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Jungian Dream Interpretation


From: Jung's Theory of Dreams

Jung vs Freud


Like Freud, Jung believed that dreams are important gateways to unknown parts of ourself. After this point of agreement the approaches of the two men differed considerably in their theories and approaches to dream analysis.

For Jung dreams are an expression of the personal unconscious through the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Whereas Freud believed that dreams were frequently distorted in a subconscious attempt at repression, Jung believed that any such distortion was usually unintentional. The dream was a direct message from the personal unconscious.

Amplification


Freudian analysis was based on free association, a technique that led ever further from the original dream. Jung preferred to stay with the dream symbols themselves and analyse each one in detail - a process of amplification. The dreamer was encouraged to "brainstorm" all the different symbolic associations for each aspect of the dream. These would include personal, cultural and archetypal associations.

As an example, say a dream included birds. Possible associations with this symbol would be flight, freedom, cage, etc.

Active Imagination


Another stage of Jungian dream analysis is active imagination. Here, the dreamer mentally evokes a character from the dream and asks it questions. Through this approach the unconscious can be questioned directly.

The various symbolic associations would then be examined and the most important ones combined to give a holistic view of the dream's meaning as related to the individual's personality.