining
them to the patient and thus making him fully conscious of the sources of
his trouble.
[296]
Assuming for the moment that this expectation is justified by the facts,
then the only question that remains is whether dream-analysis can or
cannot be used, alone or in conjunction with other methods, to discover the
unconscious aetiology. The Freudian answer to this question is, I may
assume, common knowledge. I can confirm this answer inasmuch as
dreams, particularly the initial dreams which appear at the very outset of
the treatment, often bring to light the essential aetiological factor in the
most unmistakable way. The following example may serve as an
illustration:
[297]
I was consulted by a man who held a prominent position in the world.
He was afflicted with a sense of anxiety and insecurity, and complained of
dizziness sometimes resulting in nausea, heaviness in the head, and
constriction of breatha state that might easily be confused with mountain
sickness. He had had an extraordinarily successful career, and had risen,
by dint of ambition, industry, and native talent, from his humble origins as
the son of a poor peasant. Step by step he had climbed, attaining at last a
leading position which held every prospect of further social advancement.
He had now in fact reached the spring-board from which he could havecommenced his flight into the empyrean, had not his neurosis suddenly
intervened. At this point in his story the patient could not refrain from that
familiar exclamation which begins with the stereotyped words: And just
now, when.... The fact that he had all the symptoms of mountain sickness
seemed highly appropriate as a drastic illustration of his peculiar impasse.
He had also brought to the consultation two dreams from the preceding
night. The first dream was as follows: I am back again in the small
village where I was born. Some peasant lads who went to school with me
are standing together in the street. I walk past, pretending not to know
them. Then I hear one of them say, pointing at me: He doesnt often come
back to our village.
[298]
It requires no feat of interpretation to see in this dream a reference to
the humble beginnings of the dreamers career and to understand what this
reference means. The dream says quite clearly: You forgot how far down
you began.
[299]
Here is the second dream: I am in a great hurry because I want to go
on a journey. I keep on looking for things to pack, but can find nothing.
Time flies, and the train will soon be leaving. Having finally succeeded in
getting all my things together, I hurry along the street, only to discover
that I have forgotten a brief-case containing important papers. I dash back
all out of breath, find it at last, then race to the station, but I make hardly
any headway. With a final effort I rush on to the platform only to see the
train just steaming out of the station yard. It is very long, and it runs in a
curious S-shaped curve, and it occurs to me that if the engine-driver does
not look out, and puts on steam when he comes into the straight, the rear
coaches will still be on the curve and will be thrown off the rails by the
gathering speed. And this is just what happens: the engine-driver puts on
steam, I try to cry out, the rear coaches give a frightful lurch and are
thrown off the rails. There is a terrible catastrophe. I wake up in terror.
[300]
Here again no effort is needed to understand the message of the
dream. It describes the patients frantic haste to advance himself still
further. But since the engine-driver in front steams relentlessly ahead, the
neurosis happens at the back: the coaches rock and the train is derailed.
[301]
It is obvious that, at the present phase of his life, the patient has
reached the highest point of his career; the strain of the long ascent fromhis lowly origin has exhausted his strength. He should have rested content
with his achievements, but instead of that his ambition drives him on and
on, and up and up into an atmosphere that is too thin for him and to which
he is not accustomed. Therefore his neurosis comes upon him as a
warning.
[302]
Circumstances prevented me from treating the patient further, nor did
my view of the case satisfy him. The upshot was that the fate depicted in
the dream ran its course. He tried to exploit the professional openings that
tempted his ambition, and ran so violently off the rails that the catastrophe
was realized in actual life.
[303]
Thus, what could only be inferred from the conscious anamnesis
namely that the mountain sickness was a symbolical representation of the
patients inability to climb any furtherwas confirmed by the dreams as a
fact.
[304]
Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the
applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of
the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits
it only grudgingly. Consciously the dreamer could not see the slightest
reason why he should not go steadily forward; on the contrary, he
continued his ambitious climbing and refused to admit his own inability
which subsequent events made all too plain. So long as we move in the
conscious sphere, we are always unsure in such cases. The anamnesis can
be interpreted in various ways. After all, the common soldier carries the
marshals baton in his knapsack, and many a son of poor parents has
achieved the highest success. Why should it not be the case here? Since
my judgment is fallible, why should my conjecture be better than his? At
this point the dream comes in as the expression of an involuntary,
unconscious psychic process beyond the control of the conscious mind. It
shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I
conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. I have
therefore made it a rule to regard dreams as I regard physiological facts: if
sugar appears in the urine, then the urine contains sugar, and not albumen
or urobilin or something else that might fit in better with my expectations.
That is to say, I take dreams as diagnostically valuable facts.
[305]
As is the way of all dreams, my little dream example gives us rathermore than we expected. It gives us not only the aetiology of the neurosis
but a prognosis as well. What is more, we even know exactly where the
treatment should begin: we must prevent the patient from going full steam
ahead. This is just what he tells himself in the dream.
[306]
Let us for the time being content ourselves with this hint and return to
our consideration of whether dreams enable us to throw light on the
aetiology of a neurosis. The dreams I have cited actually do this. But I
could equally well cite any number of initial dreams where there is no
trace of an aetiological factor, although they are perfectly transparent. I do
not wish for the present to consider dreams which call for searching
analysis and interpretation.
[307]
The point is this: there are neuroses whose real aetiology becomes
clear only right at the end of an analysis, and other neuroses whose
aetiology is relatively unimportant. This brings me back to the hypothesis
from which we started, that for the purposes of therapy it is absolutely
necessary to make the patient conscious of the aetiological factor. This
hypothesis is little more than a hang-over from the old trauma theory. I do
not of course deny that many neuroses are traumatic in origin; I simply
contest the notion that all neuroses are of this nature and arise without
exception from some crucial experience in childhood. Such a view
necessarily results in the causalistic approach. The doctor must give his
whole attention to the patients past; he must always ask Why? and
ignore the equally pertinent question What for? Often this has a most
deleterious effect on the patient, who is thereby compelled to go searching
about in his memoryperhaps for years for some hypothetical event in
his childhood, while things of immediate importance are grossly neglected.
The purely causalistic approach is too narrow and fails to do justice to the
true significance either of the dream or of the neurosis. Hence an approach
that uses dreams for the sole purpose of discovering the aetiological factor
is biased and overlooks the main point of the dream. Our example indeed
shows the aetiology clearly enough, but it also offers a prognosis or
anticipation of the future as well as a suggestion about the treatment. There
are in addition large numbers of initial dreams which do not touch the
aetiology at all, but deal with quite other matters, such as the patients
attitude to the doctor. As an example of this I would like to tell you three
dreams, all from the same patient, and each dreamt at the beginning of acourse of treatment under three different analysts. Here is the first: I have
to cross the frontier into another country, but cannot find the frontier and
nobody can tell me where it is.
[308]
The ensuing treatment proved unsuccessful and was broken off after a
short time. The second dream is as follows: I have to cross the frontier,
but the night is pitch-black and I cannot find the customs-house. After a
long search I see a tiny light far off in the distance, and assume that the
frontier is over there. But in order to get there, I have to pass through a
valley and a dark wood in which I lose my way. Then I notice that someone
is near me. Suddenly he clings to me like a madman and I awake in
terror.
[309]
This treatment, too, was broken off after a few weeks because the
analyst unconsciously identified himself with the patient and the result was
complete loss of orientation on both sides.
[310]
The third dream took place under my treatment: I have to cross a
frontier, or rather, I have already crossed it and find myself in a Swiss
customs-house. I have only a handbag with me and think I have nothing to
declare. But the customs official dives into my bag and, to my
astonishment, pulls out a pair of twin beds.
[311]
The patient had got married while under my treatment, and at first she
developed the most violent resistance to her marriage. The aetiology of the
neurotic resistance came to light only many months afterwards and there is
not a word about it in the dreams. They are without exception anticipations
of the difficulties she is to have with the doctors concerned.
[312]
These examples, like many others of the kind, may suffice to show
that dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning
completely on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable
information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of
which is of the greatest therapeutic importance. Doctor A understood the
situation correctly and handed the patient over to Doctor B. Under him she
drew her own conclusions from the dream and decided to leave. My
interpretation of the third dream was a disappointment to her, but the fact
that the dream showed the frontier as already crossed encouraged her to go
on in spite of all difficulties.[313]
Initial dreams are often amazingly lucid and clear-cut. But as the work
of analysis progresses, the dreams tend to lose their clarity. If, by way of
exception, they keep it we can be sure that the analysis has not yet touched
on some important layer of the personality. As a rule, dreams get more and
more opaque and blurred soon after the beginning of the treatment, and
this makes the interpretation increasingly difficult. A further difficulty is
that a point may soon be reached where, if the truth be told, the doctor no
longer understands the situation as a whole. That he does not understand is
proved by the fact that the dreams become increasingly obscure, for we all
know that their obscurity is a purely subjective opinion of the doctor. To
the understanding nothing is obscure; it is only when we do not understand
that things appear unintelligible and muddled. In themselves dreams are
naturally clear; that is, they are just what they must be under the given
circumstances. If, from a later stage of treatment or from a distance of
some years, we look back at these unintelligible dreams, we are often
astounded at our own blindness. Thus when, as the analysis proceeds, we
come upon dreams that are strikingly obscure in comparison with the
illuminating initial dreams, the doctor should not be too ready to accuse
the dreams of confusion or the patient of deliberate resistance; he would do
better to take these findings as a sign of his own growing inability to
understandjust as the psychiatrist who calls his patient confused
should recognize that this is a projection and should rather call himself
confused, because in reality it is he whose wits are confused by the
patients peculiar behaviour. Moreover it is therapeutically very important
for the doctor to admit his lack of understanding in time, for nothing is
more unbearable to the patient than to be always understood. He relies far
too much anyway on the mysterious powers of the doctor and, by
appealing to his professional vanity, lays a dangerous trap for him. By
taking refuge in the doctors self-confidence and profound
understanding, the patient loses all sense of reality, falls into a stubborn
transference, and retards the cure.
[314]
Understanding is clearly a very subjective process. It can be extremely
one-sided, in that the doctor understands but not the patient. In such a case
the doctor conceives it to be his duty to convince the patient, and if the
latter will not allow himself to be convinced, the doctor accuses him of
resistance. When the understanding is all on my side, I say quite calmly
that I do not understand, for in the end it makes very little differencewhe ther the doctor understands or not, but it makes all the difference
whether the patient understands. Understanding should therefore be
understanding in the sense of an agreement which is the fruit of joint
reflection. The danger of a one-sided understanding is that the doctor may
judge the dream from the standpoint of a preconceived opinion. His
judgment may be in line with orthodox theory, it may even be
fundamentally correct, but it will not win the patients assent, he will not
come to an understanding with him, and that is in the practical sense
incorrectincorrect because it anticipates and thus cripples the patients
development. The patient, that is to say, does not need to have a truth
inculcated into himif we do that, we only reach his head; he needs far
more to grow up to this truth, and in that way we reach his heart, and the
appeal goes deeper and works more powerfully.
[315]
When the doctors one-sided interpretation is based on mere
agreement as to theory or on some other preconceived opinion, his chances
of convincing the patient or of achieving any therapeutic results depend
chiefly upon suggestion. Let no one deceive himself about this. In itself,
suggestion is not to be despised, but it has serious limitations, not to speak
of the subsidiary effects upon the patients independence of character
which, in the long run, we could very well do without. A practising analyst
may be supposed to believe implicitly in the significance and value of
conscious realization, whereby hitherto unconscious parts of the
personality are brought to light and subjected to conscious discrimination
and criticism. It is a process that requires the patient to face his problems
and that taxes his powers of conscious judgment and decision. It is nothing
less than a direct challenge to his ethical sense, a call to arms that must be
answered by the whole personality. As regards the maturation of
personality, therefore, the analytical approach is of a higher order than
suggestion, which is a species of magic that works in the dark and makes
no ethical demands upon the personality. Methods of treatment based on
suggestion are deceptive makeshifts; they are incompatible with the
principles of analytical therapy and should be avoided if at all possible.
Naturally suggestion can only be avoided if the doctor is conscious of its
possibility. There is at the best of times always enough and more than
enoughunconscious suggestion.
[316]
The analyst who wishes to rule out conscious suggestion musttherefore consider every dream interpretation invalid until such time as a
formula is found which wins the assent of the patient.
[317]
The observance of this rule seems to me imperative when dealing with
those dreams whose obscurity is evidence of the lack of understanding of
both doctor and patient. The doctor should regard every such dream as
something new, as a source of information about conditions whose nature
is unknown to him, concerning which he has as much to learn as the
patient. It goes without saying that he should give up all his theoretical
assumptions and should in every single case be ready to construct a totally
new theory of dreams. There are still boundless opportunities for pioneer
work in this field. The view that dreams are merely the imaginary
fulfilments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is
true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all
the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical
pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations,
irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what
besides. One thing we ought never to forget: almost half our life is passed
in a more or less unconscious state. The dream is specifically the utterance
of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call
consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic
activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. It is certain that the
conscious mind consists not only of wishes and fears, but of vastly more
besides; and it is highly probable that our dream psyche possesses a wealth
of contents and living forms equal to or even greater than those of the
conscious mind, which is characterized by concentration, limitation, and
exclusion.
[318]
This being so, it is imperative that we should not pare down the
meaning of the dream to fit some narrow doctrine. We must remember that
there are not a few patients who imitate the technical or theoretical jargon
of the doctor, and do this even in their dreams, in accordance with the old
tag, Canis panem somniat, piscator pisces. This is not to say that the fishes
of which the fisherman dreams are fishes and nothing more. There is no
language that cannot be misused. As may easily be imagined, the misuse
often turns the tables on us; it even seems as if the unconscious had a way
of strangling the doctor in the coils of his own theory. Therefore I leave
theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreamsnot entirely, ofcourse, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. It is on
the basis of theory, for instance, that I expect dreams to have a meaning. I
cannot prove in every case that this is so, for there are dreams which the
doctor and the patient simply do not understand. But I have to make such
an hypothesis in order to find courage to deal with dreams at all. To say
that dreams add something important to our conscious knowledge, and that
a dream which fails to do so has not been properly interpreted that, too,
is a theory. But I must make this hypothesis as well in order to explain to
myself why I analyse dreams in the first place. All other hypotheses,
however, about the function and the structure of dreams are merely rules of
thumb and must be subjected to constant modification. In dream-analysis
we must never forget, even for a moment, that we move on treacherous
ground where nothing is certain but uncertainty. If it were not so
paradoxical, one would almost like to call out to the dream interpreter: Do
anything you like, only dont try to understand!
[319]
When we take up an obscure dream, our first task is not to understand
and interpret, but to establish the context with minute care. By this I do not
mean unlimited free association starting from any and every image in the
dream, but a careful and conscious illumination of the interconnected
associations objectively grouped round particular images. Many patients
have first to be educated to this, for they resemble the doctor in their
insuperable desire to understand and interpret offhand, especially when
they have been primed by ill-digested reading or by a previous analysis
that went wrong. They begin by associating in accordance with a theory,
that is, they try to understand and interpret, and they nearly always get
stuck. Like the doctor, they want to get behind the dream at once in the
false belief that the dream is a mere faade concealing the true meaning.
But the so-called faade of most houses is by no means a fake or a
deceptive distortion; on the contrary, it follows the plan of the building and
often betrays the interior arrangement. The manifest dream-picture is the
dream itself and contains the whole meaning of the dream. When I find
sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a faade for albumen. What
Freud calls the dream-faade is the dreams obscurity, and this is really
only a projection of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream
has a false front only because we fail to see into it. We would do better to
say that we are dealing with something like a text that is unintelligible not
because it has a faadea text has no faade but simply because wecannot read it. We do not have to get behind such a text, but must first
learn to read it.
[320]
The best way to do this, as I have already remarked, is to establish the
context. Free association will get me nowhere, any more than it would help
me to decipher a Hittite inscription. It will of course help me to uncover all
my own complexes, but for this purpose I have no need of a dream I
could just as well take a public notice or a sentence in a newspaper. Free
association will bring out all my complexes, but hardly ever the meaning
of a dream. To understand the dreams meaning I must stick as close as
possible to the dream images. When somebody dreams of a deal table, it
is not enough for him to associate it with his writing-desk which does not
happen to be made of deal. Supposing that nothing more occurs to the
dreamer, this blocking has an objective meaning, for it indicates that a
particular darkness reigns in the immediate neighbourhood of the dream-
image, and that is suspicious. We would expect him to have dozens of
associations to a deal table, and the fact that there is apparently nothing is
itself significant. In such cases I keep on returning to the image, and I
usually say to my patient, Suppose I had no idea what the words deal
table mean. Describe this object and give me its history in such a way that
I cannot fail to understand what sort of a thing it is.
[321]
In this way we manage to establish almost the whole context of the
dream-image. When we have done this for all the images in the dream we
are ready for the venture of interpretation,
[322]
Every interpretation is an hypothesis, an attempt to read an unknown
text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted
with any certainty. For this reason I attach little importance to the
interpretation of single dreams. A relative degree of certainty is reached
only in the interpretation of a series of dreams, where the later dreams
correct the mistakes we have made in handling those that went before.
Also, the basic ideas and themes can be recognized much better in a
dream-series, and I therefore urge my patients to keep a careful record of
their dreams and of the interpretations given. I also show them how to
work out their dreams in the manner described, so that they can bring the
dream and its context with them in writing to the consultation. At a later
stage I get them to work out the interpretation as well. In this way the
patient learns how to deal correctly with his unconscious without thedoctors help.
[323]
Were dreams nothing more than sources of information about factors
of aetiological importance, the whole work of dream-interpretation could
safely be left to the doctor. Again, if their only use was to provide the
doctor with a collection of useful hints and psychological tips, my own
procedure would be entirely superfluous. But since, as my examples have
shown, dreams contain something more than practical helps for the doctor,
dream-analysis deserves very special attention. Sometimes, indeed, it is a
matter of life and death. Among many instances of this sort, there is one
that has remained particularly impressive. It concerns a colleague of mine,
a man somewhat older than myself, whom I used to see from time to time
and who always teased me about my dream-interpretations. Well, I met
him one day in the street and he called out to me, How are things going?
Still interpreting dreams? By the way, Ive had another idiotic dream. Does
that mean something too? This is what he had dreamed: I am climbing a
high mountain, over steep snow-covered slopes. I climb higher and higher,
and it is marvellous weather. The higher I climb the better I feel. I think,
If only I could go on climbing like this for ever! When I reach the summit
my happiness and elation are so great that I feel I could mount right up
into space. And I discover that I can actually do so: I mount upwards on
empty air, and awake in sheer ecstasy.
[324]
After some discussion, I said, My dear fellow, I know you cant give
up mountaineering, but let me implore you not to go alone from now on.
When you go, take two guides, and promise on your word of honour to
follow them absolutely. Incorrigible! he replied, laughing, and waved
good-bye. I never saw him again. Two months later the first blow fell.
When out alone, he was buried by an avalanche, but was dug out in the
nick of time by a military patrol that happened to be passing. Three months
afterwards the end came. He went on a climb with a younger friend, but
without guides. A guide standing below saw him literally step out into the
air while descending a rock face. He fell on the head of his friend, who
was waiting lower down, and both were dashed to pieces far below. That
was ecstasis with a vengeance!
2
[325]
No amount of scepticism 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 enigmaticmessage 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.
[326]
Since dreams provide information about the hidden inner life and
reveal to the patient those components of his personality which, in his
daily behaviour, appear merely as neurotic symptoms, it follows that we
cannot effectively treat him from the side of consciousness alone, but must
bring about a change in and through the unconscious. In the light of our
present knowledge this can be achieved only by the thorough and
conscious assimilation of unconscious contents.
[327]
Assimilation in this sense means mutual penetration of conscious
and unconscious, and notas is commonly thought and practiseda one-
sided evaluation, interpretation, and deformation of unconscious contents
by the conscious mind. As to the value and significance of unconscious
contents in general, very mistaken views are current. It is well known that
the Freudian school presents the unconscious in a thoroughly negative
light, much as it regards primitive man as little better than a monster. Its
nursery-tales about the terrible old man of the tribe and its teachings about
the infantile-perverse-criminal unconscious have led people to make a
dangerous ogre out of something perfectly natural. As if all that is good,
reasonable, worth while, and beautiful had taken up its abode in the
conscious mind! Have the horrors of the World War done nothing to open
our eyes, so that we still cannot see that the conscious mind is even more
devilish and perverse than the naturalness of the unconscious?
[328]
The charge has recently been laid at my door that my teaching about
the assimilation of the unconscious would undermine civilization and
deliver up our highest values to sheer primitivity. Such an opinion can only
be based on the totally erroneous supposition that the unconscious is a
monster. It is a view that springs from fear of nature and the realities of
life. Freud invented the idea of sublimation to save us from the imaginaryclaws of the unconscious. But what is real, what actually exists, cannot be
alchemically sublimated, and if anything is apparently sublimated it never
was what a false interpretation took it to be.
[329]
The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity
which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go,
is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious
attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its
danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents
that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation
of personality, the anxious division of the day-time and the nighttime sides
of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation. What my critic feared
the overwhelming of the conscious mind by the unconsciousis far
more likely to ensue when the unconscious is excluded from life by being
repressed, falsely interpreted, and depreciated.
[330]
The fundamental mistake regarding the nature of the unconscious is
probably this: it is commonly supposed that its contents have only one
meaning and are marked with an unalterable plus or minus sign. In my
humble opinion, this view is too nave. The psyche is a self-regulating
system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process
that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and
without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal
psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a basic law
of psychic behaviour. Too little on one side results in too much on the
other. Similarly, 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?
[331]
Compensation is not as a rule merely an illusory wishfulfilment, but
an actual fat that becomes still more actual the more we repress it. We do
not stop feeling thirsty by repressing our thirst. In the same way, the
dream-content is to be regarded with due seriousness as an actuality that
has to be fitted into the conscious attitude as a codetermining factor. If we
fail to do this, we merely persist in that eccentric frame of mind which
evoked the unconscious compensation in the first place. It is then difficult
to see how we can ever arrive at a sane judgment of ourselves or at a
balanced way of living.[332]
If it should occur to anyone to replace the conscious content by an
unconscious oneand this is the prospect which my critics find so
alarminghe would only succeed in repressing it, and it would then
reappear as an unconscious compensation. The unconscious would thus
have changed its face completely: it would now be timidly reasonable, in
striking contrast to its former tone. It is not generally believed that the
unconscious operates in this way, yet such reversals constantly take place
and constitute its proper function. That is why every dream is an organ of
information and control, and why dreams are our most effective aid in
building up the personality.
[333]
The unconscious does not harbour in itself any explosive materials
unless an overweening or cowardly conscious attitude has secretly laid up
stores of explosives there. All the more reason, then, for watching our step.
[334]
From all this it should now be clear why I make it an heuristic rule, in
interpreting a dream, to ask myself: What conscious attitude does it
compensate? By so doing, I relate the dream as closely as possible to the
conscious situation; indeed, I would even assert that without knowledge of
the conscious situation the dream can never be interpreted with any degree
of certainty. Only in the light of this knowledge is it possible to make out
whether the unconscious content carries a plus or a minus sign. The dream
is not an isolated event completely cut off from daily life and lacking its
character. If it seems so to us, that is only the result of our lack of
understanding, a subjective illusion. In reality the relation between the
conscious mind and the dream is strictly causal, and they interact in the
subtlest of ways.
[335]
I should like to show by means of an example how important it is to
evaluate the unconscious contents correctly. A young man brought me the
following dream: My father is driving away from the house in his new
car. He drives very clumsily, and I get very annoyed over his apparent
stupidity. He goes this way and that, forwards and backwards, and
manoeuvres the car into a dangerous position. Finally he runs into a wall
and damages the car badly. I shout at him in a perfect fury that he ought to
behave himself. My father only laughs, and then I see that he is dead
drunk. This dream has no foundation in fact. The dreamer is convinced
that his father would never behave like that, even when drunk. As a
motorist he himself is very careful and extremely moderate in the use ofalcohol, especially when he has to drive. Bad driving, and even slight
damage to the car, irritate him greatly. His relation to his father is positive.
He admires him for being an unusually successful man. We can say,
without any great feat of interpretation, that the dream presents a most
unfavourable picture of the father. What, then, should we take its meaning
to be for the son? Is his relation to his father good only on the surface, and
does it really consist in over-compensated resistances? If so, we should
have to give the dream-content a positive sign; we should have to tell the
young man: That is your real relation to your father. But since I could
find nothing neurotically ambivalent in the sons real relation to his father,
I had no warrant for upsetting the young mans feelings with such a
destructive pronouncement. To do so would have been a bad therapeutic
blunder.
[336]
But, if his relation to his father is in fact good, why must the dream
manufacture such an improbable story in order to discredit the father? In
the dreamers unconscious there must be some tendency to produce such a
dream. Is that because he has resistances after all, perhaps fed by envy or
some other inferior motive? Before we go out of our way to burden his
conscience and with sensitive young people this is always rather a
dangerous proceedingwe would do better to inquire not why he had this
dream, but what its purpose is. The answer in this case would be that his
unconscious is obviously trying to take the father down a peg. If we regard
this as a compensation, we are forced to the conclusion that his relation to
his father is not only good, but actually too good. In fact he deserves the
French soubriquet of fils papa. His father is still too much the guarantor
of his existence, and the dreamer is still living what I would call a
provisional life. His particular danger is that he cannot see his own reality
on account of his father; therefore the unconscious resorts to a kind of
artificial blasphemy so as to lower the father and elevate the son. An
immoral business, we may be tempted to say. An unintelligent father
would probably take umbrage, but the compensation is entirely to the
point, since it forces the son to contrast himself with his father, which is
the only way he could become conscious of himself.
[337]
The interpretation just outlined was apparently the correct one, for it
struck home. It won the spontaneous assent of the dreamer, and no real
values were damaged, either for the father or for the son. But thisinterpretation was only possible when the whole conscious
phenomenology of the father-son relationship had been carefully studied.
Without a knowledge of the conscious situation the real meaning of the
dream would have remained in doubt.
[338]
For dream-contents to be assimilated, it is of overriding importance
that no real values of the conscious personality should be damaged, much
less destroyed, otherwise there is no one left to do the assimilating. The
recognition of the unconscious is not a Bolshevist experiment which puts
the lowest on top and thus re-establishes the very situation it intended to
correct. We must see to it that the values of the conscious personality
remain intact, for unconscious compensation is only effective when it co-
operates with an integral consciousness. Assimilation is never a question
of this or that, but always of this and that.
[339]
Just as the interpretation of dreams requires exact knowledge of the
conscious status quo, so the treatment of dream symbolism demands that
we take into account the dreamers philosophical, religious, and moral
convictions. It is far wiser in practice not to regard dream-symbols
semiotically, i.e., as signs or symptoms of a fixed character, but as true
symbols, i.e., as expressions of a content not yet consciously recognized or
conceptually formulated. In addition, they must be considered in relation
to the dreamers immediate state of consciousness. I say that this
procedure is advisable in practice because in theory relatively fixed
symbols do exist whose meaning must on no account be referred to
anything known and formulable as a concept. If there were no such
relatively fixed symbols it would be impossible to determine the structure
of the unconscious, for there would be nothing that could in any way be
laid hold of or described.
[340]
It may seem strange that I should attri bute an as it were indefinite
content to these relatively fixed symbols. Yet if their content were not
indefinite, they would not be symbols at all, but signs or symptoms. We all
know how the Freudian school operates with hard-and-fast sexual
symbolswhich in this case I would call signsand endows them
with an apparently definitive content, namely sexuality. Unfortunately
Freuds idea of sexuality is incredibly elastic and so vague that it can be
made to include almost anything. The word sounds familiar enough, but
what it denotes is no more than an indeterminable x that ranges from thephysiological activity of the glands at one extreme to the sublime reaches
of the spirit at the other. Instead of yielding to a dogmatic conviction based
on the illusion that we know something because we have a familiar word
for it, I prefer to regard the symbol as an unknown quantity, hard to
recognize and, in the last resort, never quite determinable. Take, for
instance, the so-called phallic symbols which are supposed to stand for the
membrum virile and nothing more, Psychologically speaking, the
membrum is itselfas Kranefeldt points out in a recent work an emblem
of something whose wider content is not at all easy to determine. But
primitive people, who, like the ancients, make the freest use of phallic
symbols, would never dream of confusing the phallus, as a ritualistic
symbol, with the penis. The phallus always means the creative mana, the
power of healing and fertility, the extraordinarily potent, to use
Lehmanns expression, whose equivalents in mythology and in dreams are
the bull, the ass, the pomegranate, the yoni, the he-goat, the lightning, the
horses hoof, the dance, the magical cohabitation in the furrow, and the
menstrual fluid, to mention only a few of the thousand other analogies.
That which underlies all the analogies, and sexuality itself, is an archetypal
image whose character is hard to define, but whose nearest psychological
equivalent is perhaps the primitive mana-symbol.
3
[341]
All these symbols are relatively fixed, but in no single case can we
have the a priori certainty that in practice the symbol must be interpreted
in that way.
[342]
Practical necessity may call for something quite different. Of course,
if we had to give an exhaustive scientific interpretation of a dream, in
accordance with a theory, we should have to refer every such symbol to an
archetype. But in practice that can be a positive mistake, for the patients
psychological state at the moment may require anything but a digression
into dream theory. It is therefore advisable to consider first and foremost
the meaning of the symbol in relation to the conscious situationin other
words, to treat the symbol as if it were not fixed. This is as much as to say
that we must renounce all preconceived opinions, however knowing they
make us feel, and try to discover what things mean for the patient. In so
doing, we shall obviously not get very far towards a theoretical
interpretation; indeed we shall probably get stuck at the very beginning.
But if the practitioner operates too much with fixed symbols, there is adanger of his falling into mere routine and pernicious dogmatism, and thus
failing his patient. Unfortunately I must refrain from illustrating this point,
for I should have to go into greater detail than space here permits.
Moreover I have published sufficient material elsewhere in support of my
statements.
[343]
It frequently happens at the very beginning of the treatment that a
dream will reveal to the doctor, in broad perspective, the whole
programme of the unconscious. But for practical reasons it may be quite
impossible to make clear to the patient the deeper meaning of the dream.
In this respect, too, we are limited by practical considerations. Such insight
is rendered possible by the doctors knowledge of relatively fixed symbols.
It can be of the greatest value in diagnosis as well as in prognosis. I was
once consulted about a seventeen-year-old girl. One specialist had
conjectured that she might be in the first stages of progressive muscular
atrophy, while another thought that it was a case of hysteria. In view of the
second opinion, I was called in. The clinical picture made me suspect an
organic disease, but there were signs of hysteria as well. I asked for
dreams. The patient answered at once: Yes, I have terrible dreams. Only
recently I dreamt I was coming home at night. Everything is as quiet as
death. The door into the living-room is half open, and I see my mother
hanging from the chandelier, swinging to and fro in the cold wind that
blows in through the open windows. Another time I dreamt that a terrible
noise broke out in the house at night. I get up and discover that a
frightened horse is tearing through the rooms. At last it finds the door into
the hall, and jumps through the hall window from the fourth floor into the
street below. I was terrified when I saw it lying there, all mangled.
[344]
The gruesome character of the dreams is alone sufficient to make one
pause. All the same, other people have anxiety dreams now and then. We
must therefore look more closely into the meaning of the two main
symbols, mother and horse. They must be equivalents, for they both
do the same thing: they commit suicide. Mother is an archetype and
refers to the place of origin, to nature, to that which passively creates,
hence to substance and matter, to materiality, the womb, the vegetative
functions. It also means the unconscious, our natural and instinctive life,
the physiological realm, the body in which we dwell or are contained; for
the mother is also the matrix, the hollow form, the vessel that carries andnourishes, and it thus stands psychologically for the foundations of
consciousness. Being inside or contained in something also suggests
darkness, something nocturnal and fearful, hemming one in. These
allusions give the idea of the mother in many of its mythological and
etymological variants; they also represent an important part of the Yin idea
in Chinese philosophy. This is no individual acquisition of a seventeen-
year-old girl; it is a collective inheritance, alive and recorded in language,
inherited along with the structure of the psyche and therefore to be found
at all times and among all peoples.
[345]
The word mother, which sounds so familiar, apparently refers to the
best-known, the individual motherto my mother. But the mother-
symbol points to a darker background which eludes conceptual
formulation and can only be vaguely apprehended as the hidden, nature-
bound life of the body. Yet even this is too narrow and excludes too many
vital subsidiary meanings. The underlying, primary psychic reality is so
inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of
intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols.
[346]
If we apply our findings to the dream, its interpretation will be: The
unconscious life is destroying itself. That is the dreams message to the
conscious mind of the dreamer and to anybody who has ears to hear.
[347]
Horse is an archetype that is widely current in mythology and
folklore. As an animal it represents the non-human psyche, the subhuman,
animal side, the unconscious. That is why horses in folklore sometimes see
visions, hear voices, and speak. As a beast of burden it is closely related to
the mother-archetype (witness the Valkyries that bear the dead hero to
Valhalla, the Trojan horse, etc.). As an animal lower than man it represents
the lower part of the body and the animal impulses that rise from there.
The horse is dynamic and vehicular power: it carries one away like a surge
of instinct. It is subject to panics like all instinctive creatures who lack
higher consciousness. Also it has to do with sorcery and magical spells
especially the black night-horses which herald death.
[348]
It is evident, then, that horse is an equivalent of mother with a
slight shift of meaning. The mother stands for life at its origin, the horse
for the merely animal life of the body. If we apply this meaning to the text
of our dream, its interpretation will be: The animal life is destroying itself.[349]
The two dreams make nearly identical statements, but, as is usually
the case, the second is the more specific. Note the peculiar subtlety of the
dream: there is no mention of the death of the individual. It is notorious
that one often dreams of ones own death, but that is no serious matter.
When it is really a question of death, the dream speaks another language.
[350]
Both dreams point to a grave organic disease with a fatal outcome.
This prognosis was soon confirmed.
[351]
As for the relatively fixed symbols, this example gives a fair idea of
their general nature. There are a great many of them, and all are
individually marked by subtle shifts of meaning. It is only through
comparative studies in mythology, folklore, religion, and philology that we
can evaluate their nature scientifically. The evolutionary stratification of
the psyche is more clearly discernible in the dream than in the conscious
mind. In the dream, the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to
instincts, which derive from the most primitive levels of nature. Therefore,
through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of
consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of
nature from which it all too easily departs, and the patient can be led back
to the natural law of his own being.
[352]
I have not been able, in so short a space, to deal with anything but the
elements of the subject. I could not put together before your eyes, stone by
stone, the edifice that is reared in every analysis from the materials of the
unconscious and finally reaches completion in the restoration of the total
personality. The way of successive assimilations goes far beyond the
curative results that specifically concern the doctor. It leads in the end to
that distant goal which may perhaps have been the first urge to life: the
complete actualization of the whole human being, that is, individuation.
We physicians may well be the first conscious observers of this dark
process of nature. As a rule we see only the pathological phase of
development, and we lose sight of the patient as soon as he is cured. Yet it
is only after the cure that we would really be in a position to study the
normal process, which may extend over years and decades. Had we but a
little knowledge of the ends toward which the unconscious development is
tending, and were the doctors psychological insight not drawn exclusively
from the pathological phase, we should have a less confused idea of the
processes mediated to the conscious mind by dreams and a clearerrecognition of what the symbols point to. In my opinion, every doctor
should understand that every procedure in psycho therapy, and particularly
the analytical procedure, breaks into a purposeful and continuous process
of development, now at this point and now at that, and thus singles out
separate phases which seem to follow opposing courses. Each individual
analysis by itself shows only one part or one aspect of the deeper process,
and for this reason nothing but hopeless confusion can result from
comparative case histories. For this reason, too, I have preferred to confine
myself to the rudiments of the subject and to practical considerations; for
only in closest contact with the everyday facts can we come to anything
like a satisfactory understanding.

questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or
join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers

OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS

SEE ALSO

AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

3.02_-_The_Practice_Use_of_Dream-Analysis

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT

3.02_-_The_Practice_Use_of_Dream-Analysis

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter

SIMILAR TITLES

DEFINITIONS

QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0]

KEYS (10k)

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

IN CHAPTERS [0/0]

WORDNET

IN WEBGEN [10000/0]

change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding":
change "table font size":
last updated: 2022-02-04 18:56:19
261860 site hits