Dreams & the Unconscious

There are three ways to learn Psychology - read Greek mythology, read Jung, and by watching, watching is best -- Fritz Kunkel, analyst

So what are dreams? Dreams are the unconscious both processing the days events AND giving guidance and advice on your life/soul journey -- if you but learn to listen.

There is is plenty of data both ancient and modern on meaning & use of dreams. Shamen & healers have been dream consultants since the dawn of time.

Carl Jung was a pioneer in dream analysis but even he was data mining & interpreting ancient myths, legends & cultural folk tales for his archetypes of the collective unconscious.

Jung saw the human psyche as made up of layers or strata. First is the conscious mind. The ego is the term given to the organization of the conscious mind, being composed of conscious perceptions, memories, thoughts, and feelings.

Those mental contents that the ego does not recognize fall into the Personal Unconscious. The Personal Unconscious is made up of suppressed and forgotten memories, traumas, etc. All psychic contents which are either too weak to reach consciousness, or which are actively suppressed by the ego, because the latter is threatened by them.

Thus far Jung is in agreement with his old teacher Freud, in supposing the existence of the Unconscious mind, which includes all that is not immediately accessible to everyday waking consciousness (i.e. the Conscious mind or Ego). Conscious and Unconscious are thus the two opposed parts of the psyche.

Jung's great contribution however was to divide the Unconscious itself into two very unequal levels: the more superficial Personal, and the deeper Collective, Unconscious.

Everyone has their own Personal Unconscious. The Collective Unconscious in contrast is universal. It cannot be built up like one's personal unconscious is; rather, it predates the individual. It is the repository of all the religious, spiritual, and mythological symbols and experiences. Its primary structures - the deep structures of the psyche, in other words - Jung called "Archetypes"; a later-Hellenistic Platonic and Augustinian Christian term that referred to the spiritual forms which are the pre-existent prototypes of the things of the material world. Interpreting this idea psychologically, Jung stated that these archetypes were the conceptual matrixes or patterns behind all our religious and mythological concepts, and indeed, our thinking processes in general.

Actually, Jung's choice of the term "archetype" is in some senses misleading. For in the late Platonic tradition, the archetypes con-stitute a totally spiritual reality; the original perfect spiritual reality or realities which generates the imperfect physical realities; the "thoughts in the mind of God" of Stoicism and Platonic Christianity.

But Jung interprets his archetypes in a biological sense. He says (no doubt due to the Darwinian influence of his age) that they are "inherited", and that they "have existed since remotest times". Yet even "remotest times" can still be located temporally. Such times may have occurred an enormously long time ago, but they are still temporal. Plato and his successors would never speak of the Ideas or Archetypes or Spiritual Prototypes coming into being in some primordial past; for they saw these as spiritual realities, and therefore eternal; beyond time altogether.

For Jung then, the Collective Unconscious is not, as many of his popularisers claim, a kind of "Universal Mind" or metaphysical reality, like the Platonic World of Forms, but rather an ultimately biological reality. The Spiritual concepts of Platonism are not seen as metaphysical, but biological, or rather, psycho-biological.

Now, it cannot be denied that there is a subphysical (the biological subconscious) as well as a supraphysical (the psychic unconscious). Yet care must be taken not to confuse the two. And it seems to me logical to assume that the motifs Jung was concerned with - the psycho-spiritual forces of transformation - pertain to the supraphysical rather than the subphysical.

Certainly, later in life Jung downplayed the "biological" aspect of his psychology, and even discarded it altogether, preferring to see the archetypes in a more Platonic sense of preexistent spiritual entities. And in his voluminous alchemical writings he was more concerned with the dynamics of the psyche, and its transformation, than with explaining how the psyche or the archetypes came about in the first place. So it would be unfair to judge Jung on these grounds. Jung himself obviously did not consider abstract theories concerning the metaphysical or cosmological origin of the archetypes as important a practical here-and-now understanding of how the psyche worked, and how spiritual transformation and the growth to greater wholeness occur.

Here at Integrated Magic I can work both with your archetypes & dreams in restoring your balance & equilibrium. I can show you new & powerful techniques to lead your life in joy & w/o fear.

Being able to understand & interpret your dreams can unleash powerful streams of creativity from within your being. Many times it can resolve old issues & old habit patterns in your life. It can also lead to new, exciting & challenging break throughs & insights.

Want to delve into your dreams and find new insights to a more expanded, empowered, interesting and more fulfilling life? Integrated Magic can help you achieve it. Contact me.

References & Links

Carl Jung- Wikipedia

Collective Unconscious- Wikipedia

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Wikipedia

Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist Tells Her Extraordinary Story and Shows You How To Tap Your Own Inner Wisdom By Judith Orloff, M.D.

Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations by Robert A. Johnson