Notes from the seminar given in 1936-1940. Edited by Lorenz Jung and Maria Meyer-Grass. Translated by Ernst Falzeder with the collaboration of Tony Woolfson.
The contents of this book come from written recordings at a series of four seminars given by Jung to select students. The style is less formal, more conversational than much of his other written work. The book begins with an introduction to Jung's method of dream interpretation.
On pages 4-5, Jung describes the four types of meanings that dreams can have:
1) The unconscious is responding to specific situation taking place in waking life (On page 31 he notes that the dream never simply repeats waking events except in the case of shock or trauma - the dream tries and fails to integrate the experience into metaphor);
2) The dream depicts a conflict that exists between a conscious situation and the unconscious point of view;
3) The unconscious is trying to change or correct a conscious attitude;
4) The dream is a spontaneous depiction of an unconscious process. These, according to Jung, are very powerful. They can be experienced as an illumination, or may portend a mental breakdown.
He gives illustrations of this last type and goes on to describe the six sources (causes or conditions) of dreams:
1) The body (sensation, posture, physical illness);
2) Other physical (environmental) stimuli, which may precede the dream or may even follow it in chronological time;
3) Stimuli in the psychological environment or atmosphere - moods and secrets connected to friends or family, for example;
4) Past events concerning historical figures - the life of the figure may illuminate the dreamer's situation;
5) Personal memories which have fallen out of conscious memory;
6) Anticipatory dreams, telling of future events or psychological states. If something pursues you in a dream it wants to come to you to unite and make you stronger.
Key assumptions:
1) Dreams are not random (p. 23)
2) Dreams reveal the orientation of the psyche: it has a purpose and goal (p. 23)
3) Free association always leads us into our complexes, and often away from the message of dream (p. 25)
4) To get to the real meaning of a dream, collect associations on the original image in the dream, always returning to the image rather than following associations in a linear or zigzag pattern out to the complexes (p. 26)
5) This amplification must be done with all the dream elements
6) The meaning of the dream "sentence" is found by replacing each symbol with the dreamer's personal associations
7) Since most symbols have meanings in common use, personal associates may not be essential - the approach of using more general associations is needed when the dreamer doesn't have personal associations or for children's dreams as the adult may not remember what was going on at the time and a child may not be able to describe associations.
In the last part of the chapter on the method of dream interpretation, Jung encourages his students to use a schema that can be generally applied, and may be especially helpful in complicated dreams (p. 30):
1) Locale: Place, time, "dramatis personae."
2) Exposition: Illustration of the problem.
3) Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation - which can also leave room for a catastrophe.
4) Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream.
Jung tells us, through his students, that this dream structure illustrates the dramatic tendency of the unconscious and can be seen often in dreams.
This book focusses almost exclusively on childhood dreams brought by adults. In these cases, very little personal association is possible. Jung says that in these cases "we have to use the ethno-psychological method with dreams that cannot be solved by personal questioning or personal amplification. In general, the book is full of dreams brought by Jung's seminar students, or by Jung, himself. Typically, there are very few personal associations elicited from the children. There isn't a great deal of psychological or medical history presented. The students take each of the symbols in the dreams and link them to symbols from literature or myth. This work is densely layered with metaphor. They form interpretations from these symbols, and Jung adds his additions and corrections and interjections.
Jung makes some interesting general points about childhood dreams:
* Early dreams "come out of the totality of the personality (p. 20)" and often foreshadow the child's future. When a child has a cosmic dream it may point to a future where the child grows up to give up personal for collective role.
* Children's dreams often "surface uninhibited from the collective unconscious" because consciousness is weaker in children (p.80)
* Children are closer to the collective unconscious and to archaic images and archetypes than are adults, as they came out of them more recently, and have had less time to develop a personal consciousness (p. 107).
I found very little information in my quick scan of the book that relates to how to help the child who is having the dream. I gleaned one piece of practical advice: "pay attention to the child and try to stabilize his or her consciousness" by having thee child draw or write about the dreams. This will help to make the "freely floating danger" concrete. I believe Jung is suggesting that this will make children less sensitive to powerful dreams and less afraid of them. I suspect that therapists who work regularly with children and their dreams, or with the childhood dreams of adults, would find this book helpful when they get stuck on a complicated dream. Because I'm so drawn to the approach of helping the dreamer to connect the dream to his or her waking life and to develop a response to what the dream is asking for, the book didn't resonate with me.
The contents of this book come from written recordings at a series of four seminars given by Jung to select students. The style is less formal, more conversational than much of his other written work. The book begins with an introduction to Jung's method of dream interpretation.
On pages 4-5, Jung describes the four types of meanings that dreams can have:
1) The unconscious is responding to specific situation taking place in waking life (On page 31 he notes that the dream never simply repeats waking events except in the case of shock or trauma - the dream tries and fails to integrate the experience into metaphor);
2) The dream depicts a conflict that exists between a conscious situation and the unconscious point of view;
3) The unconscious is trying to change or correct a conscious attitude;
4) The dream is a spontaneous depiction of an unconscious process. These, according to Jung, are very powerful. They can be experienced as an illumination, or may portend a mental breakdown.
He gives illustrations of this last type and goes on to describe the six sources (causes or conditions) of dreams:
1) The body (sensation, posture, physical illness);
2) Other physical (environmental) stimuli, which may precede the dream or may even follow it in chronological time;
3) Stimuli in the psychological environment or atmosphere - moods and secrets connected to friends or family, for example;
4) Past events concerning historical figures - the life of the figure may illuminate the dreamer's situation;
5) Personal memories which have fallen out of conscious memory;
6) Anticipatory dreams, telling of future events or psychological states. If something pursues you in a dream it wants to come to you to unite and make you stronger.
Key assumptions:
1) Dreams are not random (p. 23)
2) Dreams reveal the orientation of the psyche: it has a purpose and goal (p. 23)
3) Free association always leads us into our complexes, and often away from the message of dream (p. 25)
4) To get to the real meaning of a dream, collect associations on the original image in the dream, always returning to the image rather than following associations in a linear or zigzag pattern out to the complexes (p. 26)
5) This amplification must be done with all the dream elements
6) The meaning of the dream "sentence" is found by replacing each symbol with the dreamer's personal associations
7) Since most symbols have meanings in common use, personal associates may not be essential - the approach of using more general associations is needed when the dreamer doesn't have personal associations or for children's dreams as the adult may not remember what was going on at the time and a child may not be able to describe associations.
In the last part of the chapter on the method of dream interpretation, Jung encourages his students to use a schema that can be generally applied, and may be especially helpful in complicated dreams (p. 30):
1) Locale: Place, time, "dramatis personae."
2) Exposition: Illustration of the problem.
3) Peripateia: Illustration of the transformation - which can also leave room for a catastrophe.
4) Lysis: Result of the dream. Meaningful closure. Compensating illustration of the action of the dream.
Jung tells us, through his students, that this dream structure illustrates the dramatic tendency of the unconscious and can be seen often in dreams.
This book focusses almost exclusively on childhood dreams brought by adults. In these cases, very little personal association is possible. Jung says that in these cases "we have to use the ethno-psychological method with dreams that cannot be solved by personal questioning or personal amplification. In general, the book is full of dreams brought by Jung's seminar students, or by Jung, himself. Typically, there are very few personal associations elicited from the children. There isn't a great deal of psychological or medical history presented. The students take each of the symbols in the dreams and link them to symbols from literature or myth. This work is densely layered with metaphor. They form interpretations from these symbols, and Jung adds his additions and corrections and interjections.
Jung makes some interesting general points about childhood dreams:
* Early dreams "come out of the totality of the personality (p. 20)" and often foreshadow the child's future. When a child has a cosmic dream it may point to a future where the child grows up to give up personal for collective role.
* Children's dreams often "surface uninhibited from the collective unconscious" because consciousness is weaker in children (p.80)
* Children are closer to the collective unconscious and to archaic images and archetypes than are adults, as they came out of them more recently, and have had less time to develop a personal consciousness (p. 107).
I found very little information in my quick scan of the book that relates to how to help the child who is having the dream. I gleaned one piece of practical advice: "pay attention to the child and try to stabilize his or her consciousness" by having thee child draw or write about the dreams. This will help to make the "freely floating danger" concrete. I believe Jung is suggesting that this will make children less sensitive to powerful dreams and less afraid of them. I suspect that therapists who work regularly with children and their dreams, or with the childhood dreams of adults, would find this book helpful when they get stuck on a complicated dream. Because I'm so drawn to the approach of helping the dreamer to connect the dream to his or her waking life and to develop a response to what the dream is asking for, the book didn't resonate with me.