Carl Jung on Dreams & Symbols
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohk5TvaW6vs]
‘Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?’
~ Carl Jung, The Red Book
I’d spoken recently with a friend whose friend had recently crossed to the other side after a lengthy bout with cancer. She’d had a dream of her, a beautiful dream. Thinking of the Jungian dream workshops I’d attended, I reminded my friend that Jung’s premise was that everyone and everything in the dream is you, meaning every image in the dream is acting as a symbol of you, as an aspect of you.
Heavy, yes? But as we kicked it around in those terms, I’d seen it even more beautiful still, in that she was projecting her own absence of fear of death.
We’d also been given a used copy of Man and His Symbols as a wedding gift. A Jungian who taught at the healing institute I’d gone to long ago had us draw our own Archetypal figures and name them.
Upon further online exploration over the past week I’d discovered that Jung had also proposed that it was possible to actively engage characters in dream in conversation...in order to change a recurring dream, which process I’d learned as Lucid Dreaming, which try as I have...I’ve never achieved. A mere 10 mins:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8WuljiJFBI]
“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.”
“Dreams show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.”
“The whole of your Self is certainly an irrational entity, but this is just precisely yourself, which is meant to live as a unique and unrepeatable experience. Thus, whatever you find in your given disposition is a factor of life which must be taken into careful consideration.”
~ Carl Jung
FWIW: Carl Jung's 9 Rules of Dream Interpretation, 43 mins, as I’m unable watch.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlYQKh8_qlQ]
‘Carl Jung: An Introduction To Dream Analysis’, jungiantherapist.net
http://www.jungiantherapist.net/carl-jung-on-living-an-authentic-life/
“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.”
“Dreams show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.”
Now consider our Imperial rulers and owners (plus allies & ‘friends’), whose masked adaptive rational beings project their shadows onto others.
Current themes afoot:
~ No JCPOA or rewrite it, as Iran wants a nuclear bomb to nuke Israel
(which nation has ever dropped nuclear bombs?)
~ Russia is on the verge of invading Crimea again
~ Elections in ‘Our Backyard’ were deemed illegal before the voting, and therefore void
~ Sunni Muslims are Good; Shi’a Muslims are Evil
~ Nicolas Maduro is a dictator, as is ___ (fill in the blank)
~ The US supports the TPLF government over elected PM Aiby Ahmed
~ USian killings w/ impunity in the race/class wars
~ the coming war on China over the Uighurs and Taiwan
~ Palestinians get what they deserve
~ Assad gassed his people, so bomb Syria
~ Saudi Arabia and Israel bomb Yemen with impunity
...you get the gist; add your own if you'd like.
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
Thanks for the Jung
A fascinating trip into the dream world.
Sometimes dreams seem more real than waking
awareness.
i hear you on that!
i reckon it's because dreams are so adept at showing us who we are, even though they make us uncomfortable a lot of the time (at least for me).
i sure have met my Dark Side a lot, but haven't come close to taming it. Example: Many Blue Meanies self-castigations in the wee small hours, but then i was raised in shame and guilt. and so it goes, lol, as kurt vonnegut would say.
thanks for reading, QMS.
Jung might've better than Sigmund, buuuut...
...are you aware that serious psychologists shitcanned the lot of them decades ago? That was one of the firs things I learned as a formal student of psychology (if only the things I learned in high school and my freshman year of college were common knowledge, most of the Post-2014 NewTruth wouldn't even have made it out of the gate).
Everything we've been fighting for is based on The Enlightenment: People are fundamentally rational. Everything we value today rests on that truth, and fascism comes from a direct rejection of that...courtesy, ultimately, of that charlatan Freud, his pernicious daughter, and his exponentially more loathsome nephew.
Jung is at least colorful and entertaining, but then, so is astrology; he's not going to help us. Let's not sully the magic of dreams with his quackery.
"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it.'
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Madison Avenue is based on people being irrational
And they have been very successful.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
People are like computers...
...GIGO.
Saying that people are all fundamentally irrational just because you can destroy their minds with sufficient mistreatment and deliberate, malevolent targeting of their weaknesses is like saying that just because the same can be done to their bodies, people are all fundamentally dead.
Further, people depend upon trust, and there's nothing inherently irrational about being credulous, it just leaves you vulnerable to liars...which is reason enough we need to stop giving liars a pass (or even promoting it as "a valuable life skill", one of the most despicable trends I've seen in recent years, which is of course saying a LOT) and enthrone truth as as The Supreme Value.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
if by madison ave. you mean
advertising, it's very rational, as in masked egocentrics making you desire something, and sell it to you.
you may remember that the father of modern advertising PR and propaganda, was edward bernays,
Uncle Sigmund's nephew.
but then wasn't sigmund's belief that dreams were just wish fulfillment? which some wags took off with: 'but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?' ; )
No, the advertisers are indeed rational
It's the marks that are irrational.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
each to his or her own,
amigo. but you and carl use the terms 'rational and irrational' very differently.
serious psychologists? seriously? ack! ; )
Jung spoke of
rational and irrational functions. Tends to confuse even Jungian psychologists. Plus it's not devoid of sexism. Jung's rational functions are "thinking" and "feeling." Not too different from the "men are from Mars" and "women are from Venus" formulation.
independent thinking is essential.
Re posted list of "current memes" from some neoliberal politicos.
I'm tired of the same old people and their same old memes. Its sick and twisted to do anything other than avoid this kind of thinking as its caused so much destruction. We don't owe these has been politicians or their greedy agenda anything. Since they obviously could not care a shit about us or we here in the usa's people. The sooner they retire the better.
Money should be flowing to very much needed social programs, NOT more wars to make the politician and oligarch losers rich. War isnt a joke. It kills lots of innocent people.
you and i use language very
differently, although there are others here at c99 with whom i share a similar confusion
who are these, please?
my larger point was that thy in the list projected their fears onto others, including whole nations, given their failures to look within.
i guess i don't even know what 'independent thinking' is. but no, war is not a joke, but it is very expensive.
A pull-quote worth noting:
The project their fears onto others — including whole nations — given their failures to look within.
That is certainly the essence of the Inferior Human.
A nation that has a majority of inferior humans (lazy thinkers) suspends the world as it is. Progress will be slow or long delayed, and day to day life is rooted in tradition and established methods. The joys, sorrows, injustices, and tragedies of life are accepted as the nature of existence. Restless hearts and minds are soothed by a heavy blanket of Christianity, a religion rooted in the ancient past that prescribes obedience and supplication for divine intervention. This is what Western Philosophy hath wrought. It is these people who lift Inferior Leaders into power.
Inside of every human being lies a seed, a potential for living a considered and enlightened life. By shifting our gaze within, we quicken that seed. A higher awareness begins to grow and patterns begin to emerge until we finally accept personal responsibility for the world that we see around us. Their mindful decisions and actions, great or small, will begin to heal the world. This is what Eastern philosophy hath wrought. It is these Enlightened people who will elevate visionary Leaders into power.
Extinction hangs in the balance.
dupe
Thanks for the Jung
I still have the first book that got me acquainted with Jung in the late 70's, a large hardbound copy of Man and His Symbols, (great photos and illustrations)and at that time I scoured used bookstores finding his other books to add to my collection.
When money was short I'd bring to the store a box of books I thought would interest them and sometimes traded a half a dozen, or more, for one Jung book. At garage sales I'd buy books popular at the time just to use to trade for a Jung book I'd spotted in a bookstore (that accepted trades).
I haven't read him in some time, but I never stopped trying to go over my dreams when I first wake up. At times I kept a notepad by my bed to write them down as it happened, no interpretation, just what happened. I almost didn't write some down because I thought I'd never forget that dream but later on looking at the journal I found I'd either totally forgotten it, or small critical parts of it.
It was also interesting to look back on what was happening in my life at the time of those dreams and found it very valuable as to how I looked at then and the present.
When Bill Moyers did that series with Joseph Campbell "The Power of Myth" in 1988 my interest in Carl Jung was revived.
https://billmoyers.com/series/joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-1988/
This is getting too long and I haven't watched all of the 42 minute video yet but in the comments section someone posted "The 9 Rules of dream interpretation".
Carl Jung's 9 Rules of Dream Interpretation
In this video, I explore Carl Jung's ideas around dream analysis and dream interpretation. Jung was very open and flexible in approaching the mysterious nature of dreams in his psychiatric sessions with patients. Although there always has to remain an openness to the interpretation of dreams, Jung has outlined quite a few 'rules' that are based on his experience and conceptualization of the unconscious. These dream interpretation rules are like guidelines to keep us from getting lost in the mysterious nature of the unconscious psychic activity - that receive as dreams.
1. Take dreams as facts
2. Dreams become blurry, so remain humble in their presence
3. Reach mutual agreement and joint reflection
4. Remain open to constructing new dream theories
5. Establish the context of the dream by keeping close to the dream images themselve
6. Take a dream series over a single dream
7. Take dreams seriously
8. Interpretation requires exact knowledge of the conscious status-quo (context of individuals consciousness)
9. Gain an understanding of mythology and archetypal images
Thanks again.
whooosh, you have been
a devotée of jung! i'd only had the used hardcover copy of 'man and his symbols' i'd mentioned, but apparently mr. wd couldn't find it in our many bookshelves down cellar.
a friend dubbed us the whole joseph campbell series; it was quite a gift, and campbell was quite the seeker.
i'm glad for the cliff's notes of the 43 min video, as long videos give me vertigo.
to my mind, in these videos, the most important may have been the duality of anima/animus, reminding us once again that we are a bit yin and a bit yang, so to speak.
thank you for all of this, mi amigo!
Many layers in the dream state
some pass thru, some stick around
[video:https://youtu.be/pAdgJjf8L0o]
beautiful!
did you ever keep a dream journal? like aliasalias, i did for decades, and just a few words would bring back the dream. for some rather embarrassing reasons (what wakes me up in the night and in the morning), i don't keep a journal any longer.
Yes, it was a thing for many years
pen and pad on the night stand
wonder what ever became of that journal?
now it is as soon as my head hits the pillow at night
the dream scapes come back in sketchy fragments
of where it was the brain went in the nights
before awakening
good on ya;
here's hoping it will provide more defined dreams. ; )
I wrote a lot of code in my dreams!
I kept a steno pad and pen on the nightstand. In the morning I would furiously write it down before it faded from memory.
I did my best work sleeping (no distractions?).
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
case in point:
how many billions per year does the US give to its 'friend' Israel to defend that nation from Iranian nukes??
via electronic intifada: “Terror” designation of rights organizations should not deter US-based activism', nov. 25
.and so on...
on edit:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMz8pgua_0]