‘This sea of
sleep, deep in the foundations of human nature, has its high tide at night:
every slumber indicates only that it washes a shore from which it retreats in
waking hours. What remains are the dreams; however marvellously they are
formed, they are no more than the lifeless remains from the womb of the depths.
The living remains in him and secure in him: the ship of waking life, and the
fish as the silent booty in the nets of artists.’[1]
Walter
Benjamin suggests that dreams are lifeless remains, but I would say that
interpretation gives these remains a new life, one that can support us with our
creative process. This is about allowing dreams to enrich and influence the
creative process. It is not about “using” dreams. We tend to reduce things to
their use value. A self-help book will be useful to us; it will help us
eliminate our problems and lead more fulfilling lives. Sometimes though, a
self-help book surprises us. It says something that we did not expect and yet
it changes your outlook on life. One such book that had a profound influence on
me was Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul: How to Add Depth and Meaning to Your
Everyday Life.
Moore’s
approach was to find the depth and meaning in our problems rather than
eliminate them.[2] The book
was about nourishing the soul, ‘“Soul” is not a thing, but a quality or a
dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value,
relatedness, heart, and personal substance. I do not use the word here as an
object of religious belief or as something to do with immortality. When we say
that something or someone has soul, we know what we mean, but it is difficult
to specify exactly what that meaning is,’[3]
We could say
that dreams are soulful or originate in the soul, hence my reluctance to
ascribe use value to them. One thing I will say about dreams is that they
operate with a wild and untamed logic that can be disturbing to the rational
mind. In Man and his Symbols Carl Jung wrote that, ‘One cannot afford to
be naïve when dealing with dreams. They originate in a spirit that is not quite
human, but is rather a breath of nature – a spirit of the beautiful and
generouse as well as of the cruel goddess.’[4]
Jung suggested that through the civilising process,
‘… we have divided our consciousness from the deeper instinctive strata
of the human psyche, and even ultimately from the somatic basis of the psychic
phenomenon. Fortunately, we have not lost these basic instinctive strata; they
remain part of the unconscious, even though they may express themselves only in
the form of dream images.’[5]
Jung
explained that these instinctive strata of the psyche play an important part in
the compensating function of dreams, ‘In this respect, dream symbols are the
essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the
human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so
that it learns to understand again the forgotten language of the instincts.’[6]
Often, like a
self-help book that says something completely different to what we expect, a
dream will communicate something we do not want to hear. It compensates for our
conscious attitude. Whilst I was writing this, I had one such dream:
I am in a
rowing boat with four other people. The boat is almost round like a coracle but
is made of wood. There are three oar holes for each person, and you have to use
the right oar hole to go in a straight line. We are practicing for a race. We
practice numerous times until we are ready for the race. When it comes to the
race, I cannot remember which oar hole to use and we go round in circles. We
get nowhere and loose the race.
The dream
seems to be saying that my inability to choose the right oar hole was resulting
in me going round in circles. I need to pick a niche and stick to it. I have
several artistic projects on the go as well as writing this blog. The dream was
telling me to focus on one project or I would get nowhere, I would literally go
round in circles. The dream reminded me of the Tarot card The Chariot. Both
horses have to be pulling in the same direction for progress to be made.
I attempted
to interpret this dream in other ways, but nothing made any sense. In the end I
reluctantly conceded that I had too much clutter in my brain from different
ideas and projects and that I needed to focus on one. The dream was telling me
to focus on one thing only and see it through to the finish line.
I try to follow
the method of dream interpretation developed by Carl Jung called amplification.
This is a process of finding personal and collective analogies and associations
that remain close to different dream motifs, amplifying them to the point where
their meaning becomes comprehensible to the conscious mind. Sigmund Freud used
a method of dream interpretation called free association. Jolande Jacobi
observes that in contrast to the Freudian method, amplification, ‘is not an
unbroken chain of causally connected associations leading backward, but a
process by which the dream content is broadened and enriched with the help of
analogous images.’[7]
For Freud the
dream was a form of wish fulfilment, ‘I believe that the conscious wish is a
dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish which
reinforces it.’[8]
Carl Jung on the other hand thought that dreams were a form of compensation
from the unconscious, a means of producing psychic balance, ‘I was never able
to agree with Freud that the dream is a “façade” behind which its meaning lies
hidden – a meaning already known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from
consciousness. To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbours no intention
to deceive, but expresses something as best it can.’[9]
Freud
suggested that there was a dream censor that conceals this wish fulfilment, ‘It
is in fact the wish-fulfilment that has already induced us to separate dreams
into two groups. We have found some dreams that were plainly wish-fulfilments;
and others in which wish-fulfilment could not be recognised, and was frequently
concealed by every available means. In this latter class of dreams we
recognised the influence of the dream censor.’[10] Jung
suggested that for Freud, this censor made dream images misleading in order to
deceive consciousness about the actual subject of the dream, hence protecting
sleep.[11]
In Psychology and Alchemy Jung
suggests that amplification naturally occurs in series of dreams,
‘… the
dream-motifs always return after certain intervals to definite forms, whose
characteristic it is to define a centre. And as a matter of fact, the whole
process revolves around a central point or some arrangement around a centre,
which may in certain circumstances appear even in the initial dreams. As
manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams circulate or circumambulate
round the centre, drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in
distinctness and scope.’[12]
Jung realised that this naturally
occurring process of amplification could be extended to aid the interpretation
of dreams. Jacobi writes that,
‘In
Jung’s amplification method the various dream motifs are enriched by analogous,
related images, symbols, myths, etc., which throw light on their diverse
aspects and possible meanings, until their significance stands out in full
clarity.’[13]
Jung writes that,
‘The amplificatio is always appropriate when
dealing with some obscure experience which is so vaguely adumbrated that it
must be enlarged and expanded by being set in a psychological context in order
to be understood at all. That is why,
in analytic psychology, we resort to amplification in the interpretation of
dreams, for a dream is too slender a hint to be understood until enriched by
the stuff of association and analogy and thus amplified to the point of
intelligibility.’[14]
Jolande
Jacobi suggests that isolated dreams can seldom be interpreted with any
accuracy, ‘Interpretation can become relatively certain only in a series of
dreams: each successive dream corrects the mistakes made in interpreting its
predecessors.’[15]
These dreams radiate or cluster around a centre of meaning.[16]
[1]
Walter
Benjamin, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem.” In Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, edited by M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 399.
[2] Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: How to Add
Depth and Meaning to Your Everyday Life, (London: Piatkus, 1992), 6.
[3] Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: How to Add
Depth and Meaning to Your Everyday Life, (London: Piatkus, 1992), 6.
[4] Carl G. Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” in
ed. Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 52.
[5] Carl G. Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” in ed.
Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 52.
[6] Carl G. Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” in
ed. Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, (London: Arkana, 1990), 52.
[7] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1973), 84.
[8] Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans.
A.A. Brill (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1919), 438.
[9] C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
(London: Fontana Press, 1995), p. 185.
[10] Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans.
A.A. Brill (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1919), 436.
[13] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 86.
[14] C.G. Jung, Psychology
and Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull
(London: Routledge, 1993), 289.
[15] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 76.
[16] Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G. Jung (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1973), 76.
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