Civilization in Transition

Jung: Concerning Ourselves With Dreams

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on September 9, 2010

To concern ourselves with dreams is a way of reflecting on ourselves-a way of self-reflection. It is not our ego-consciousness reflecting on itself; rather, it turns its attention to the objective actuality of the dream as a communication or message from the unconscious, unitary soul of humanity. It reflects not on the ego but on the self; it recollects that strange self, alien to the ego, which was ours from the beginning, the trunk from which the ego grew. It is alien to us because we have estranged ourselves from it through the aberrations of the conscious mind.

“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 318

“the Dream Is a Little Hidden Door….”

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 13, 2010


The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.

For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego.

Its essence is limitation, even though it reach to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.

There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.

The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 304