Dreams According to Carl Gustav Jung - Essay Example

Dreams according to Carl Gustav Jung Running head: DREAMS ACCORDING TO CARL GUSTAV JUNG The Dream Theory in the Analytical Psychoanalysis According to Carl Gustav Jung Write your name here Write the name or the institution here Psychoanalysis was devised in Vienna in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud, a neurologist interested in finding an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud’s theory about the origin of human’s problems in the mentally unacceptable repressed and unconscious desires and fantasies of a sexual nature, has led to development of many other theories opposing Freud’s. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) had a commitment to know the nature of the psyche through direct, personal experience, and revelation resulted in the precedence he gave to dreams and visions and the idea of understanding them through investigations of philosophy, religion and literature. Jung was Freud’s main collaborator and most probable successor as leader of the psychoanalytic movement, but his own researches led him away from Freud’s emphasis on the psychosexual origins of neurosis, founding his own analytic psychology in response to Freud’s psychoanalysis. This differed from the Freudian model in downgrading the importance of sexuality a childhood conflicts in the treatment of neuroses, and concentrating more on a patient’s current conflicts. Jung’s doctoral dissertation was entitled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called occult Phenomena” and was presented at Basel University in 1902. This stuffy sowed the seeds of ideas that became pivotal in the practice of Jung’s system of analytical psychology, namely that the unconscious contains “complexes” or part-personalities that can manifest in dreams and visions, and that personality development and integration (individuation) occurs at the unconscious level. A ”complex” is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster-constellate-around a theme provided by some archetype (archetype will be explained further on). Jung describes a “complex” as a “node” in the unconscious; it may be imagined as a knot of unconscious feelings and beliefs, detectable indirectly, through behavior that is puzzling or hard to account for. Jung found evidence for complexes in the “word association test”; here a researcher read a list of words to each subject, who was asked to say, a quickly as possible, the first thing that came to mind in response to each word. Researches timed subject’s responses and noted any unusual reactions- hesitations, slips of the tongue, and signs of emotion. In Jung’s theory, complexes may be related to traumatic experiences or not. There are many kinds of complex, but at the core of any complex is a universal pattern of experience, or archetype. Few contemporary psychologists shared his view that psychological development, the growth towards the realization on an individual’s true potential continued throughout the whole of life rather than being limited to childhood. Such self-realization could occur, Jung argued, by treating the unconscious as a living, daemonic presence: by confronting and examining what the unconscious has to say, a person can come to know themselves more truly and personal transformation can occur. Jung made significant step of defining the unconscious of a person as comprised of both: personal unconscious-proceeding from the experiences of the individual, and a collective unconscious-issuing from the inherited structure of the brain, and common to humanity. The unconscious, the inner “environment” of the psyche, is a different medium from the conscious. According to C. G. Jung dream analysis is the primary way to gain knowledge of the hidden part of our mind. “Dreams are specific expression of the unconscious which have a definite, purposeful structure indicating an underlying idea or intention”- as Jung said, the dream is natural phenomenon which can be studied, thereby gaining knowledge of the hidden part of our mind. Dreams, for Jung, originate in the unconscious; they arise spontaneously and autonomously into the conscious mind: “The general function of dreams is to restore one’s total psychic equilibrium. They tend to play a complementary or compensatory role in over psychic makeup”. Jung developed a theory which claimed that when there is imbalance between the conscious and unconscious minds, a “neurosis” or “psychosis occurs. This is a fragmentation of the personality, in the sense that the psyche is split into two opposing energies which refuse to be reconciled (Schizophrenia is a good example of such a conflict.). Jung explains the phenomenon of dreaming by saying that the psyche regulates itself by a process of compensation. As a compensation of the imbalance, the psyche will attempt to right itself by providing clues, or possible solutions to the problem through dreams. According to Jung, if the dreamer can understand and apply what the dream is saying, the imbalance will be corrected. This is one of the basis of the analytical psychology The unconscious communicates with the conscious mind through dream imagery. When the dream is considered, one finds in one’s consciousness certain “associations” which are connected to the image. Associations, in this context, are ideas or feelings which arise in the mind of the dreamer when contemplating the dream. Jung contends that only through these associations the real meaning can be discovered, this is referred as amplification. Jung did not believe that dreams should be interpreted using “free association” (as Freud did), but that one could come closer to the meaning by focusing on the specific images that the dream provides. As Jung stated: “I concluded that only the material that is clearly and visibly part of the dream should be used in interpreting it”. A dream image, he says, can have many different meanings according to the dreamer’s associations. Jung was vehemently opposed to any kind of “dream dictionary” where the images are given fixed meanings. According to Jung, creative ideas can come to us through dreams, the unconscious is a “rich vein” of creativity. Nevertheless, there are dreams which are of a “personal” nature; however there are collective dreams, which arose from the collective unconscious- emanating from the personal unconscious. Collective dreams contain symbols which are common to all human beings. (Example: in most religious mythologies, there are stories of a destruction of the world by the supreme deity.) Collective dreams are not easily understood by the dreamer because they are of an impersonal nature. “The general function of dreams is to restore one’s total psychic equilibrium. They tend to play a complementary or compensatory role in our psychic make-up”- said Jung. The point of it all is really self identity and self understanding. It is possible to come to a greater level of understanding without dreams, however, it is not wise. Dreams are irreplaceable source of information, inspiration and enlightment. Humans’ dreams material may come from the unconscious, that we have no access to during the day. C. G. Jung said that the unconscious is not necessarily smarter, but that it holds different information than our conscious mind. It enables us to see things that are at times difficult to understand and admit the unconscious experiences that are revealed to us in dreams also allow freedom and mobility that would be impossible to obtain through the conscious mind. In the dream state we have an opportunity to access the private and the collective unconscious. According to C.G. Jung the primary functions of dreams are: 1. Dreams are compensation for what is going on in daily life. They can serve as a positive or negative compensation. In this way they attempt to balance the psyche. (For example: if you experience sad event during the day, you may have a joyful dream.) 2. Dreams provide a reaction to a traumatic experience. (For example: if you broke a leg, you may dream the event-falling down.) As the individual assimilates these traumatic experiences, such dreams should become less and less frequent and may take another form. 3. Dreams may be prophetic. Some dreams may provide the dreamer with glimpses into the future about small matters, while other dreams may reveal important events. However, most dreams are symbolic and not literal. Prophetic dreams may have an emotional or psychic charge that is different from other types of dreams. 4. Dreams may be telepathic. In the American Heritage Dictionary, telepathy is defined as “communication through means other than the senses”. Telepathic dreams may be a means of communicating with others, as well as a path for one part of the dreamer’s psyche to communicate with another. 5. Dreams may be mimetic of events occurring in the physical system or body. Thus, dreams nay attempt to bring to consciousness an unknown illness or be a reflection of a current physical challenge. Interpreting dreams can and should be practiced without much dogmatic certainty. The analytical approach in interpreting dreams is of a higher order than suggestion, which should be avoided when practicing analytical analysis. According to Jung, the dream begins with statement of place, next comes a statement about the protagonists (statement of time is rarer.) This phase of the dream is called exposition. It indicates the scene of action, the people involved, and often the initial situation of the dreamer. In the second phase comes the development of the plot. The situation is somehow becoming complicated and a definite tension develops because one does not know what will happen. The third phase brings the culmination or peripetia. Here something decisive happens, or something changes completely. The fourth and last phase is the lysis, the solution or result produced by the dream-work (There are certain dreams in which the fourth phase is lacking, which can present a problem). The dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly. If unconscious is denied to the degree that it is repressed, its danger increases. Initial dreams are often amazingly lucid and clear-cut, but as the work of analysis progresses, the dreams tend to lose their clarity. Carl Jung believed a dreams’ content uses symbolic language. All products of the unconscious are symbolic and can be taken as guiding messages. In Jung’s view, there is a difference between a symbol and a sign. A sign merely points to something, while a symbol is a term, a name or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. A symbol implies something vague, unknown, or hidden from us. The personal unconscious is that aspect of the psyche which does not usually inter the individual’s awareness and which appears in overt behavior or in dreams. It is the source of new thoughts and creative ideals, and produces meaningful symbols. The collective unconscious is that aspect of the unconscious which manifests inherited universal themes which through all human life. Inwardly, the whole history of the human race, back to the most primitive times, lives on in us. Behind the personal unconscious lies the collective unconscious, which contains the archetypes. The archetypes represent the structure of a “psychic world” whose reality is seen through its effects on the conscious mind. The structure of the psyche is similar to that of the physical body. According to Jung, “the archetypes are the organs of the prerational psyche”. Archetypes are images, not structures, they allow for the periodic creation and dissolution of images. The archetypes have a hierarchical order. The “primary’ archetypes are those that cannot be further reduced. The next in line are the “children” or “secondary” archetypes. Then come the “grandchildren” or “tertiary” until we come to those which are closest to consciousness and which have the least intensity, meaning and numinosity or energy charge. There primordial images reflect basic patterns or universal themes common to us all which are presented in the unconscious. These symbolic images exist outside time and space. As it was mentioned previously, the contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung also called them dominants, images, mythological or primordial images. An archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an “organizing principle” on the things we see or do. The archetype is like a black hole in space, we only know its there by how it draws matter and light to itself. One of the archetypes is the mother archetype. All of our ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an environment that included a mother or mother substitute. We would never have survived without our connection with a nurturing- one during our times as helpless infants. It stands to a reason that we are “built” in a way that reflects that evolutionary environment: We come into this world ready to want mother, to seek her, to recognize her, to deal with her. So the mother archetype is our built-in ability to recognize a certain relationship, that of “mothering”. Jung says that this is rather abstract, and we are more likely to project the archetype out into the world and onto a particular person, usually our own mothers. People tend to personify the archetype, that is, turn it into mythological “story-book”character. The mother archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or “earth mother” of mythology, by Eve and Mary in western traditions, and by less personal symbols such as the church, the nation, a forest, or the ocean. According to Jung, someone whose own mother failed to satisfy the demands of the archetypes may well be one that spends his or her life seeking comfort in the church, or in identification with “motherland”, or in mediating upon the figure of Mary, on in a life at sea. These archetypes are not really biological things, they are more spiritual demands. For dreaming long things, Freud might suggest these things represent phallus and ultimately sax. However Jung might have a very different interpretation, it is curious that in primitive societies, phallus symbols do not refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize the archetype mana, or spiritual power. These symbols would be displayed on occasions when the spirits are being called upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or heal someone. The connection between the penis and strength, between seen and seed, between fertilization and fertility are understood by most cultures. Sex and life instincts in general are a part of an archetype called shadow, which derives from our presuming, animal past, when our concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we were not self-conscious. It is the “dark side” of the ego, and the evil we are capable of is often stored there. The shadow is amoral; neither good nor bad, just like animals. It is capable to tender care for its young and vicious killing for food, but it does not choose to do either. The animal is “innocent”, it does what it does. From the human perspective the animal is brutal, inhuman, so the shadow becomes something of a garbage can for the parts of ourselves that we can’t quite admit to. Symbols of the shadow include: the snake, the dragon, monsters and demons. The persona represent human’s public image. The word is related to the word person and personality, and comes from a Latin word for mask. So the persona is the mask humans put before showing to the outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time we are finished realizing, it is the part of humans most distant from the collective unconscious. All its best, it is just the “good impression” we all wish to present as we fill roles society requires from us. It can also be the “false impression” people use to manipulate other people’s opinions and behaviors. At its worst it can be mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true nature. A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung felt that people are really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we neither are male or female in the social sense. In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on people’s different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. Women are expected to be nurturing and unagressive; men are expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. Jung felt these expectations meant we had developed only half of our potential. The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality, and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, and even argumentative. The anima or animus is the archetypes through which a person communicates with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. Jung said that there is no fixed number of archetypes which can be simply list and memorized. They overlap and easily melt into each other as needed, and their logic is not the usual kind. But some of the archetypes Jung mentions are other “family archetypes” as archetype father, often symbolizes authority figure. Archetype family representing the idea of blood relationship and ties that run deeper than those based on conscious reasons. Archetypes child, represents the future, becoming, rebirth and salvation. The hero archetype is the mana personality and the defeater of evil dragons. The hero represents the ego, because we find to identify with him, and it is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the form of dragons and other monsters. The animal archetype represents humanity’s relationship with the animal world. The trickster archetype is often represented by a clown or a magician, his role to hamper the hero’s progress and to generally make trouble. The most important archetype is the self which is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross and the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus back to the center, and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The behavior of the self can be determined from dreams. The central archetype of the psyche is the self which, together with the ego, determine the order parameters of the entire psyche (biases; dispositions; likes and dislikes; values). The ego is our personality and it is responsible for our daily functioning; it is our psychology and rationality. The ego has its own unconscious component. The ego rules the day and this is the conscious life. The ego is the central complex in the field of consciousness; the ego is the subject of consciousness which comes into existence as a complex quantity which is constituted partly by the inherited disposition (character constituents) and partly by unconsciously acquired impressions and their attendant phenomena. Just as the brain is comprised of a host of interrelated components, so Jung’s psyche is comprised of numerous complexes, instincts and archetypes. These parts together with the libido, work together to form macrocosmic ordering parameters which are the feelings, thoughts and memories, that make up the personality or ego-complex that part of the part which is conscious. In order to undergo the individuation process, the individual must be open to the parts of oneself beyond one’s own ego. In order to do this, the modern individual must pay attention to dreams, explore the world of religion and spirituality, and question the assumptions of the operant societal worldview, rather than just blindly living life in accordance with dominant norms and assumptions. References: 1. Jung, C. G. (1974). Dreams. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press (compilation from Collected Works Vols. 4, 8, 12, 16) 2. Jung, C. G. (1968). Man and his symbols. New York City, USA: Dell Publishing 3. Jung, C. G. (1970). Four Archetypes; Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (contained in Collected Works Vol. 9 part 1) Read More