Carl Jung: Ten Quotations about Dreams
(The Axeman Cometh?)
The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not—which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.
It is on the basis of theory, for instance, that I expect dreams to have a meaning.
I cannot prove in every case that this is so, for there are dreams which the doctor and the patient simply do not understand.
The Practical use of Dream Analysis (1936)
Page 318
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.
Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work.
But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.
This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 125
The evolutionary stratification of the Psyche is more clearly discernible in the dream than in the conscious mind.
In the dream, the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to instincts, which derive from the most primitive levels of nature.
Therefore, through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of nature from which it all too easily departs, and the patient can be led back to the natural law of his own being.
The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1933)
Page 351
Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that “big” dreams are dreamed only by “big” men -medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
The real difficulty begins -when the dreams do not point to anything tangible, and this they do often enough, especially when they hold anticipations of the future. I do not mean that such dreams are necessarily prophetic, merely that they feel the way, they “reconnoitre.” These dreams contain inklings of possibilities and for that reason can never be made plausible to an outsider.
First: I am thankful to Carl Jung for his book – “Answer to Job.” God answers Job in the last five chapters of the Book of Job.
This section of the Bible – as a unit – contains science – theology – and psychology.
For me to have a relationship with the greatness of God is therapy.
This section is the most high-powered section of the Bible –
according to my experience of studying the Bible.
Second: I am thankful to Carl Jung for his book – “Psychology and the East.”
I would have liked to be sitting at the table with psychiatrists
listening to Carl Jung tell how the thinking of India and China
is different from the thinking of the West.
This information is enough to revolutionize
psychotherapy and pharmacology.
For example: To say – with the Orient – “I am divine” –
is much different from saying – with the West –
“I am a sinner saved by Grace.”
When I say: “I am divine” – I call this
“Momentum Therapy.”
Third: I am thankful for the book – “On Jung” – by Anthony Stephens.
When I read about the psychology of an individual –
from birth to death – I am glad that I am still
alive to read the book.
The book is one of the most inspiring books
for persons of grandparent age – that I have read.
Fourth: The picture of Toni Wolff shows that she knew what she was doing.
Her eyes reveal a hard glare straight at you.
Her crossed legs show authority.
Her extended finger points out her individuality.
We can criticize people –
Then – when we meet them –
We are enchanted by their body language.
Last: Since I am a male –
I would like for Carl Jung to have explained
how he could have intimate partnership
with a wife and a concubine at the same time.
If I search his teachings – I will find the answer.
If you know that the woman has the animus –
and the man has the anima – you know how
to establish unusual rapport with women.