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Dreams • Quotes
8 months ago
According to Jung, all dream images are essentially subjective.
He suggests thinking of a dream as if it were a theater in which the dreamer is at once
The scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public and the critic.
Thus all the figures in dreams are personified aspects of the dreamer's own personality.
This means that when I dream of Miss X or Mr. Y, the unconscious is presenting me with information to add to the inventory of my self-image.
What is there about me that is like him or her? In what ways do we differ? How do I feel about them?
How does their appearance in the context of the dream reflect what is currently happening in my life?
We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre
But in the hearts of ordinary men and women.
This is the secret of dreams--that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
We are the object of the dream, not its maker. The dream is dreamed to us.
We are the objects. We simply find ourselves put into a situation.
If we go to our own dreams and sincerely work with the symbols that we find there,
We generally learn most of what we need to know about ourselves and the meaning of our lives,
Regardless of how much we know of the psychological theories involved.
if human psyche is a self-regulating, self-directive system, it would be nice if said system would communicate with us
By typing out a text message informing us how to conduct the business of daily life. In actuality, it does do exactly that, metaphorically speaking.
We are alive when we feel alive, and what makes us feel alive is the contact with that flow of the unconscious psyche. That's why dreams are so important.
You can say that each ladle full of the water of life is a dream. That's what a dream is.
Every night, we get, so to speak, a sip of the water of life, and, if we understand the dream, we are vivified.
We feel in contact with our psychic depth and with our own living substance, and then we subjectively feel that life is flowing, that we are alive.
My respect for dreams goes very far, and I am impressed again and again by the extraordinary independence of the unconscious,
The most extraordinary mental independence that I know. The independence of the conscious is ridiculous in comparison.
One is again and again overwhelmed by the genius of that unknown mysterious something in our psyche which is the inventor of our dreams.
It picks elements from day impressions, from something the dreamer has read the evening before in the paper, or from a childhood memory,
And makes a nice kind of potpourri out of it, and only when you have interpreted its meaning do you see the subtlety and the genius of each dream composition.
Every night we have that carpet weaver at work within us, who makes those fantastically subtle patterns, so subtle that,
Unfortunately often after an hour's attempt to interpret them, we are unable to find out the meaning.
We are just too clumsy and stupid to follow up the genius of that unknown spirit of the unconscious which invents dreams.
But we can understand that this carpet is more subtly woven than any human could ever achieve.
If the unconscious suggests something that seems crazy to me, I say to it:
Well, I think this is crazy nonsense. I am not going to do it. Go to hell!
Still, I add, but if it is not crazy nonsense,
Please send me another dream and then I'll reconsider.
It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt.
Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods.
Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets
That are hidden from the conscious mind, and this it does with astounding completeness.
What we find, if we pay attention to the expressions of the psyche
Our symptoms, our sudden insights, our compensatory dreams, our insurgent feeling states
Is that our souls are constantly registering an opinion.
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious.
We may call consciousness the daylight realm of the human psyche,
And contrast it with the nocturnal realm of unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
No amount of skepticism 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 enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche.
Ego consciousness has to learn about the unconscious,
And dreams are the vocabulary of the unconscious speaking to the conscious mind.
Yet, in dreams and in visions, subject and object are the same.
I believe my unconscious knows what I need more than anyone else does.
If you allow a dream image into your life when you are sick or having psychological difficulties, it can pull you in a helpful direction.
Dreams are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand.
Dreams have great power to reveal truth about our inner states, conveying their meaning through indirect,
Seemingly absurd but strongly evocative symbols. This, in fact, is the whole basis of dream analysis in depth-psychology.
The reason we have lost access to the deeper truth, for Jung, is that we have lost access to the symbolic language that discloses it.
When you begin to see your imagination for what it really is,
You will realize that it reflects the inner world of your unconscious as faithfully as a highly polished mirror.
The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state,
While the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly.
If you take your dreams as a reflection of the unconscious dynamics within you, you are most likely to get to the heart of the matter;
It is on the inner level that you can change life-patterns most profoundly; it is at the inner level that your dream is usually aimed.
While many dismiss dreams as daily events or working through of the plethora of stimuli we experience,
A humble attendance upon them will begin to reveal that they have a purposive nature,
Sometimes a compensatory nature, and sometimes a directive, developmental nature.
As you perhaps already know, I take account of the psychology both of the conscious and of the unconscious,
And this includes the investigation of dreams. Dreams are the natural products of unconscious psychic activity.
We have known for a long time that there is a biological relationship between the unconscious processes and the activity of the conscious mind.
This relationship can best be described as a compensation, which means that any deficiency in consciousness
Such as exaggeration, one-sidedness, or lack of a function is suitably supplemented by an unconscious process.
The vast majority of dreams are compensatory. They always stress the other side in order to maintain the psychic equilibrium.
But the compensation of mood is not the only purpose of the dream picture. The dream also provides a mental corrective.
The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact,
About which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious.
Dreams are neither deliberate nor arbitrary fabrications; they are natural phenomena which are nothing other than what they pretend to be.
They do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise.
Dreams do not deceive, do not lie, they do not distort or disguise-they seek to express something ego does not know and does not understand.
Dreams are neither deliberate nor arbitrary fabrications; they are natural phenomena which are nothing other than what they pretend to be.
The dream neither disparages nor criticizes. It will only show how he can change something in himself.
It is important that the dreamer learns that he is not responsible for what he dreams,
But that he is fully responsible for what he does with the acquired awareness.
Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of his personality.
As long as these are undiscovered, they disturb his waking life and betray themselves only in the form of symptoms.
Though we seem to be sleeping there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream,
And that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.
These depths, that layer of utter unconsciousness in our dream, contain at the same time
The key to individual completeness and wholeness, in other words to healing.
The meaning of whole or wholeness is to make holy or to heal.
If we allow the images that arise from the organs of our own body to shape us, we incubate our own bodysoul.
If we allow ourselves to be twisted by society's images, we become sick.
Better to align yourself with images that spontaneously arise from your own psyche often via dreams,
Than attempt to conform with society's expectations of how you should shape up.
Archetype is merely a word that Jung used to indicate that there is something in us creating images.
Part of the genius of Jung lay in his ability to make himself very naive and to ask simple questions,
Such as: why is there such a thing as a dream in the first place?
Well, the reason there is a dream in the first place is that there is something in us making them.
Jung gave this something a word, and that word is archetype,
Which refers to an image-creating factor in the psyche
That lies behind our personality and shapes the images we find in our dreams.
By apprehension I do not mean simply intellectual understanding, but understanding through experience.
An archetype, as we have said, is a dynamic image, a fragment of the objective psyche,
Which can be truly understood only if experienced as an autonomous entity.
Even if a person deliberately tries to fabricate something, to imagine a pure fiction,
The material that comes up through the imagination still represents some hidden part of that individual.
It has to come from somewhere inside the person who is producing the images.
The psyche is not unconscious. We are. The psyche is constantly making intelligible statements.
It's making dreams and symptoms, it's making fantasies and moods. It's extraordinarily intentional, purposive.
Fantasy is not just whimsical ego-nonsense but comes really from the depths;
It constellates symbolic situations which give life a deeper meaning and a deeper realization.
Dreams of discovering a new room or section of one’s house are frequent
And serve as indicators that an unconscious aspect of the personality is being made available to consciousness.
Jung found that animals often represent primitive physical and instinctual energy systems within us.
A fight with a threatening animal in a dream may signal a conflict between the needs of your deep, instinctual side
And the civilized attitudes of your conscious mind.
Jung asserted that all our difficulties derive from the fact that we become separated from our instincts, those internal energies,
Drives, and feeling states that move us toward greater wholeness and Nietzsche further characterized us as the sick animal.
Animals almost invariably represent instincts when we meet them in dreams and active imagination.
Each animal represents a different instinct, or if you would prefer it, another aspect of instinct.
Jungian psychology deals with wounds by, paradoxically, amplifying rather than reducing our problems.
It declares that dreams and symptoms exist for a purpose.
They are there to lead us back to the path we have lost, to meaning, to truth, and to the art of living.
Jung once told me that he thought the dream was always going on in the unconscious,
But that it usually needs sleep and the complete cessation of attention to outer things for it to register in consciousness at all.
To be psychologically free is to be confident in our own inner world,
Responsible for our own strengths and weaknesses, consciously loving ourselves and therefore, able to love others.
Dreams guide us in that direction, however crooked the path may be.
To analyze creative people is a great problem because often such people think they are in a neurotic crisis
But when you look at their dream material it shows that they are neurotic
Because they are haunted by a creative idea and should do something creative.
More Quotes:
General
Unconscious
Synchronicities
Dreams
Active Imagination
Mythology
Shadow
Anima
Individuation