I have no theory about dreams. Carl Gustav Jung E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Subscribe Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Volume #8 Issue #3 March 2001 ISSN# 1089 4284 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Download a Cover for this Issue! http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-covers Artist : Richard Wilkerson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= C O N T E N T S ++ Editor's Notes ++ Event: Mutual Dream Destination for March 17, 2001 New Grange, Ireland. ++ Notes to the Editor/Dream Airing ++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis ++ Column: The Dream Doctor By Charles McPhee, Ph.D. ++ Column: The DreamSpinner Column Working Dreams With The Power Of Computers By Bjo Ashwill ++ Column: Exploring Dreaming through the I Ching By Hilary Barrett, Clarity ++ Article: Jung the Great Dreamer but Where Are His Little Dreams? By Strephon Kaplan-William ++ Article: How to Interpret Your Own Dreams [With reference to Jungian Psychology] By Stephen Flynn ++ Article: Jung, Personality and Dreamwork: The Persona, the Ego and the Four Functions By Richard Wilkerson ++ Article: Jung, the Shadow and Dreamwork By Richard Wilkerson ++ Article: Jung, the Desired and Dreamwork : Working with the Anima/Animus By Richard Wilkerson ++ Article: Jung, the Self, and Dreamwork By Richard Wilkerson G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S - Peggy Coats NEWS * RESEARCH & REQUESTS * WEBSITE & ONLINE UPDATES * * DREAM CALENDAR for March & April 2001 * ASD News Update! D R E A M S S E C T I O N : This issue includes volume #88 - #118 D E A D L I N E : March 14, deadline for APRIL submissions M.U.T.U.A.L D.R.E.A.M T.A.R.G.E.T New Grange, Ireland :: March 17, 2001 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Send Dreams and Comments on Dreams to: Richard Wilkerson Send Dreaming News and Calendar Events to: Peggy Coats Send Articles and Subscription concerns to: Richard Wilkerson: =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Editor's Notes =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Welcome to the March issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and dreaming. If you are new to Electric Dreams, please see our January 2001 issue for an introduction and guide to dreaming online. http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues This month we have a special focus on the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. If all the Jungian jargon confuses you, use this web address to look up the terms: http://www.cgjungpage.org/jplexicon.html There aren't many approaches to dreams used these days that can't be traced back to Jung, whether we see the dream subjectively as being parts of our self, whether we engage in dialogues with dream characters, whether we use topical association to the dream image or whether we see the dream as revealing to us special spiritual information about health and wholeness, about our future, about our deepest most self. There are times when all the modern dreamwork seems to be just an elaboration of Jung's techniques. Jung himself was willing to try esoteric and ancient techniques, skillfully combining them with modern psychology to produce a wide variety of approached to dream imagery. However, he always said that through the dreamworker should learn as much about theory as possible, once the dream image shared, all these theories need to be set aside. Many Jungians are concerned that there are too many people calling themselves Jungians. They feel the whole process gets diluted when someone learns a technique and then calls themselves a Jungian. But the genii seems to be out of the bottle. Jung had some hand in this himself in strongly valuing individuals and being suspicious of groups. His therapies were all directed towards the analysand being able to eventually interpret their own dreams outside of a clinical setting. In this issue of Electric Dreams we are not so concerned with what is or isn't valid Jungian therapy, but rather with its deep influence on the Dream Movement. To do this I want to move in two directions a once. One will be back into the theories of Jung, to mark a depth that perhaps requires a therapeutic setting, the other will be to turn around and look at what we as individuals working alone or in peer dream groups can gather and use from Carl Jung's theories without diluting them so much they lose all their soul and spirit. The first article I would like to call your attention to is by Strephon Kaplan-Williams. Strephon's life marks a balance between someone who has spent decades studying Jungian therapy, and yet has also gone beyond the Jungian fold and deeply influenced the Dreamwork movement. Be sure to read, "Jung the Great Dreamer but Where Are His Little Dreams?" In the second article on Jung, the Irish psychoanalyst Stephen Flynn takes Jung's dramatic development technique to show you how to look for dreams within various stages of presentation in his "How to Interpret Your Own Dreams." I am also including four essays of my own on Jung. I want to provide a core model of Jung's by which one can gauge the depth of the dream encounter, as well as providing tools for shifting levels as needed. If we are to learn to be our own authorities on the meaning and value of dreams, then we need to develop measures to guide us along the way. I will be looking first at the Persona, or face to the outer world, then the Shadow, our evil other. Then we will turn to the face inward, the deeper desires found in the Anima and Animus. Finally, to bring the whole thing together, we will look at the great Self in dreams. In a later issue this year, I will return to Jung and focus on mythology and archetypes. ---------- Other articles in this issue: Bjo Ashwill has been showing us how to use the computer's power to store, group, analyze and retrieve information from our dreams about archetypes. Whether you are on the hunt for the Shadow or the Divine Child, her software can help your journey. Also, please note that Bjo is looking for nightmares that she can use in her research. See the DreamSpinner column for all this and more. Charles McPhee, author of Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams and the director of the Dream Doctor website returns to comment on dreams. http://www.dreamdoctor.com The excerpt from Lucy Gillis's "Lucid Dream Exchange" focuses on the lucid dreams of one of the people in Marc Barach's _Healing Dreams_ who share's their lucid experiences. Marc book is a wonderful reading of Jung and beyond in the world of self healing. Be sure to read how lucidity and healing come together in this month's column. Jung said in CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502 "It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. " Tired of that same old dream bus or train? Hilary Barrett uses the I Ching on a train dream with interesting results. Make your next station stop a place for enlightenment with "Exploring Dreams through the I Ching" Our news directory, Peggy Coats, from dreamtree.com, has gathered dreaming news from around the world, events, conferences, seminars..... be sure to read what is both online and offline has allowed us this month to include the ASD E-news in place of the usual Global Dreaming News. If you have news items about dreams and dreaming for Peggy, send them to her at pcoats@dreamtree.com Our Dreams this month come from all around the Net and have been organized by the software developed by Harry Bosma. Be sure to look through the dreams and see what on the mind and soul of dreamers in Cyberspace. If you would like a cover for your Electric Dreams, the cover is at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-covers Be sure to visit with us in live Chat on Wednesday March 28th at 7pm pacific time. The Dream Time Live guest will be John Herbert, Ph.D, a pioneer well know to our Electric Dreams community, as our dream groups are based on the techniques he developed for dream sharing on computer mediated communication networks. Send an e to chat@asdreams.org for details an stop by the chat room at: http://members.tripod.com/enchantco/dreamchat/id2.htm More on this below in the Dream Airing section. See you there! -Richard Wilkerson /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "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. 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." "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dream Airing: News, Notes and Events =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ///////////////////////////////////// Want to chat about dreams? So you have seen it all and done everything there is to do in dreamwork. For you, Electric Dreams offers the further reaches of dreamwork. On the outer edge, the community explores postmodern dreamwork, transhumanist dreamwork, mutual dreaming, lucid dreaming and psi dreaming. Imagine dreamwork at trans-warp drive speeds. Open a sub-space portal and teledream though. A good place to start here is with the dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com list. Stop by http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/dreamchatters for more information. //////////////////////////////////////////////////// I wanted to first mention that we are re-structuring the dream groups sponsored by Electric Dreams. We will still have the same great in-depth dream exploration, but we are adding some educational components to some and allowing for more personal group formation on others. Keep and eye out in early February for full scoop, we will send out information along the Electric Dreams channel as well as the DreamGate "History of Dreams" channel. If you are already a member of one of these groups, you will hear about the changes from your group moderators. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// The Association for the Study of Dreams DREAM TIME LIVE SCHEDULE: On February 28, 2001, 7 PM Pacific Time, our Dream Time Live guest will be John Herbert, Ph.D., pioneer researcher in group dreamwork in computer mediated communication. Dr. Herbert's studies of group dreamwork via computer mediated communications have spanned two decades. His early studies at Compuserve, the Well, AOL Seniornet expanded in the mid 1990's to include larger group venues such as the Dream Show on AOL with Jeremy Taylor. His methods have been a model for online dreamwork and his research has provided empirical evidence of how dreamwork may be conducted productively online. To read John Herbert's dissertation "Group Dreamwork Utilizing Computer Mediated Communication" comparing face to face groups with online groups, go to http:/www.dreamgate.com/herbert Herbert, J.W. (2000) "Group Dreamwork Utilizing Computer Mediated Communication" Saybrook Institute, San Francisco. You can also view a Sample Online Dreamwork Session at: http://users.aol.com/john0417/dmgp/dg16.html ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Are you having dreams about computers? I have expanded the Computer Dreams survey to include not just digital dreams, but also dreams about robots, cyborgs, androids and other beings and scenarios that look at the human-machine interface. Be sure to drop off your computer dreams and fill out the survey at: http://www.dreamgate.com/computers/ ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ---------- WHAT "Night Eyes: Revealing the Spiritual Side of Dreams" Each night we embark on a journey both strange and fantastic. From the beginning of human history, dreams have been a source of creative inspiration and spiritual renewal, emotional and psychological insight, and scientific and cultural innovation. How can your dreams become keys to a deeper sense of self-understanding and creativity? Renowned author and dream counselor Jeremy Taylor shares his insights on how dreamwork can enhance spiritual practice. GUEST Jeremy Taylor, Unitarian Minister, Author, and Past- President, The Association for the Study of Dreams. WHEN Sunday, February 25, 2001 9:30 - 10:30 am (pacific time) WHERE Gresham Hall at Grace Cathedral 1100 California Street at Taylor San Francisco, California LIVE WEBCAST http://www.GraceCathedral.org This program is FREE and open to the public. Questions will be taken from both our live and internet audiences. Rev. Taylor will sign copies of his books following the Forum. This program will also be available on our site as an on- demand RealAudio file by Tuesday, February 27. QUESTIONS? Lee Gilmore, Associate Forum Producer GraceCom Media Ministry of Grace Cathedral 415.749.6351 * leeg@gracecathedral.org //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Dear Dreamer, Here's a short quiz: What do the following people have in common? Isabelle Allende, Albert Einstein, Paul McCartney, George Frederick Handel, Richard Wagner, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Renes Descartes, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Elias Howe, James Watt, Billy Joel, D.H. Lawrence, Dmitri Mendelev, and Jack Nicklaus. These are just a few of the scientists, musicians, artists, writers, inventors and athletes who have said their work was deeply enriched and often, completely inspired by their dreams! Dreams are one of the primary sources of human creativity and problem solving. Indeed, virtually all cultures throughout time have honored the wisdom and guidance available from dreams. Yet, in our own society, few of us realize the numerous discoveries, inventions and works of art that are dream-inspired and which have shaped our culture. That's why the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD) is unique: We study dreams and not just the dreams of famous people. We know that dreams can be a profound source of problem solving, guidance, as well as healing in the daily lives of each and every one of us. On a personal note, I am writing to let you know the real treasure I have found learning from this richly diverse group of teachers, anthropologists, counselors, researchers, clergy and artists, not to mention the many simply interested in dreams for their own personal study and spiritual nourishment. I attended my first ASD conference fifteen years ago on a lackluster whim: " Sounds interesting. Guess I'll go. Why not?" Now fifteen years later, I want you to know the immense impact that learning the language of my dreams and becoming part of an international dream community has had on my life. I know when you choose to join ASD, you will find as I have that your life is enormously enriched by the people you meet and the understanding you gain about dreams. So, whether your interest is personal or professional, a vast array of experts from different disciplines, countries and cultures will offer you an abundant choice of workshops and programs. Here are some recent offerings: Find out how dreams can help you at critical turning points in your life. Learn how as parents we can help our children benefit from their dreams and overcome nightmares. Hear why brain researchers no longer view dreams as random and meaningless. Discover the role dreams play in literature and philosophy and how they stimulate the artistic and creative process. Chat with Tibetan monks about the Yoga of dreaming and explore the fascinating functions dreams play in many indigenous and shamanic cultures. Join a dreamsharing group and discover new techniques for working with your dreams Each year I look forward with excitement to these meetings, always knowing that I will be welcomed into what feels as much like a warm extended family as an international organization whose mission is to explore the leading edge of consciousness about the nature of dreams. However, the embrace of community and like-minded friends is only one of the special benefits of joining ASD. As an ASD member, you'll receive our: Quarterly magazine DreamTime Quarterly multi-disciplinary professional journal Dreaming For cyberspace dreamers, you can check us out at our very cool web site http://www.asdreams.org/ where you'll have the opportunity to: Create your own Personal Member Web Page Log on to bulletin boards Join E-Study groups on dream-related studies you find most intriguing Receive ASD E- News at your email doorstep every month Hear about regional conferences and speak monthly with dream experts via our DreamTime Live Internet Chats . Finally, don't forget about our now world famous Dream Ball that caps off every annual conference- a fabulous dream- inspired costume party! So having shared with you some of the unique and wonderful benefits I have personally enjoyed as a member of ASD, I am inviting you to join us now. Take advantage of this extraordinary educational opportunity and be a part of the festivities at our upcoming 18th International conference: 2001: A Dream Odyssey in Santa Cruz, CA from July 10-15, 2001. You can also learn more about us and sign up at our web site ~ http://www.asdreams.org/2001 ~. Until then May your dreams guide you swiftly and well along your path. David Gordon, Ph.D. Membership Chair Association for the Study of Dreams /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations. "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mutual Dream Destination, New Grange, Ireland =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Our meeting place for this month in dreamland is New Grange, Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. New Grange is a Neolithic site that pre-dates the Christian stories of St. Patrick, but its located just a few miles above Dublin and is no-doubt the source of many such stories and myths. See the photos online for a target focus. http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams See you there! Can this really happen? What about different time zones? OK, don't get overload by consensus reality. First, yes, people often have dreams where upon awakening they find out that someone else had the dream too. We just boost this process by lending a conscious intention to the game. It doesn't really matter if you dream of Florida tonight after reading this, or on the specific date set out. We don't put that kind of linear time requirement on this game. We are not trying to determine if we "really had the same dream" or "really were there together". Let's just say that to some degree, imaginal, psychic, cosmic, or comic, if we dream about similar things, we do share those images and in a sense, we were both there. You can share them on Dreamchatters or Dreamshare, two www.yahoogroups.com discussion lists, or you can send to Judith and indicate whether you are comfortable posting them to the Dreamshare conference. About Mutual Dreaming: See Linda Magallon's Mutual Dreaming FAQ: http://members.aol.com/dreampsi/archive/mutualdreaming.html# anchor456487 Where would *you* like to meet in the future? Contact Judith E-mail : comadre@mindspring.com *********************************************************** "Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is, of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams. But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple." "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=- An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=- ---------------------------------------------- AN EXCERPT FROM THE LUCID DREAM EXCHANGE By Lucy Gillis This month I'd like to share with you a book review by Karl, one of our readers. Shortly after he began reading this book he had a lucid dream, which is included below. Karl wanted me to let you know that the author interviewed him for this book so he feels his opinions may be somewhat biased. But in *my* opinion, if a book can inspire you to have lucid dreams, it's great no matter what!! BOOK REVIEW By Karl HEALING DREAMS: EXPLORING THE DREAMS THAT CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE - By Marc Ian Barasch Marc Ian Barasch's new book, Healing Dreams: Exploring the Dreams that can Transform Your Life, is an ambitious, sweeping work. Barasch focuses on "big dreams," those dreams that seem different somehow, larger, more vivid, more urgent. In exploring this subject, he looks at many different kinds of dreams: lucid, precognitive, mutual, prodomal.... An author could easily lose perspective in writing about a topic this large. What holds this book together is Barasch's personal stake in these dreams. From the beginning, he makes it clear why he has written this book. Barasch is alive today because he paid attention to big dreams that were telling him something was wrong with his throat. His persistence in the face of medical scepticism finally led to the discovery of thyroid cancer, and early treatment. Barasch's predicament, his need to heal, runs through every page and gives the reader a continual example of the impact of healing dreams on waking life. But what makes this book refreshing is its perspective on dream work. Many authors have outlined various useful methods to analyze dreams. But while dream analysis can provide many benefits, it becomes easy to slip into a mode of thought in which the dream becomes a lifeless artifact dredged up from the depths of the subconscious, an inert thing to be pulled apart and examined. Barasch makes the case that the dream - and especially, the big or healing dream - is a living, breathing entity in its own right, a powerful, active force that is larger than the sum of its parts. He reminds us that for all our cleverness and insight, we are not masters of our dreams. Rather, we would be better off to nurture a healthy awe for the vital forces that flow into our lives through our dream life. `*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*` Here's a recent lucid dream, which I had the first night after I began reading Healing Dreams: Exploring the Dreams That Can Transform Your Life, by Marc Barasch. Karl November 2000 In my dream, I was living in an apartment and was in the kitchen, when I felt something pull me backwards and upwards out of my body. At that point, I didn't realize I was dreaming - I thought I was having a waking OBE. The pull I recognized as guidance. I tried to visit a former co-worker; then I returned from the OBE. I was back in the apartment, and a young blond woman was there. She'd known, psychically, that I'd had an OBE and was very excited. She lived in a nearby apartment and said that now that I'd been out, I'd have more of these experiences, especially since she lived so close by. Then I went into the main room of the apartment and tried turning on some lights. They didn't work right, and that's when I realized I was dreaming, and that this woman was a guide. Then I found myself in the basement of my parents' home, with two people I knew were my parents, but who were not my waking parents. One was the dark-haired woman I've dreamed of all my life, a guide who helped raise me as a child. The father, I didn't recognize. I was 18 again. The mother scolded me in a protective, motherly way about something - a spot on my clothes, or something trivial like that - and I felt such love for her and realized she was trying to help me - it was great. I was lucid and knew who she was, and I hugged her and thanked her for everything. Then, I was outside the house, walking down the street with yet another guide, another 18-year-old, a guy. In the dream, we were good friends. As we walked down the street, I asked him questions about dreaming, and he answered them. At one point, a stray thought entered my mind - for some reason, I thought about a cat - and suddenly, this gigantic house- sized cat materialized and began trying to play with us as if we were dust balls. It was funny, and it made me realize the power of thought. I asked the guide if I could use lucid dreams to access past lives. He was cautious about this. He told me that of course that's possible, but he asked me why I wanted to. In waking life, I'd have been able to give him a good reason, but here, I said simply that I was curious, and he shook his head and said that was not a good reason, that I had to have a serious purpose in mind. Then, I was at a banquet with many other people. It was nearly time to go in and sit down and eat. We all decided we should wash up, so we all scrambled for a bathroom. The building was like the home of one of my aunts and uncles, and I knew of a bathroom the others didn't, so I went in. I looked in the mirror and saw the face of a pretty young woman. I had long hair, and I needed a band to put it in a pony tail and get it out of my face. I couldn't find one, so I thought this would be a good time to try to practice materialization. I tried to imagine a blue band in the medicine cabinet. I'd open the cabinet and look, and each time, I'd see a blue thing that hadn't been there before, but never a band. I realized that it was difficult to control this, and I would need lots of practice. Then I went into the banquet and sat at one of the tables. A woman I know from the Internet was there. She hadn't been served, so I helped serve her. *********************************************************** The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly issue featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles, poetry, and book reviews submitted by readers. For further information contact Lucy Gillis at lucy_gillis@hotmail.com *********************************************************** "A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. Just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it, however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be. We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need an interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences." "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The Dream Doctor Charles McPhee, Ph.D. http://www.dreamdoctor.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Secret Room" Dear Dream Doctor- I've been having a recurring dream for many years now that I can't figure out. It starts out with a few people following me into this old abandoned house in the middle of the woods. I'm telling them to follow me to this particular room in the house that can be somewhat difficult to get to. We end up crawling through narrow crawlspaces, squeezing through very skinny hallways, and even braving a cement ledge around half of the house (which can end up miles high), just to get to this room. When I reach it, I realize that no one has been able to complete the journey except me. I look around at this tattered, dark empty room with no light (yet light exists because I can see), and realize that I am utterly alone--for miles. I know there is no one in the forest surrounding me, let alone the house. In real life, I would have been terrified, but for some strange reason, I am completely content. In fact, I have never felt this much at peace except in this room in a dream. I'm not depressed, or upset, and haven't been. I can't figure out what this dream means. The only thing I can think is that it might relate to my spiritual quest in life. I've taken a liberal stance towards religion and am "freelancing" it. In other words, I pick what I need and apply it to my faith and relationship with God. I'm wondering if this could possibly be related to my conversations with people about spirituality, and trying to get them to understand me. Hope you can help. Lisa, USA P.S. I'm an artist and decided to create it on computer. To see what the house in my dream looks like, visit http://home.att.net/~lgossler/presence.jpg Hi Lisa You may have left your friends behind, but I think you brought us with you on your journey. Your quest to reach a private, "secret room" is one that all spiritual adventurers understand. You lead your friends to a deserted house in the middle of the woods (thanks for sending us the picture you drew on your computer!), and soon begin a fantastic climb. You squeeze through narrow hallways, slide through skinny crawlspaces, and even wind up outside the house, on a ledge that, when you look down, you realize is several miles above the ground. This is no ordinary room, and it is no ordinary journey! Climbing in dreams is a familiar metaphor for attempts to reach a goal or destination in our lives. The narrower the path, and the higher it leads into the sky, the more likely it is that our dream concerns lofty aspirations. Will we reach fabulous new heights in our career? Will our spiritual quest lead us to new levels of empowerment, and wisdom?Feelings are the truest indicator of a dream's meaning. Once you reach your secret room, you realize you are utterly alone, yet a tranquil feeling of peace and contentment fills you nevertheless. The feeling is so powerful that is unequaled in your waking life. You associate this dream with your personal growth and relationship with God. Your dream shows us that you find this journey toward spiritual atonement (at-one-ment) challenging, private, exciting and rewarding. As for your friends, who were unable to join you in your private room is it possible they discovered their own secret rooms along the way? Charles McPhee, Ph.D. http://www.dreamdoctor.com *********************************************************** The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer's secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift. "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The DreamSpinner Column Working Dreams With The Power Of Computers 8th Column: Finding Jungian Archetypes With The Computer By Bjo Ashwill http://www.spinner-soft.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Hi, Electric Dreamers. I am Bjo Ashwill and am writing a monthly column on my experiences of creating a computer software program that does very detailed analysis of dream narratives. You are welcome to visit my web site and check out DreamSpinner, the software program I will be describing. http://www.spinner-soft.com. The site was recently revised and is full of exciting interactive things you can do. Check us out! In this column I shall describe, over time, how to use the computer's power to store, group, analyze and retrieve information from our dreams. DreamSpinner's greatest power is working with long "over time" dream series, although it can work with individual dreams as well. How do metaphor patterns change over time? That is the question that began my journey toward creating DreamSpinner. This month, in keeping with the Jungian theme of this issue, I will discuss finding Jungian Archetypes in dreams using DreamSpinner. The most obvious method is to create Categories and sub- categories. You could create a category called "Archetypes". Under that category would be the sub-categories that are each archetype you wish to follow. The Divine Child, The Wise Old Woman, The Wise Old Man, The Hero, The Heroine, The Journey, The Great Mother, The Shadow, The Self, and so on. I would put this in the already created "Nuance" category. The reason I would do that is that specific words do not always mean there is an Archetype image connected to it. Not all older women are necessarily an example of The Wise Old Woman archetype. So hooking the word "woman" or the word "old" will not give you an accurate picture. It is possible to create a separate definition for the root word "woman" as "The Wise old Woman." When you feel you have encountered that archetype in a dream either linking the word "woman" with the definition "The Wise Old Woman" will count that archetype; or clicking the "Nuance" button" and putting the link to the "Wise Old Woman" sub-category will also work. It will be important to set up these categories or separate definitions of words that link to the archetypes you wish to examine at the beginning when you first start working with DreamSpinner. You can always add a category later, but all dreams you had linked before you added the category will not be included in the count for that archetype. In addition, I've noticed that the more of these indirect things you are looking for that are not linked to a specific word takes a great deal of concentration. You have to be alert to all the things you are looking for in each dream as you are linking it. I began my dream database with the archetypes in the nuance category but soon could see I was not remembering to look for those archetypes. I took them out. So, I use the indirect search method I will describe below. In Column #5, I discussed various search methods and used an example of searching for "The Shadow" to demonstrate the indirect method of searching for something that isn't written in the narrative. Here is that excerpt from DreamSpinner Column #5: "Another search method is to look for indirect evidence of a metaphor. Archetypes are a good example of that. I rarely, if ever, write in my dream narrative that the archetype "Shadow" is there. I must infer its presence. DreamSpinner can do this easily. You decide what criteria would define that archetype and do multiple searches for only those dreams that include those criteria. For the archetype "Shadow", I will use the following searches: a. A female stranger (Category: "Characters," "Stranger", "Woman/Stranger") b. Emotions of aggression (Assuming we are looking for the negative Dark Side of the "Shadow".) c. Incongruities. d. Dark Haired female. e. Animals (perhaps specifically coyotes, wolves, ravens, or whatever trickster animals you consider a "Shadow" element.) f. Negative social roles (female.) One can come up with other criteria, depending on what your sense of the 'Shadow" in your dreams. You would run this series of searches until the dream set contains only dreams with these criteria. Then you would examine the word frequency counts for any elevated or lower patterns." The archetype "The Divine Child" search would start with: a. The babies. (Category "character's age", sub category, "Baby")(Animal babies are also included in that category.) b. The sense of newness. (Category: "Time" sub category "Age Younger") c. Creativity. (Category: "Movement", sub category "Transformation", sub category,"Creativity") d. A sense of numiousness. (Category: "Appearance", subcategory "Light")(Category: "Nuances" subcategory "spiritual") The "Wise Old Man" archetype search might be: a. The male gender. (Category: "Character's Sex", sub category "Male General")(The "Male General" sub category has words in it like man, guy, fellow, men, guys, boy, boys, and so on. I think the archetype is generally seen in strangers rather than people we know in our waking lives. However, if a particular character in the known category feel archetypal to you, be sure and add them to the search criteria.)Another category, "Character's Identity", subcategory "Stranger", sub category "Stranger/Man" will also be helpful.) b. The sense of oldness. (Category: "Time", sub category "Age Older") c. The sense of authority. (Category: "Character's Identity" sub category "Occupation", choose those occupations that would suggest that wise sense of authority. Priest, pastor, lawyer, judge, doctor, leader, wizard and so on.) d. Friendly actions toward dreamer. (Category: "Social Interactions" sub category "Friendly" sub category "F4, Helping") as well as (Category: "Social Interaction Direction" sub category "Others Toward Dreamer" sub category "F4" Helping".) e. (Optional for after you run the above search.) The word "say". (All verb tense endings are included in the search for that one word.) Often the wise old man (or woman) is making statements well worth hearing. (Category: "Movement" sub category "Communication sub category "SI Friendly" (Social Interaction Friendly Communication) These same categories work in finding the "Wise Old Woman" with the obvious change of gender search, Female General, Stranger/Female, and Occupations like priestess, doctor nurse, lawyer and so on. (In my dream database, I created different definitions of the same root word so that I would click on lawyer, male, or lawyer female so I could keep track of the gender in those areas. Heaven forbid we would be sexist and assume the occupation "Lawyer" is only male.) It might be that the wisdom from the Old Woman is from the "feminine side, right brained, spiritual, nurturing and "Lawyer" weather by female or by male is a left brain activity. The choices of what occupations to include would be yours and your sense of what that archetype represents. I would add the Category: "Character Identity" "crone" and "witch" as well. The Journey archetype is very simple to create. a. Any dreams containing travel from point A to someplace else. (Warning that's most of your dreams!!) (category: "Movement", subcategory "Journey" sub categories "Under Own Power", "With Assistance (a vehicle), and "Unknown", meaning the dream wasn't clear how the traveling occurred.) (Another possible search is the preposition To, as in moving Toward a place.) b. Of course, I was just kidding about the "simple" to create part. There's more than simply traveling to someplace. I would add the setting of Outdoors. (Category: "Setting" sub category "Outdoors"). That will eliminate portions of "Under Own Power" where characters are walking Indoors. c. Now it is possible to assume that all Journey archetypes are embodied in all travel dreams. When Is a "cigar" simply a "cigar", as Freud would ask. Is there more one can do to narrow the search for the actual archetype? Yes, of course there is. Most archetypal journeys involve barriers and difficulties as the character is on that "life's" journey. You could check the blockage of flow. (Category: "Movement" sub category "Flow" sub category "Not Flow". d. Looking for Difficult Situations is helpful. (Category: "Evaluation", sub category "Difficult situations") e. Misfortunes would be a good category to check out. Is the environment stopping you, creating barriers?(Category: "Chance" sub category "Misfortune". Choose any or all of the 6 levels of misfortune you feel would represent the kind of barriers found on a "Journey".) f. Social Interactions is another category to explore. Especially Aggression or Friendly. What type of social Interactions cause a barrier to progressing on down your path? (Category: "Social Interaction" sub category "Aggression" and sub category "friendly" Each of those sub categories have up to 8 different levels of that activity. Choose how much or how little to look at. In fact with all the searches on Archetypes, exploration and experimentation is a cool way to define your search more closely. It doesn't take long to pull up the word frequency form and you can explore if unnecessary items are entering into the picture. You can simply change the search criteria by deleting a category or adding another category until you have the mix right. (Like cooking.) Also, every time I peek into dreams with the word frequency counts I learn something new about my dreams. It is exciting. You can see by these examples that Jung can indeed enter the computer age. While I have your attention, hopefully, I would like to request any nightmare dreams you would be willing to share that I could use in a research project I am involved in. I will be doing a presentation on "Counting The Things That Go Bump In The Night" for the ASD conference in July of this year. I am using the Barbara Sanders long dream series. I would like to gather other people's nightmares and dreams as a comparison. In addition, I am creating a base line database for DreamSpinner to measure dreams against. If you are willing, there are two ways you can get the dreams to me. 1. You can go to my Website http://www.spinner-soft.com and enter a dream. I would also need you to fill out the optional registration form and the Informed Consent form giving me permission to use your dreams. I will not use any personal identifying information about the dreamer. The dreams will be anonymous. If fact most of the dreams will be presented as patterns and percentages. Perhaps a few snippets from dreams may be used as examples. It would help if you changed the names of known characters and places so you can protect the privacy of anyone in your dreams. 2. Send your dream to me directly with my email dreambjo@hotmail.com. I will then send the registration form and the Informed Consent form. I thank you and hope you will want to participate in this experience. Come on up to my website:www.spinner-soft.com and leave some nightmare dreams. Or any kind of dreams you wish. Leave a comment on others dreams. List the metaphors in your dream and comment on how that metaphor seems to mean to you. Check out what others think that same metaphor means to you. It's yet another dream group online. See you next month. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= *********************************************************** As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material. We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws. "The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits" (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Exploring Dreams through the I Ching Hilary Barrett, Clarity =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Dream The Wedding (Anon) Nothing went right. The groom wasn't who I thought or wanted it to be. My bridesmaids were my cousins and the groomsmen was my ex boyfriend of two years, and all of his friends. They were all sitting among the pews with the family instead of up at the altar where they were supposed to be. My girlfriend was wearing a wedding dress too. I hated my hair but loved hers. I couldn't walk down the aisle because everybody else was. I was just really frustrated. I dreamed this twice. The first time I was up at the altar the groom and I blew out some candles at the altar, and in the second dream, just himself blew out the candles. The interpretation Your wedding is supposed to be 'your big day': you look your best, you are 'radiant' and the centre of attention. You are united not just with a man but with a whole new way of living - before women had the option of living independently, marriage meant graduating to adulthood. So when you dream that your wedding day goes completely wrong, this reflects basic discord within you, and probably with your present way of life. I asked the I Ching what was going on in this dream, and it replied with Hexagram 23, Stripping Away, moving to Hexagram 35, Prospering. The second hexagram represents the broader context - I think it accounts for the wedding imagery; the first one, Stripping Away, explains what happens to the wedding. 'Prospering, Lord Kang is given a gift of horses, uses them to increase the herd. He mates them three times a day.' The horses were a sign that Kang was in favour with the ruler - it was definitely his day. And rather than simply sitting on the gift, he made it fertile and multiplied it. This is like a strong, earthy version of the parable of the talents: when you have God-given gifts, go out and use them, and they will grow. It may be hard work ('Difficulty' is the nuclear hexagram at the heart of Prospering), but it will pay off. The word for 'mating' also suggests 'receiving and reflecting onward': Kang was receiving the full light of good fortune, and he multiplied it and passed it on. Hexagram 35 shows the sun rising over the earth, and the growing plants responding to its light. This is what weddings are supposed to be about: full of vigour, advancing triumphantly into the light, positively shining with good fortune. Everything about this hexagram is brightness: it is 'daylight indeed', and the ideal person 'radiates her own natural light, clear bright virtue.' ('Virtue', by the way, doesn't mean 'being good' so much as 'being what you personally are meant to be'.) All this is near enough the opposite of what happened in the dream. Instead of shining, you find yourself outshone and sidelined - and in the end, instead of reflecting light onward, you are blowing the candles out. What has happened? Like you say, 'nothing goes right' in the dream - but surely the biggest problem is that you're marrying the wrong man! In a way, it's just as well that everything else goes wrong after that... You are in the process of Stripping Away: things that no longer belong in your life are being cleared out to make space for something new. This can be an acutely painful process, as people, things and ideas that you have been attached to are cut away - the I Ching represents it as being skinned. Before the process of transformation can begin, you need to understand that it is no longer the time to concentrate on appearances: the time for Stripping Away comes when Adorning (Hexagram 22) is exhausted. You are dressed like a successful bride in the dream - but it's no use, your friend is, too (and her hair is better!). The dress can't make the wedding happen. As pretence and illusion are peeled away, the real you is exposed. It is not the time for a purposeful advance to the altar: you are obliged simply to let things happen. As you felt in the dream, being so unexpectedly and completely disempowered can be very frustrating. In the I Ching, this hexagram is the opposite of 'Deciding', an active process of driving out what does not belong. At a time of Stripping Away, there may be many layers of old, inessential things to be removed, and all you can do is let them go. Dreaming of a failed wedding is part of this process of separation. 'The ideal person honours the dissolving pause, filling and emptiness. Heaven acts.' Allow time and space, and what is right for you will return. But first leave the wedding: don't try to be united with a past that's wrong for you. Blowing out the candles that illuminate the altar is the best thing you can do - you need a change of focus. At heart, this situation is about becoming fertile ground for new growth, like the open, nourishing earth. You can't know yet what will grow in the new space, but you can make sure that it is clear and prepared before you try to begin to build again. The earth is humble, easy to overlook, but it is also the foundation for life - this hexagram shows how mountains rest on it. 'Generosity from above creates peaceful dwellings below.' Now is the time to give your attention generously to your own foundations, creating a sense of peace. The imagery of the one moving line of your answer indicates that the process of Stripping Away has reached the critical, painful point. 'Stripping away the bed, at the flesh. Misfortune. Cutting close to disaster.' Your 'bed' is gone - the ideas and expectations you rest on, your sense of security, has all been cut away. Now the knife cuts into you, your confidence and identity, separating you from them right at the altar. It comes perilously close to cutting into some vital part of the psyche. The 'bed' here also suggests dreaming - how it can strip away the comfort of sleep and cut 'close to the bone'. Stripping Away marks the beginning of an essential transformation - and so, I think, does this dream. Once you've gone through with this process, and you are freed from the old ideas and attachments, the bright light, vitality and gifts of Prospering can become a reality for you. *********************************************************** The I Ching is the ancient Chinese oracle of change. For a hundred generations, it has been answering people's questions, from dream interpretation to career decisions, across the whole spectrum of human experience. I have been learning from the I Ching for many years, and founded Clarity, a dedicated I Ching consultation service, to make the oracle's help readily and simply available to all who need it. Hilary Barrett. Please send comments or questions to support@onlineClarity.co.uk www.onlineClarity.co.uk *********************************************************** The I Ching has deep connections with Carl Jung. Many of the translations of the I Ching available in European languages today are usually reinterpretations of Richard Wilhelm's 1923 German translation and the later 1950 English translation. Jung wrote the forward to Wilhelm's book and has stated there and elsewhere that he was aware of and had used the divining side of the I Ching prior to 1923. The question is, how deeply was Jung's development of his theories influenced by these works? See Wilhelm, Richard (1931/1962). The Secret of the Golden Flower, A Chinese Book of Life. Commentary by C.G. Jung. *********************************************************** "It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, futhermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart?" "The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jung the Great Dreamer but Where Are His Little Dreams? by Strephon Kaplan-Williams, author, the Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual, Elements of Dreamwork and the Dream Cards http://www.dreamwork2000.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= We start with an observation. Jung himself was not a dreamer. He was a great dreamer. Jung originated the term, Great Dream, by which he meant any dream that like drama, had a beginning, middle and an end, was complete in itself and whole. In his _Memories, Dreams, Reflections_, published after his death, he gives us his great dreams and tells us how they directly influenced and guided his life. They are indeed major dreams and show the Jungian dreamwork process. Jung's childhood dream was of going down a tunnel underground and coming face to face with an erect penis on a throne. The Jungians call this a phallos to indicate an archetype, not a human. So we get the impression that Jung was a great dreamer, a version for some of a Jungian saint. I once had in my year long dreamwork training a man who presented dreams of flying from earth to mars and so on. He really impressed us and so I named him the cosmic dreamer. However, his wife told me privately that he only remembered and wrote down his great dreams. He never bothered with all the ordinary dreams, what one analyst of mine called the skunk dreams where we are shitting in the living room and not the bathroom, or where I had to stack hundreds and hundreds of pieces of wood. This raises an issue. Certainly when we remember or only present our great dreams, those with major archetypal and mythic imagery, then we are going to believe in the Jungian collective unconscious and that everyone out there is having great dreams of the archetypes. To illustrate, an older lady in a dream group complained that she only had ordinary dreams compared to some of the other members of the group. She would dream repeatedly of a simple farm with a fence around it and in that fenced in area would be a cow. Certainly she could not be classified as a great dreamer. But I did suggest one thing to her. If she wanted to dream of mythic creatures she should read a book about dragons before bedtime. She replied that she would do just that and bring the results in the following week. Well, in fact she came to group beaming, for she now had her first mythic or archetypal dream. She dreamed of the same simple farm with its fence around the pasture. But this time instead of there being a cow in there she now had a dragon fenced in! She could now earn the title of Dragon Lady, a more exciting title of course than Cow Lady. So this incident illustrates the difficulty of interpreting dream content. I call it dream context. What is the dream landscape you habitually dream in? So, as some have said, if you go to a Freudian you have Freudian dreams and if you go to a Jungian you have Jungian dreams and if you go to a Lucidian you have lucid dreams. This last part I have added of course. What is key with any dream is the context within which it is dreamed. This does not mean necessarily the context of the dreamer's life but of the dreamer herself. I once counseled a young woman dreamer. Her father wanted her to stay in college because he was an academic himself. But she kept dreaming of trees, forests, streams, mountains. So I suggested that she could simply follow in life what her dreams were dreaming for her. She quit college and went full time into the ecology movement. I am almost sure that was the right choice for her. Thus we have the issue, do we lead the dream or does the dream lead us? Are we dreaming certain a symbolic context because we are creating our context, like a Jungian who has to be a Jungian because he identifies with being a Jungian? To rephrase the paradox, might it not be better that for some Freudian patients who are having Jungian dreams that they be referred instead to a Jungian, and that the Jungians then reciprocate by sending their clients who have a lot of sex dreams to Freudian analysts? In my own trainings and practice I will work with anyone's dreams and usually go along with their context. Some are always dreaming about their personal relationships while others mostly journey alone in their dreams. I don't intervene and suggest other kinds of dreaming but if anything, enhance with the dreamer the context they are dreaming in. One woman years ago who had never had any interest in animals except her house cat started dreaming of dolphins. What were we to do? Suggest that the dolphin is symbolic of a mammal who regressed to the sea, or is a mythic animal the ancients revered and so she was having a spiritual experience or that dolphins represent relating across species and therefore she should improve her relationships with the other sex, or all the variations thereof? No doubt you can look up in Jung's collected works what dolphins mean for him. However, what this dreamer wanted to do since she kept dreaming of her dolphins is that she took her vacations to Australia to visit people who visited the dolphins in the sea. This became a major advocation for her. This also raises dreamwork issues. One danger of the Jungian approach to dreams is when it remains interpretive. The orthodox Jungian turns symbol into concept. They create interpretations based on their knowledge of other dreams, on mythology, on symbols and artifacts of culture. In fact, one of the major Jungian books on dreams is all about interpreting dream symbols and nothing at all about using Jung's active imagination techniques with dreams. When I began the Jungian-Senoi Institute in 1978 in Berkeley, California, no one I knew of was doing dream reentry. Jung had already stated in his writings that sometimes he had his patients carry the dream forward. Jung stated you do not interfere with the dream itself, you do not change it in anyway since it is a direct product of the unconscious. But he did say that amazing things could happen when you began at the end of where your remembered dream left off and did active imagination of letting new images come to you as you continued your dream journey. Jung said he learned about imagery techniques from Ignacius Lyola, the founder of the Jesuit order who had his monks do guided imagery with the Christian dogma. What I did was entirely new and it took a lot of courage on my part since I had been trained as a Jungian for ten years with Dr. Elizabeth Howes of the Guild for Psychological Studies. Don't change the dream! said Dr. Jung in effect, or this is ego inflation by the archetype! But a woman dreamer, herself a therapist, in my dreamwork training for a year kept having repeat dreams of dark male figures. Now I could have interpreted these in Jungian fashion for her as negative animus symbols, but in fact I wanted to get to the emotional level with her. Turning _ image into concept_ simply would not do since it was interpretive and thinking. I needed to turn _symbol into function_, the functional approach. Jung had indicated that powerful things happen when you reenter the deeper psyche through active imagination which I also call the meditative state. So I got this dreamer's permission to take her back into her dream of the dark mysterious man with her eyes closed and my eyes closed. What happened lasted an hour and a half. Other spontaneous imagery came up for her and it quickly turned into a man who had years earlier raped her. So then we had to go through that. I learned also that simply taking a person back into their psyche via the imagery could in fact be dangerous. I had the Senoi concept from Kilton Stuart that you could intervene in the dream situation while in the dream state. The Senoi trained their children to let themselves fall all the way when they had a falling dream instead of waking themselves up as if the dream was a nightmare. So here in this dream reentry I did not tell this dreamer what do to but suggested she simply stay present to this man, who was the image of her rapist, and encounter him however it came to her. My guidance was supportive and not directive, following the Jungian principle of let the deeper psyche produce its images spontaneously. The amazing result was that for this dreamer a lot was healed for her at the feeling level because now she could confront her attacker. She had been having these negative male figure dreams because of a past traumatic experience. I subsequently used dream reentry with other dreamers who have been raped and also with other trauma victims and in each case with amazing and healing success. Their repeat dreams never repeated themselves after going through guided reentry with me. And their emotional life changed dramatically. I hasten to add that many people now who have not been professionally trained in psychology or dreamwork at a highly skilled and supervised level are using active imagination and a form of guided dream reentry. One recent case in point from the Netherlands is of a priest who goes around telling his groups to close their eyes, see a forest and see their wild animals in the forest. To the classically trained Jungian this is rape of the unconscious. It is a rational approach used to evoke imagery from the unconscious. Some people will immerse in the suggested images but what gets evoked can be more than they can emotionally handle. So it is not simply Jungian to do dream reentry, active imagination or creative visualization, a misnomer for what is not always creative when you have people close their eyes and suggest things to them to visualize. I strongly advocate that people who use active imagination on others and dream reentry with others be supervised and trained in handling ethically and professionally this technique. Having said this I know that there are many out there who will not go along with this statement. But I can tell you from personal experience that active imagination and dream reentry are powerful techniques. You can unbalance a person's psyche if you are not really knowing what you are doing. But for those of you who will go ahead anyway I urge that as a guide you stay supportive and neutral as much as possible. You do not direct what the person you are guiding should do. You do not say when someone is at the door of a dream house, would you enter the house now and report what you see there? Better you say, You are at the door of this house. What are you experiencing right now? Then after experiencing the situation you can as guide ask, what choices do you have here? If finally the choice is to enter and explore the house, still keep it neutral. The guide can say, please start slowly. Just open the door and proceed at your own pace. Describe what you see. It will be amazing and unpredictable what is seen or experienced there. The guide supports possibilities. He or she does not direct the show with an exaggerated sense of his or her self importance at using such a powerful technique. The reason I still consider myself Jungian is that through the dream and dreamwork channels the archetypes, or energy structures, have become very real for people at a feeling and imagery level. I use my Ego and the Seven Basic Archetypes model to help balance situations. If there is too much adversity I may search with the dreamer for a little more heroic, but without suggesting the images themselves. Thus in a dream reentry and the dreamer is before her dream cave and it is dark in there, should you suggest that she summon a helper or light a torch? Aha! Guiding again by telling someone else what to do or what you would do. What if the choice is not to enter the cave in the dark. Again, stay present but don't suggest what to do. You are at the entrance to this cave. Can you just describe what you are experiencing there? And above all, never ask a person how they feel! Feelings are rational reactions. I feel fine. I feel bad. These are evaluative statements. It seems to pull the dreamer out of their trance state where they are open to their unconscious. How are they supposed to know what they feel? They are experiencing without immediate evaluation. That is the point. I will just say that amazing things often happen out of a dream reentry. There may even be physical changes. Stephen LaBerge at one point stated he hoped to fine lucid dreaming techniques that would bring about physical healing. Well, I have taken a few dreamers through a dream experience and after they did have a change of symptoms. One dreamer was diagnosed as having breast cancer. She had a dream in which she was in the hospital hall and afraid to open the door to a ward room for what she would find there. I suggested she meditate in front of that door in her daily meditations until it occurred to her what to do. When she finally after many days opened the door she was not a cancer victim in bed there. And her breasts had no sign of cancer in her next diagnosis. The same happened for a dreamer with a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Dream reentry with a huge woman made of earth that the dreamer was helped to experience also meant somehow that her next pap smear was negative. Not enough to go on statistically but it would not be hard to do clinical tests with the skilled and professional application of dream reentry to the right dreams of persons diagnosed with cancer. Another of my year long dreamwork students was scheduled the next day for an operation on her knee which was lame in part. She dreamed of being in the hospital and healing her knee right there with a method and statement that she knew what was wrong and could heal herself and did not need the doctors. Well, the next day she declared her knee was indeed healed and cancelled the operation and never had trouble with her knee since. Talk about Jesus doing healing's! Maybe it is possible with the right interventions? What I am suggesting here with the Jungian dreamwork is that you must show results to prove that your methods and personality theory works. Any appeal to "Jung says," simply will not do. Can you produce results? Can you back up your ideas? Of course I have many more examples along these lines. What is still Jungian about my approach is that the fundamental assumption that dreams reflect archetypal patterns still holds. I have also had extensive experience with psychotic teenagers in the former glory days of St. George Homes, Inc, in Berkeley, California. There also strong interventions through the dream state into the unconscious seemed to be a contributing factor in real shifts out of psychosis into healing. But of course with the mentally ill you have to often put a lot of energy into evoking the unconscious in the right way. I have had a number of letters now from therapists who used my Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual with effective and healing results with their clients and patients. Sadly it is out of print now but may be gotten as a used book. Also my rewritten edition, Dreamworking is available as a used book. We are looking for a re-publisher and any grounded suggestions would be helpful. Currently I live in the Netherlands and have a three to five year course for dreamwork professionals that meet every other Saturday throughout the year and work in small groups in between. This is training at the highest of professional levels and graduates must have had over one hundred dreams worked with at a core level. We are Jungian in the sense of Jung's key concepts of wholeness and individuation at work in the deeper psyche and revealing themselves as major energy principles in dreams and their dreamwork. We train professionals of integrity who have done the thorough work on themselves even before working with others and their dreams. Amazing changes in life and dreams have come about with these committed students. Our professional ethics are based on students having direct experiences of their own dream journeys and life changes brought about through their own dreamwork. This cannot happen without going through the basic three year course, the one hundred dreams worked with, and an enormous shift away from dream control and egocentricity to truly following the guidance of ones own dreams and dream source. In addition students are professionally supervised and trained in using the dreamwork methodology on others as well. My own Jungian training lasted ten year. We try and do the professional level in five to seven years by concentrating mostly on the dream and its dreamwork itself. For my Jungian training I had to read all of Jung's twenty-two volumns, know them practically by heart, and be current with almost all the other Jungian writers as well. Fascinating stuff but for our professional dreamwork training we focus mostly on the dream and its dreamwork. This is the original book of the unconscious and far more powerful than reading even Jung. I also give a week long summer intensive, this year from June 30 to July 6, 2001 in a forest in the Netherlands. Both my advanced Norwegian and Netherlands students will be there to participate and help lead. You can of course join us if you would like to work intensively for a week with your own dreams. This year our web site should be offering its first comprehensive dreamwork course for work at home on ones dreams. Strephon Kaplan-Williams has his web site, www.dreamwork2000.com going for a year now with around 500 visitors a week. Of special note is his _Dream Cards_ Interactive page where visitors can pick by synchronicity an unknown Dream Card on a dream or life issue and receive the _Dream Card_ images and inspirational wisdom message which may give personal insight to what they are dealing with. Many have testified that this tool works for them. Also of note is that the _Dream Cards_ in revised edition with new recipes is out for the first time in a German language edition. The _Dream Cards_ have sold over 100,000 copies by now in eight languages. Please also note and pass on to others interested that Strephon is a weekly contributor to analyzing issues in dreams that people share at the Consciousness Forum page of Dreamwork2000.com. Here you can see how he works with people's dreams without making highly personal interpretations. Strephon calls his approach the functional approach to dreams in which dreams are analyzed for key issues in dreams and life and for life principles for dealing with those issues. If we do the work on the dream itself, how to deal with life becomes more obvious. We dream to wake to life! -Strephon. Strephon Kaplan-Williams may be reached at s.williams7@chello.nl through his web site. http://www.dreamwork2000.com *********************************************************** "Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat or do not eat enough or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self- regulating psychic system." Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (re-titled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123 ************************************************************ ** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How to Interpret Your Own Dreams [With reference to Jungian Psychology] by Stephen Flynn =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Introduction Trying to paint such a broad canvas as the title suggests is difficult enough without having to write a book on it. Instead, I hope to offer some encouragement and some essential tips, and if I enthuse you with the desire to read up some more, then I have indeed done well. If you become serious about yourself, then you might get some of your own power back and be less dependent on others, and sure , that's no bad thing. Jung himself used the dreams his patients had to gain insight as it helped him understand what was going on for the patient in the unconscious. He studied his own dream world too. Most of my understanding comes from C.G. Jung's psychology. However he is not easy to read so I would advise a newcomer to start by reading either _Dreams and Reflections_ or _Man and his Symbols._ It makes quite exciting reading anyway. What are dreams and where do dreams come from? The dream acts as the interplay between the unconscious and the conscious. It's a kind of video, who's language relies on symbol and metaphor. As Jung said 'Where and when does anything take place to remind us even remotely of phenomena like angels, miraculous feelings, beatitudes and resurrection of the dead etc,? ..... during the unconscious state of sleep, intervals occur, called 'dreams,' which contain scenes (of) the motifs of mythology. For myths are miracle tales ...'*1a. The conscious is that part of you that is aware, a constant knowing . Consciousness is the unique quality of the Ego and seems to distinguish us from other animals. The Ego simply means 'that part of you (which is reading this line now,) or looking now, or listening now' and don't let anyone tell you differently. The Ego is 'the story writer' in you, and not the story itself, that's history. Sure, we all have our own story, and very real it is too. The Ego is the story teller, the one who experienced the happenings and is still here to tell the tale. Things can go on unnoticed by the Ego, for instance, while you are reading this, your heart is beating away and your little toe is either hot or cold or just right. If heart and toe and everything else for that matter, are all as they should be, nice and comfortable, then you will soon 'just forget about them.' There are numerous things going on about us that we take no notice of either unless they reach our attention. This being so, it doesn't take long to realise that there are some 'memories' outside the Ego's knowledge, that is, things recently and long forgotten. These are personal memories now forgotten. Sometimes they come back via a piece of music or some smell. These can also return via dreams. This is referred to as the 'personal unconscious.' What lies beyond the personal unconscious is also the stuff dreams are made of. So far everything is fairly straightforward. Now this is the interesting bit, it seems the further away one gets from the conscious Ego the less we can know about what goes on. From what we do know, it seems that in spite of the unique differences between each person we are much alike. Like one of my children stated when quite young, 'Underneath we are all blood and food.' Behind our differing personalities we share similar patterns of thinking and experience and value the same things. It seems the further away we travel from that conscious part of us, the 'bigger' become the images that come up from the deep to haunt us in our dreams. We are quite sure that some of these big images like, say, the jester, or the 'wicked witch' actually have no separate existence outside of us. We think they are, as it were, only imaginings of dreams and story. We seem to have more doubt about such 'spiritual' beings such as Jesus and all the Saints. Lots of us people see them as 'separate beings from ourselves' capable of revisiting us in visions. I have my own answer for this one and you must find yours. It is up to you to determine which figures in the dreams (and visions) come from inside or from outside of yourself, say, from somewhere in space, or you may decide they come from deep inside, but come they do, and that is a psychological fact. Jung calls the place where all destructive and creative forces come from the 'Collective Unconscious' as it seems we are all common or have a sameness when it comes to this type of image. He calls them archetypes. My attitude to Archetypes is simple, I don't care if they come from the inside of us or if they come from the out side of us, I respect the 'presence' they bring with them. I don't mess about foolishly here! Now we hit a second problem. From where do dreams come ? I argue from the standpoint of facts ,. what do we know. The fact that all these images come from either the personal unconscious or further away from awareness where things become less conscious and 'more common,' or as Jung called it, from the 'collective unconscious.' (As we all know some images mean much the same for everyone.) Jung argues that both the Ego and the dream rest on a sea of unconsciousness. If we accept this statement as fact, then the whole dream happens in the head. This helps us to interpret the dream as either a personal one emerging from our distant or recently forgotten past, or one emerging from deep within, The point I am making is that In any event the whole dream comes from within the dreamer! The third thing to grasp is that dreams are an actual message from one part of you to another. If you misunderstand this then the dream will remain of limited use. We all have had bad dreams or nightmares. Some people even think dreams are dangerous, and yet if you think about it, people are most dangerous when they are awake! But consider the idea that some of the images and people in our dreams are actual creations within our own head. That cannot be true, you might say, as you dreamed about such and such a person the other night, and they are real people out there. My reply to you is that the person you refer to is your impression of that person, not mine, or anybody else's. The same people or person will be someone else daughter or son, brother, sister, lover, father or mother. So your impression of them is unique to you. Own that impression of the person/s in your dreams and what they mean to you. This way we can move onto the content of the dream and its interpretation in a personal and more useful way. Consider the dream as a message from something huge inside you wanting to tell you something. We all know if this were true then whatever it is or whoever it is giving the messages doesn't seem to do a very good job when it comes to dreams, because the messages, comes in a kind of Video containing symbols and metaphor or some code not easy to break. The biggest problem today, it seems, is that we need first to appreciate that dreams offer the Ego balance. The dream tries to help the Ego understand that we may have taken a wrong turn or are heading for trouble if we continue to follow a certain way . I am suggesting dreams also offer guidance. Developing the right attitude to the unconscious is very important. I also suggest you don't 'play' with it. This would be like playing Water polo in mid Atlantic. Neither can you 'ignore' the unconscious because it will come back on you in a less helpful way, a bit like trying to block up a stream without letting any water out. It will just come over the top, round the sides or find its way underneath. As I have said, the more sensible way is to acknowledge the unconscious is there and respect its presence.. It is worth lingering on this idea of respecting the unconscious as it is key to making further progress within oneself. If you consider the word 'respect' it implies giving someone or something its full value. Not overinflating it, not disregarding it either, but to give it full weight and have regard. Dreams are no less and no more important than the awake state. You are left to choose either to ignore or to follow its promptings. There are three ways of interpreting the dream The old way of superstition. There is the old wives tales or superstition as way of gaining knowledge. 'If you dream of water, that means feelings, if you dream of a fish that means a quality, if it talks to you, that means you have been given a gift, and so on...' This method of interpreting a dream is limited and does not allow for the personal unconscious part of ourselves to have any room in the dream. There is no choice as it is all done for you, this means this and that means that. There is an element of truth in this approach too.. I'm not sure what the 'old wife ' would make of me dreaming about my big toe nail. Before the old wife tells me that dreaming of a big toe nail means I will meet an old friend or something, I want to state that my toe nail is the ingrowing type and gives me a lot of pain at times, and that I thought I would have to go into hospital at one point. So my big toe nail might have significance to me that others cannot know about. Superstition does not take account of the personal unconscious in the awake state or via dreams. The second way is called 'The Theory method.' This type of dream interpretation starts with a belief, system or theory. The theory method is employed by Freudians, among others, where the dream fits the belief. So if the theory has a sexual base, then there is bound to be some truth in it, isn't there! This approach will touch on the collective unconsciousness of sexuality and also on the personal unconsciousness level too. Such an approach can raise personal anxieties that are not in the dream. I suggest the theory method raises anxieties not in the dream. But sure, you don't need dreams to raise anxieties, they can easily be found. No! A general theory misses the specific point of the dream and can at best be like looking through binoculars and seeing all the issues through the same lenses, you miss the overall picture and things are too close will be 'out of focus.' The third way'The Dreamers Own Interpretation.' I think Jung would argue from the facts. For instance, is there any deep meaning in the dream for the dreamer? What is going on in the life of the dreamer? What is the significance of the dream for the dreamer. *2. You could say the first dream interpretation is based upon superstition., and yet has some truth to it. The second method demands fitting a dream into a fixed theory no matter what is dreamed. The third method is Jungian and he advises that it is not what is dreamed but what the dreamer makes of these deep impulses that matters. Jung gives us a bit more information saying that the main reasons for dreams are to balance or counter balance the dreamers life when awake. In other words they are messages asking you to cop - on! They compensate, as it were, or try to remedy what is going wrong through the day time , or the dream might even try to prepare you for a gentle let-down if things are going real well. So dreams can also tell you what is going to happen. It seems the dream can borrow from future events things that might help you now! Why not? The day time 'I' can borrow from the past (experience) to help sort out the present, why can't the 'I' of the dream go to future events to do the same thing? There is certainly enough evidence of this around, prophetic as it were, and there is enough evidence of warning dreams in the Bible. I myself have had 'warning' dreams, which I respect too! Dreams self regulate. This point is so crucial to the understanding of dream interpretation. It seems that if we 'our Ego' becomes 'one sided' in what we chose to do, hear and listen to, then the unconscious part of us builds up an equal 'other' or opposite stance. There is always the exception, but normally the compensation coming up from the unconscious does not go against consciousness. *2 I have found both through my work and in myself, that harmony between the unconscious and conscious parts leads to good mental health. So developing a respect for the unconscious is good for us! How to develop a more healthy attitude to the unconscious. The first point Accept the fact that the whole of the dream belongs to you. Its all in your head, even if its someone you know, it is your impression of them not the person themselves! The Second Point Developing the right attitude is important which means be a little more serious about yourselves. Write down or record (dreams) as soon as possible in a special book kept for that purpose. The dream is about transformation, and overcoming, a moving towards a state of being more integrated and content within yourself. This is about healing yourself too, if you think about it. The Third Point Once you have recorded your dream there is a powerful method called 'active imagination.' It works like this Sit quietly and go back into the dream using your imagination. If there were another person in the dream, then become the other person, and as if you were them , say why you are there. If there is some significant 'thing' in the dream become this and state what your purpose is as if you were the thing in the dream . Then return to yourself and reflect on what was said, and push it a bit further by asking questions and return to the role of the other, and answer the questions. Thus you can switch back and forth until you are sufficiently satisfied you cannot get any more from whatever appeared in the dream. So you amplify or exaggerate what came up in the dream, and begin to understand. *2 The fourth point Is there any mythical background either in fairy tale, legends or even religion, to the things or people who came up in the dream. Think about it and see it there is anything that could help you connected to the deeper collective part of you. The fifth point Also look at your dream in a dead simple way too! Was there anything 'stupid' in it and what might this show you. Other tips on dreams are 1. There are 'little' dreams and 'big' dreams. Big dreams you remember longer and they continue to be important as long as you continue to remember them. Some stay with you for life. 2. Within the average dream itself, there is generally a structure As follows The first stage concerns the STATEMENT OF PLACE . (a street or a hotel etc,.) The statements of TIME are rarer. The statement of the PROTAGONIST (dream Ego) 'I was walking etc,. The second phase is the development of the PLOT . The third phase is the CULMINATION where something decisive happens or something changes completely. The fourth and last is the SOLUTION OR RESULT. *1d. This structure of four phases generally indicates that dreams are dramatic, story like and unfolding. An example using the 'The Dreamers Own Interpretation.' way. I had a 'big' dream myself some years ago. I will use the above stages to help you see the dreams structure and how to use the points of interpretation. Phase 1. STATEMENT OF PLACE. I was in in the basement of a bus depot or station where the road spiralled down into what looked like a dark car park.. The only sense of TIME was that it was daylight above. THE PROTAGONIST statement: I was surrounded by young black Afro' warriors all dressed in war paint with spears, clubs etc,. I was taller than any one else there , white and older, and dressed in a whit e robe. I could see my three sons, The two younger were in among the black tribe. They had oiled their skin and looked every bit as black as the others who were Negro. My oldest son stood half way up the winding road. He half wanted to join me. The development of the PLOT I tried to make contact with my younger sons, but some irritating youth kept jumping up and down in front of me, distracting my attention. I took his club off him and 'bopped' him on the head. Not too hard, but just to express my frustration and annoyance at his rather childish antiques. The third phase of CULMINATION While I was doing this the whole lot of them suddenly surged forward and ran passed me up the spiraling road and out into the world, leaving me alone in the dark, now silent space. The fourth phase of SOLUTION OR RESULT I knew I could not follow. These were young men doing their thing, something like some hunting party. I was too old and past it. Wrong kind of energy, kind of thing. I woke up to the empty house, alone, and wept bitterly at my loss. My wife was away in England at the time too. The dream had brought home to me what I hadn't noticed before, my pain, my loss. The boys were doing their own thing over in England and I was happy for them. It was a time when my youngest had reached manhood. My role as a father had 'officially' come to an end., and I hadn't acknowledged it before. I had been too delighted for them as they were all at college in England or doing their own thing. I remember thinking at the time- 'No one had warned me it would be painful to let them go!' Some observations I made to interpret my dream The feelings in the dream began to emerge as I thought about what had occurred. This was a 'big' dream as I still remember it as if it were last night, so it is still important to me. The self is often represented as the city in ancient myth O This pre Christian Celtic symbol above is also the sign of the city divided into for quarters and having a wall round it, and like all symbols it has other meanings too. It is the symbol of the 'self' too. This is a collective unconscious symbol, which still has meaning today and, as in every modern City there is the 'bus depot' a terminus. (The End of the growing family.) The underground of the bus depot, in my city , (in my self) I could see meant the unconscious part, the lower part, like the underworld of early Christianity below in Rome. It was the birth of a new way of life in that city, perhaps this might be so for me. It was the part of the city involving 'transport.' the part I chose to ignore with the conscious ego. So this 'place' is very important. It was the going away from me, I had up 'till the dream, failed to notice. Taking the line that everything in the dream is part of my own nature, these youths were black, in a gang and in a hunting party consistent with African jungle surroundings, but we are smack in the middle of a modern city. This is the 'stupid' bit, there is a source of serious conflict here. This unconscious part of me was still undeveloped, as one would expect, it had not caught up with modern times. I hadn't thought about it, therefore, these youths who represented my attitude to my children remained undeveloped. My whole primitive nature was being observed by the 'dream ego' which needed to act in a collective mindless group who ran up and out to the light to work out their primitive instincts. This emerging 'in the light,' into my own awareness, will update their activities and change their behaviour even as modern young people do now-a-days, acting out their basic desires in pop music , parties, gigs and the buzz of campus life. Seeing that it is all me anyway, some of my own base nature will be released from past ignorance, and thereby, my attitude will be transform to accepting my loss and moving on to what I want to do in life. (There was more, but you get the general idea.) When you think about it, the ideas of African style natives going hunting for wild animals with spears from a bus depot, in a large city through the city streets is stupid. I myself, was naive in my relationship with the annoying youthful vigor of youth, so as to 'forget' to communicate or catch up with the times. The implications for me, the awake ego, shocked me . I also realized I couldn't understand my sons, because of my own prejudice. A final word When all is said and done about learning to interpret your own dreams, sometimes you need the help of another, as things are so close to you they cannot be recognized for what they are. It is like facing a tree three inches away, it is impossible to know if you are in a forest or what! So remember to treat your unconscious with respect and be more serious about your dreams, they are your friends, but they are never more important than your awake state. Your own experience in life is your main teacher., not the dream, or worse still, someone else's experiences! Bibliography *1a. C.G.Jung The Collected Works. Vol' ' 9. pt 11. Aion' 81. paragraph 67. *1b. ibid, paragraphs 315. to 320. *1c. ibid paragraph 350/1. *2 C.G.Jung Vol' '6 pt XI. Psychological Types '71 paragraph 693 to 694. *2a P.W. Martin Experiment in Depth '1956 pp38/42. 00O00 Dr. Carl Gustav Jung was the son of a Minister, born in Switzerland in 1897 and died in 1961. He was a well known Psychiatrist and philosopher. His writings were put together to form 'The Collected Works ' comprising of eighteen volumes. Terms like 'complex' 'psychological types' and 'introvert and extrovert,' have become part of everyday speech resulting from his work.. He founded the school of analytical psychotherapy using the concept of the unconscious to instruct his psychiatric practice. ---------------------- I was fortunate enough to have 3/4 years analytical therapy from a man taught by Hillman in Zurich. And having read most of Jung's collective works for the past 16 years I now focus all my energy into my practice as (it appears) the only state employed, permanent and full time psychotherapist in Ireland. How come I am the only one? 'Cause I'm b**** good! Well......there should be more employed as well, to be sure! Stephen Flynn Thanks to Stephen Flynn for allowing Electric Dreams to re- publish this article. Some font and emphasis marks changed to fit the Electric Dreams format. ************************************************************ * Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history. What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook. "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jung, Personality and Dreamwork: The Persona, the Ego and the Four Functions By Richard Wilkerson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Persona. ("actor's mask" in Latin). From James Hall: "One's social role, derived from the expectations of society and early training. A strong ego relates to the outside world through a flexible persona; identification with a specific personal (doctor, scholar, artist, etc) inhibits psychological development." (Hall p. 121) Jung felt that our ego identity, who we feel and thing we are, rises as children from a vast unconscious sea, first in little islands and soon with a feeling of individuality. As the Jungians say, we rise from the Great Mother. Now this little new identity thinks and feels that it is separate and unique from the mother, but is in fact, quite dependent upon others for its survival. The haughtiness carries on, even through adolescence when individuality asserts itself more forcefully, but again, is usually still very dependent. One way of looking at who we are is to look at the role we take in the world, our persona. At first it might be good child, bad child, son who is clean, daughter who helps mother, brother, sister, friend and so on. We come to know ourselves and others through these roles. But we also know there is more than just these roles and understand there is a difference between our persona roles and our self. When someone forgets this difference , we feel treated by them as less than human, like we are part of a inhuman act or play. Anyway, this little ego not only has roles, but begins to develop and favor certain patterns of attitude, style and behavior, while neglecting others. Jung liked to look at this development in two basic attitudes, introversion and extroversion. The extrovert, like the rabbit in nature, survives through mating and multiplication and manipulation. The attention of the extrovert is on how they are affecting the world. The introvert survives in nature like the tortoise, though turning inward, changing itself rather than the environment. The attention of the introvert is on how the world is affecting them. Jung also like to see the ego as favoring certain ways of functioning and used a binary opposite four system topology, Intuition vs. Sensation, and Thinking vs. Feeling. He originally felt that if one favored one style of perception and judgment, the opposite would be undeveloped, and hence some people get by in life by being thoughtful and others by using emotional means, others by just staying busy. These functions are now very popular in mainstream culture and lots of books have been written recently on using the system which becomes quite complex when you consider that each function has two attitudes. Thus one may favor Introverted Intuitive styles while another may favor Extroverted Thinking styles making for eight different basic types. If you are interested in what type you are, you can take a quick test by searching online for the most popular of the Jungian types personality indicators, the Meyers-Briggs. There is also the Singer-Loomis personality test which is a more fair test of all the functions, but less well known. Note that the tests online or scoring tests yourself may be inaccurate. Analysts and specialists spend some time learning to interpret these tests. For our purposes here of looking quickly into how dreams and personality connect in Jungian theory, I just want to generally lay out the role of personality in the process of individuation as the Jungians see, and how its important in finding the doorway inward through the least used parts of our personality. The least used function is called the "inferior function" and is usually not under the conscious control of the individual. Thus a thinking person may very easily have hurt feelings, but feeling will always seem like its something to a thinking person that *happens* to them. A feeling type *uses* feelings achieve what they desire. If you are an intuitive in an airport and someone comes up and speaks to you in an foreign language, you will probably try to understand what the person is saying. Any sensate type would immediately get someone to translate, not spending a second trying to make meaning out of something they don't understand. Difference in styles. For our purpose here in dream work land, we are going to turn this whole game around an use it to look at the persona (masks) personalities in our dreams rather than seeking to find our waking personality types. We are going to assume that there is almost *always* a persona level to a dream and we can approach this level by choice and read the dream for insight into our own masks. EXERCISE: Persona. Read a dream *for* persona issues. When a dream is about clothes and problems with appearance, its easy to see the persona issues, but I want to suggest that *all* dreams have a persona level and can be read as such. Pretend the dream is a play. Note the way the curtain opens, (how the dream starts) what kind of drama is unfolded (Comedy, Tragedy, Mystery, Horror, Sit-Com) and the way characters enter and exit the dream stage. Note what everyone is wearing and what this indicates about them. Are they wearing leisure clothes, business clothes, sports clothes? Or is your awareness of what's being worn missing altogether? How "into" the roles are the dream characters? In other words, is the policeman in the dream somewhat aware that he *has* a policeman's job or is he completely absorbed in this job & role and there is no chance of relating to him as a person? What are the dream characters up to on a surface level? Are people going to work, are they just hanging out, are they looking for fun, are they unaware of what they are after? Are the people in the dream everyday friends and family, unknown people or famous personages? What are your dream character=s personality strengths and weaknesses? Who favors their rational intellect, which characters favor feeling? Which characters just do things without thinking, which characters seem to have an instantaneous intuitive grasp of the moment? These persona and masks and roles are a wonderful and complex network and gauge of our relationship to the world, to the family and even to ourselves. They form the bright side we offer to others that they can count on. The are the vehicles that allow us to travel and move around without constantly crashing into others. True, if we confuse our roles with who we really are there can some real stagnation and problems. (note the Eichmann trial where in Nazi Germany he was "just doing his job"). But its also a disaster is our persona is not developed. Its very difficult to move around in our world when other's can't readily recognize the roles you offer. If you have ever been a job interview in an area where you have little development, this lack of persona development can quickly and anxiously be felt. Because the persona takes time to develop, one must make choices. When we are young we choose to develop the good girl instead of the bad girl. Perhaps we get rewarded for a talent we have in fixing things and begin to develop this ability. We might find we can cope better in our home by shutting the emotions of the parents away and being creative in our own world. Each of these choices leaves behind them a shadow. What type are you? http://www.advisorteam.com/user/kcs.asp http://www.knowyourtype.com/ http://skepdic.com/myersb.html EGO: SELECTIONS: ================ Psychological Types, CW 6, esp chap. 11, "Definitions," under "Ego," p 425. Aion, CW 9, II, esp. chap 1"The Ego" pp. 3-7 "On the Nture of the Psyche," CW 8, pp. 159?234. "Child Development and Education," CW 17, pp. 49?62. _Ego & Archetype_ by Edward Edinger. 1972, Baltimore:Penguin Books. Neumann, Erich (1954) The _Origins and History of onsciousness_. Princeton :Princeton University Press. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES: ==================== Psychological Types, CW 6, chap 6, Chap 10, "General Description of the Types" pp. 330?407. Keirsey, David & Bates, Marilyn (1984), Please Understand Me_ Character Tempermaent and Types. Del Mar, CA: Gnosology Books, ltd. Sharp, Daryl, (1987). personality Types: Jung's model of Typology. Toronto: Innter City Books, 1987. Shadow: PERSONA: ========= Psychological Types, CW 6, esp, chapter 11, "Definitions," under "Soul (psyche, personality, persona, anima)" pp. 463- 470. *********************************************************** "To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud's view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect. It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream's sleep- preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud's view. " "General Aspects of Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485 *********************************************************** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jung, the Shadow and Dreamwork By Richard Wilkerson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "THE THING A PERSON HAS NO WISH TO BE" Jung CW 16 para 470 For Freud, the unconscious was about content that was socially unacceptable. Jung agreed with Freud and called this the personal unconscious, or the personal Shadow. However, there are some differences. Jungians will often refer to any material that is unconscious as "In Shadow" and there are depths to the Shadow that become collective rather than personal, such the Devil Archetype, or the dynamics that Shadowed Nazi Germany. That is, at some point, our personal Shadow becomes so large it is more accurate to call it a Collective Shadow. Positive characteristics may be in Shadow as well. But the most common way to refer to Shadow material is anything we once were but then pushed away. Jung felt the Shadow would often appear in dreams as an unknown but same sex person. But not *all* unknown same sex persons in dreams are Shadows. All that is unacceptable is, as they say, "in Shadow" to the degree that is us, or was us, and we deny it. We would usually consider a Shadow figure as morally inferior. They slink around our dreamworld and we would rather die than have someone say we are like them. But denying the Shadow robs us of strength and that's why it's so useful to take a look at the Shadow when one is frozen or loses the ability to move or walk or is paralyzed in some other manner. Also, as mentioned, when its time for a person to begin to deal with the Shadow, it may begin to stalk the dreamer, which is that part of the psyche's way of saying, "Hey, you've neglected me too long and we need to talk." Exercise: Make a list of the people you know that when they are in the room, they really get under your skin, they really bug you, and you can't say why. (Except, of course, that you consider them morally wretched creatures). And include in the list a few statements "I really hate it when they [fill in blank]." Like, "I really hate those people who suck up to the boss" or "It really bugs me every time that guy gets angry everyone whimps away and lets him have his way." OK this is the gist of an aspect of *your* Shadow. For the most part, we would rather die than admit to being or having that Shadow. But if you ask around, others may clearly see this in you, though in perhaps another form or way. If you can locate these figures in your dreams, all the better. The point, according to Jung, is not to become or accept these figures nor to reject them, but to find your own unique and creative way to be with them or relate to them. Jung felt the dream not only *revealed* the Shadow problem, but always offered a *solution* that the ego might creatively consider, thereby carrying the dream forward. The general idea being that this is an undeveloped aspect of your personality and by coming into playful and even serious relationship with it, something special and unexpected happens. Here is an exercise I use in my class to teach students how to begin working with their own Shadow. Lets do a variation that Ann Wiseman uses with children. Draw a picture of a part of your dream where there is someone or something bugging, stalking, chasing or threatening you. Now draw something that would make it safe for you. Kids today too often draw guns killing the problem, but showing them how to use a prison or magic circle is useful. Now you can "talk" with the thing that has been neutralized. Have a pretend conversation with it like you were one of Ann Wiseman's school children. "Bad monster, I want you to leave me alone!" Then allow the dream image to speak back. What might does it tell you? With the kids, the monsters often said they just wanted to play. One wonders with Jung's idea that the Shadow need attention and asks for it how these wonderful little minds came up with the same solution as Jung. Of course, adult responses may be more complex than a child. Israel is said to have wrestled all night with the angel and the thing broke his leg in the struggle. But the point here is to move forward with the dream image, to attend to it, to respond, to listen.... to begin to play. And it is surprising how things really begin to change for a person once they learn in the *dream* to begin confronting the evil threats and pursuers. One note of guidance. Jung was once doing some active imagination with a woman on a dream and she was being confronted by a lion. Jung asked her continue the dream in her imagination, go back to the image and play. She did so and said the lion turned into a flower. Jung asked her to immediately bring the lion back.... The point of image confrontation is not to gloss over the threat but come into a better relationship with it. True, we may have to cast spells and turn enemies into flowers momentarily to protect ourselves from the threat, but this is not the same as staying with the image and the tension until something new and creative happens. Exercise: Stick with the Image: Pick a really annoying or uncomfortable dream image after awakening and choose to keep it with you during the day. Try to stay as close as possible to the feeling tone, the icky , uncomfortable part of the dream. What parts of your body does the image linger most strongly? You don't want to analyze it too much, just attend to it as if it were a sick child you are attending. Imagine that you are going to carry this image around with you in your pocket during the day. Try to bring the image out whenever possible: coffee breaks, walking to the car, on the bus, in the bathroom, while cooking dinner. Watch your own reactions and feelings and thoughts to the image, but again, don't over analyze it, just stay with it, and notice what comes up for you. At the end of the day make some notes about your feelings about the image, how your day was or wasn't different, if anything new came up for you. end exercise. For most people, the changes are very slow and subtle in this exercise. But many feel a movement from an all-out desire to just get rid of the feelings (or complaints about how boring the exercise is ? an interesting 20th century emotional fear defense) to an unexplainable empathy and affection for the image, even though it basically remains an icky image. Shadow work is the work of a lifetime. We don't get rid of our Shadow by doing Shadow work (though it will shift and change). Develop one side and another will slip into being unused and underdeveloped. To accept and value one thing means another will seem unappealing. What can we do? If Jung is correct about our dreams balancing our ego, and our path is one of wholeness and individuation, we watch our dreams, that's what we do. The dream itself forms a Shadow for our society. Notice how in popular culture the dream and the Shadow are both considered something morally inferior (rare is it that the ethics of a dream are taken by people as superior to dayworld judgements). Both are something we want to be rid of (as a culture, our parents tell us it was "just a dream" and we should focus on the daytime tasks at hand). Both are intrusive ? they happen *to* us. It's only recently that lucid dreaming has come into the public consciousness. For the most part, we are the passive recipients of dreams (and inferior parts of our self ? we don't *choose* to have people get under our skin!). Besides the personal Shadow, there is the collective Shadow, who shows up in stories as Evil Itself, the Devil, and the Enemy. Although mythic heroes engage and take on these monsters and exemplify various historical paths we can take as individuals, we cannot take on the Collective Shadow by our own. We do our part by dealing with our personal Shadows, but its an egotistic and inflated person that thinks they can take on a Collective Shadow. It would be like an individual trying to solve the problem on his/her own of atomic weapons. And we see what happens to these individuals in mythic characters like Captain Nemo in _Twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea_ or Ahab in _Moby Dick_. Because the approach to the personal Shadow can led us into "deeper waters", its often advised to have a personal therapist or be part of a larger community when doing this kind of work. Its still in question whether or not non-professional or peer groups can provide the kind of container to do deep shadow work. The Electric Dreams community has been exploring this since 1994 and the general feeling is that it can provide a container for the insight aspects of Shadow work, though it often lags on the emotional side. John Herbert's work on group dreamwork and computer mediated communications has provided some encouraging statistics and guidelines. Whether this work is really Jungian is a question beyond the scope of this essay. I am bringing it up just to say that at some point we *do* need to move our personal Shadowork to group Shadowork, and all forms of communication can be instrumental in this project. Note for example the work done by the Electric Dreams community during the Kosovo Crisis when we had Serbian members in the online dreamgroup. Some people left the group in protest, while others stayed and continued doing dreamwork with the "enemy" to the benefit of both sides. (see http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/Serbia/ I would like to advise that anyone taking the path of self development and self discovery might examine the support system that is available to you. Grass root dream support groups and other support groups are now available all over the Americas and Europe. Ask the leaders about the ethics of the group. For a guide, I recommend using the Association for the Study of Dreams ethics guide for dreamwork: http://www.asdreams.org/ethics/ While we might work with our personal and collective Shadows all our lives, we aren't *always* encountering the Shadow in dreams. Once we have a productive relationship with the Shadow and the unacceptable, a new guide emerges, that which we most desire. This area is even more dangerous than what we despise, yet can lead us to live a life of completeness and wholeness. However, this journey begins by not turning away from the unacceptable, by not tossing our dreams aside in the morning, by not averting our gaze from what our dreams present to us, from learning to look at what we can absolutely not look at. Bibliography & Special Bibliographies (CW) = Jung, C. G. (1953) The Collected Works. Translated by R. C. F. Hull. Bollingen Series XX, vol.s 1?20, Princeton: Princeton University Press. (MDR) = Jung, C. G. (1965). _Memories, Dreams and Reflections NewYork, NY: Vintage Books. Campbell, Joseph (1959). _The Masks of God_. Vol 1?4, New York: Viking Press Eliade, Mircea_A History of Religious Ideas_ Vol1?3, Chicago, IL: Universtiy of Chicago Press. Guggenbuhl-Craig, Adolf. _(1978) Power in the helping Professions._ Zurich: Spring Publications. Hall, James, A. (1983). Jungian Dream Interpretation: A handbook of Theory and Practice. Inner city Books: Toronto, Canada. Jung , C. G. _ Aion_, CW 9, II, chap. 2 pp. 8?10. ________ . "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9, I pp. 3-41. ________. "The Problems of Modern psychotherapy," CW 16, pp. 53?75. Von Franz, marie-Louise. (1971). "The Inferior Function". In von Franz, marie-Louise, and Hillman, James, Jung's topology. New York: Spring Publication. von Franz, M?L. (1964) "The Realization of the Shadow" in C. G. Jung's _man and His Symbols_ . p 166-176. New York, NY: Doubleday Whitmont, Edward, C. (1969). "The Shadow: Chapter 9 in _The Symbolic Quest_. Princeton, NJ :Princeton University Press. PERSONA: ========= Psychological Types, CW 6, esp, chapter 11, "Definitions," under "Soul (psyche, personality, persona, anima)" pp. 463?470. SHADOW: ======== Jung , C. G. _ Aion_, CW 9, II, chap. 2 pp. 8?10. ________ . "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9, I pp. 3-41. --------. "The Problems of Modern psychotherapy," CW 16, pp. 53?75. Guggenbuhl-Craig, Adolf. _(1978) Power in the helping Professions._ Zurich: Spring Publications. Von Franz, marie-Louise. (1971). "The Inferior Function". In von Franz, marie-Louise, and Hillman, James, Jung's topology. New York: Spring Publication. von Franz, M-L. (1964) "The Realization of the Shadow" in C. G. Jung's _man and His Symbols_ . p 166-176. New York, NY: Doubleday Whitmont, Edward, C. (1969). "The Shadow: Chapter 9 in _The Symbolic Quest_. Princeton, NJ :Princeton University Press. For the Latest Links collected on this subject in relation to dreaming, go to the DreamGate Links page www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/online97.htm *********************************************************** "The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments 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." "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317 ************************************************************ ** =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jung, the Desired and Dreamwork : Working with the Anima/Animus By Richard Wilkerson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "If the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development, then that with the anima is the 'master-piece.'" Jung CW 9 I, Para 61. Originally the idea was that a man has an unconscious & undeveloped feminine side and a woman has an unconscious and undeveloped masculine side. Late 20th Century capitalist society has shown that men may also show undeveloped masculine as well as feminine traits, as can a woman show underdeveloped feminine traits. And that the issue of masculine and feminine is not the gender issue it once was. Men may exhibit high degrees of emotional development and women high degrees of intellectual achievement. The whole notion of what is masculine and what is feminine has come under deep scrutiny and is generally problematic. However, if we look at the masculine and feminine as traits separate from gender, we may still gleem some gems from a kind of dreamwork that goes beyond the adaptation of the ego to the outer world and the shadow this creates. Classical Analysis: Anima. The inner feminine side of a man. Animus. The inner masculine side of a woman. In classical Jungian analysis, the individual would begin to develop these unconscious areas once the analysand had caught on to the idea of the Shadow. But the Anima/Animus pair go beyond mere underdeveloped functions. With the Shadow, we said that it was part of us that got repressed or pushed away. With the Anima/Animus we say that it was *never* part of us, but infinitely attracts us. When a man says about a woman "It's Her" or a woman says, "That's Him" we are getting close to what Jung meant by the strength of the pull of these Archetypes. When we are in love, its seems the most intimate and personal event we have ever experienced, but when our friends and family are possessed by fascinations and loves, we are aware that they are not completely themselves and are acting out patterns that seem to occur over and over in life, myth and fairy tales. In dreams the Anima/Animus are said to show up as opposite sex characters. But they really are more like myths than real people. (And myths in both senses of the word) For a man, the anima can be said to be the collection of all the experiences man has ever had with women. And for the woman, the animus is said to be the collection of all the experiences women have had with men. But Jung was quite aware that we all have both. So lets just look at this level of psyche as what we see as "Totally Other", in that it can be felt out a bit, but never fully understood. Exercise: a. Write down the sentence: "All men are [blank]" and fill in the first ten things that come to mind. b. Write down the sentence "All women are [blank]" and fill in the blank with the first ten things that come to mind. Can you recall dreams where you were attracted to someone with these characteristics? From Whitmont: "Anima and animus tend to operate like partial or separate personalities made up of different composite patterns. In man, the (anima) behaves like a different individual "other" personality with whom he is "stuck" or to whom he is "married". For the sake of individuation it is necessary for him to find out what this other personality is like, how it feels, thinks and tends to act. In a given situation one has to consider not only one's own reaction but also how the anima reacts, what she desires, likes or dislikes. Like a problematic partner, the anima has to be treated with attention and consideration but also with discipline and experimental interplay and challenge. " ( p185) We can only relate to this other by giving them some means of expression and showing a willingness to learn from them as well. In dreams, they classically appear as unknown figures of the opposite sex. But are all opposite sex characters Anima/Animus characters? There are some good reasons for saying "No", especially when the opposite sex characters are mother or father like. The Pair not only present themselves to us as guides to parts our ourselves that need develo