It has been very helpful to me to have learned that dreams give us essential information about ourselves. I say “very helpful” but “life-changing” is more accurate. It was almost 30 years ago that I began meeting with a Jungian psychotherapist, became acquainted with Carl Jung’s theories, and began reading books to augment what I was learning in therapy. Dreams, through their symbols and stories, provide us with information from the unconscious, self-knowledge that becomes integrated with our conscious personalities, making us more aware and more whole persons.
As is true of books and articles about all topics, some are much better than others. As I’ve said in other posts, Jungian psychotherapist John Sanford’s books are excellent. Another Jungian psychotherapist and author whose writing I respect is Robert A. Johnson. Like Sanford, Johnson effectively writes about Jungian ideas, as well as his own and other people’s experiences with dream work. Here’s an excerpt from Johnson’s book Inner Work: “For every symbol in a dream the unconscious is ready to provide the associations that explain the symbol’s meaning. The unconscious contains within itself the references for every symbol that it generates; therefore the symbolic language of the unconscious can be decoded. Our task begins with waking up to the associations that spontaneously flow out of us in response to symbols.”
I recently remembered two dreams that occurred within one day of each other and a friend of mine appeared in both dreams. After recording the dreams in my journal, I thought of my associations to my friend, including what I consider to be her positive qualities and also those aspects of her personality that don’t appeal to me. After doing that, I felt like I understood what the dreams might be telling me about myself. The dream image of my friend was not about her; rather, the dream used her image to symbolically represent certain aspects of my personality that the dream wanted to bring to my attention.
As I said earlier, I worked with a Jungian therapist. I think it can be difficult for a person to do dream work without the assistance, at least initially, of a therapist who has expertise in this area. I highly recommend doing this. It is life-changing.