The Purpose of Dreams
In many indigenous traditions across continents, dreams have always been considered meaningful and important, not only for the person dreaming but, first and foremost, for the community. Dreams are messages from the Spirits, from the Ancestors, or from the Gods. They foretell dangers and reveal pathways. Thus, dreams ought to be taken seriously, and only Elders or trained shamans are generally considered apt at decoding the messages. From this standpoint, dreams are understood to be as real as our “external reality”, and are perceived as reflecting the actions our souls engage in. This could be why we are so shaken when we awaken from a dreaming of situations we consciously find unfathomable, unimaginable, terrifying or deeply immoral.
Dream analysis features prominently in the psychodynamic tradition. C.G. Jung conceives of the dream as “an autonomous and meaningful product of psychic activity” which can and should be analyzed systematically (Jung in The analysis of dreams in CW4, 1909, par.65). For Jung, dreams are the result of a logical psychological process that aims at working through complex conscious and unconscious tendencies in order to help resolve ongoing tensions and struggles manifesting in the individual psyche. Dreams can therefore help us understand what it is we are experiencing from a deeper, more creative angle which bypasses the moral censorship of our ego-consciousness.
When and why do we dream?
Dream activity is the most intense during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of sleep. Typically, adults experience three to four times an REM phase each night, but children and young adults experience greater frequency than older adults. That said, according to Hans Dieckmann (in Methods in Analytical Psychology, 1991, p.109), we spend about one-fourth of our sleep time dreaming, a necessary and healthy process given that dreams appear to hold “special psychological and physiological significance for the healthy functioning of our psychophysical life”. This means that dreams play a key role in helping the conscious ego engage with unconscious patterns of emotion or behaviour that tend to disrupt the flow of life.
Dreams can be compensatory or explanatory, or they can help us process some deep, complex emotional material in times of conscious growth.
The Practice of Dream Analysis
Dream analysis became a central focus of Freud’s psychoanalytical approach at the turn of the 20th century. As Jung summarizes in The analysis of dreams (CW4, 1909, par.67-70), Freud was interested in understanding why “this particular person dream[s] this particular thing [at this particular time]” and argued that dreams represent the fulfilment of a repressed wish. Freud distinguished the manifest content of the dream (i.e. the literal images and actions presented in the dream) from the latent content (i.e. the underlying meaning of the dream images). Freud’s main approach to unpacking the latent content of the dream was to use free association so as to identify what repressed thought, emotion or action maybe hiding behind the dream images.
For Jung, the dream is not merely a reflection of repressed content, but serves a specific function and holds a symbolic meaning that needs to be approached by staying as close as possible to the dream images and not lose sight of them by musing over “irrelevant” free associations. To quote Jung (in Man and his symbols, 1964, pp.13-14):
“A man may dream of inserting a key in a lock, of wielding a heavy stick, or of breaking down a door with a battering ram. Each of these can be regarded as a sexual allegory. But the fact that his unconscious for its own purposes has chosen one of these specific images – it may be the key, the stick, or the battering ram – is also of major significance. The real task is to understand why the key has been preferred to the stick, or the stick to the ram. And sometimes this might even lead one to discover that it is not the sexual act at all that is represented, but some quite different psychological point.”
Jung’s approach to dream analysis in practice is like a circumambulation, a circling around the dream image with a clear focus on the specific features of the dream, a respect for what the dream says as it is (as opposed to what our own projections may want or not want the dream to say).
This is why there is so much more to dream analysis than simply checking what the dream images are associated with in a dictionary of symbols. The meaning of the dream is intimately attached to the dreamer’s own unique psyche, and broad generalizations or generic interpretations overlook the unique context of the dream and of the dreamer. Dream analysis from a Jungian perspective is not a standalone practice, but is part of the deep psychotherapeutic exploration, the soulful work that aims to reconnect and realign ego and Self.
