The Nature of Dreams

My Thoughts on Jung's "On the Nature of Dreams"

Dream School Update

I started Jungian Dream School last fall in response to a wonderful synchronicity involving Jungian analyst Murray Stein and the This Jungian Life podcast.

As you may already know, dreams have been an area of interest to me ever since I had the dream I call the Spirit Dream in 2007 which changed, or possibly saved, my life.

I’ve recently written my Spirit Dream / autism memoir up to the point where what I learned in those first weeks of Dream School becomes relevant. So I went back to module one and worked through it again.

In doing this I reread On the Nature of Dreams more carefully than I had done the first time around. And there was so much there, I wanted to share a bit of what I learned. I hope I will do it justice and not get too much wrong!

How Dreams Bring Balance

In On the Nature of Dreams Jung points out our dreams are rarely in accord with the sensibilities of our conscious mind. To Jung, this means that the unconscious (which he calls "the matrix of dreams") must have an independent function. In other words, the unconscious functions separately from our conscious self (which contains the ego).

In creating dreams, the unconscious may strongly oppose our waking paradigm. This is intentional.

The gap between our everyday attitude and the dream may be slight or great (or very occasionally absent). This relates to Jung's concept of compensation. According to Jung, the dream deviation is an attempt to correct (or compensate for) the errors of our conscious self.

According to Jung there are three compensatory possibilities:

1. If the conscious attitude is one-sided the dream takes the opposite position.

2. If the conscious is more in the middle, the dream may deviate a little from our waking attitude.

3. If the conscious attitude is correct the dream will coincide (though not mirror, because the conscious always maintains what Jung calls its autonomy).

The purpose of compensation is to restore wholeness or balance. This correction usually has something to do with what is going on with us at that particular point in time. Some dreams, particularly long series of dreams, are more far-reaching (this is addressed in Psychology and Alchemy which I will have not read).

It's important to note, that compensation is not black and white. Dreams have their own kind of logic. Their relationship to our waking life is nuanced, complex and expansive. Understanding a dream is always a process.

Who Can Interpret Dreams

According Jung you don't have to be an psychologist (or any sort of professional) to interpret dream. Which isn't to say that anyone and everyone can do Jungian dream interpretation. The characteristics required to "diagnose dream compensation" according to Jung are: intelligence, some knowledge of psychology and life experience.

But these alone are not enough.

Jung is adamant in saying that an understanding of mythology, folklore, indigenous cultures and comparative religion is also required.

I loved hearing that. While I have learned through Dream School that we must always consider our personal association first when approaching a dream, I find mythological themes to be very important in dreams. Right or wrong, whenever it is there I apply it.

On the Nature of Dreams also contains a warning for people who decide that the dream "knows best” or readily believe that dreams predict the future. According to Jung, those who take this approach may find that their dreams become trivial over time. This is because these individuals are over rating the subconscious function and under valuing the conscious.

The conscious, per Jung, must fulfil its own appointed duties. It has developed for a reason and has an important role in our lives. The dream, according to On the Nature of Dreams, may fill in the blanks, correct our attitude or move us forward after our best attempts have failed. This is not to say that they never provide real life guidance, only that most of what they have to tell us relates to our internal states.

Dreams tend to be mythic, symbolic and poetic. Because of this they offer much more than ordinary, everyday advice. While some dreams are precognitive (as Jung was well aware) most are not, and it’s important to properly understand the dreams role in our life.

Dream interpretation can be challenging. While a lot has been written on it by Jung and his contemporaries very little of that is what I would consider an easy read. The book Dream Wise written by three of my Dream School instructors makes Jung's ideas accessible—as do the writings of Jungian analysist Murray Stein.

Stein’s short book Four Pillars of Jungian Analysis talks about dream interpretation in concise and understandable way.

Big Dreams

Big dreams are different than other dreams because they contain symbolic images found in the collective unconscious of the human race. These images are reflections of invisible energetic forms Jung calls archetypes.

Archetypes have existed at all times in human history and in all places. To Jung, this proves that there is both a personal unconscious and a collective or universal unconscious accessible to all. Archetypal images include thing like dragons, initiations, fairy tale elements or alchemical substances. For me personally, they tend to present as specific deities, symbols and themes.

Big dreams come from the collective unconscious at critical stages of our lives. They may hard to interpret, Jung says, because of the lack of personal meaning. Often, we need to go back to the mythology in order to understand them.

This is why a knowledge of myth and folklore is so important. If we don't know these stories we may fail to recognize important elements and messages in our dreams.

We can identify big dreams by their mythic themes and "poetic force and beauty." Often these dreams haunt us, becoming the "richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience." (CGJ) This, in my experience, could not be more accurate.

The Stages of Dreams

A key point in On the Nature of Dreams is a the idea examining a dream through its structure.

Jung provides four stages that describe the structure of most dreams.

1. Exposition: The statement of place, introduction of key dream characters and the initial situation of the dreamer.

2. Development: The plot of the dream as it becomes more complicated and tension develops.

3. Culmination or Peripeteia (a Greek word for an unexpected reversal or point where the situation changes dramatically): The point where something decisive happens or something changes completely.

4. Result or Solution: While not every dream will have a fourth stage Jung looks at this last stage in relation to the solution sought by the dreamer.

I like to look at the structure of the dream and question each stage keeping in mind that every aspect of a dream is there for reason.

There is a lot to be learned from the structure of the dream. The setting, key characters, action and turning point are all important. When I look at my own dreams, I always consider the result or solution. Sometimes this fourth stage is little more than an idea or impression which may be easy to overlook—but it is still important.

Context and Associations

It is also crucially important to do what Jung calls "taking up the context" by exploring personal associations for each dream element.

Because dreams are closely tied to our lived experience, it's also helpful to think about our current situation as we try to understand how our unconscious might be trying to restore balance in the here and now.

Most dreams are not big dreams. But every dream we have is important in terms of our day to day life. Many apparently "lesser" dreams can be mapped as part of a dream series that may be factor into our individuation process (a Jungian term that describes the process of becoming the person we are meant be).

Dreams offer an immediate and crucial course correction as we journey from day to day. They do not (in the vast majority of cases) tell us what to do. Instead they help us orient ourselves to a life that aligns with our greater purpose.

I'll be writing more about what I'm learning about dreams and Jung in future posts!

Read about the synchronicity that put me on the Jungian dream path here:

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I've had a few dreams I consider big and one that figures prominently in my memoir and in my life as a whole. You can read it on The Mystic Review here: The Spirit Dream. You can learn more about Jungian Dream School via the This Jungian Life website.

This post first appeared on The Mystic Review (MysticReview.com).