Dreams in analytical psychology

Abstract

Dreams have always been an essential part of human culture and history. They are also one of the corner stones of analytical psychology. At first Jung practiced classical Freudian psychoanalysis, but he soon discovered that when analyzing dreams, Freud’s method of free association leads away from the content of the dream to the patient’s complexes. Although this has its practical applications, Jung thought that the true meaning of the dream was missed. He soon came to the conclusion that dreams are not masked wish-fulfillment. He saw dreams as a natural phenomenon without any mechanism of deceiving. He interpreted them as compensating functions of the unconscious, which is why he came to the conclusion that their true meaning can only be discovered by the dreamer. For this reason he developed his own methods of focused association and amplification of the dream material through different cultural material, such as fairy tales, myths, symbolism, literature and science, as well as his so-called “no theory approach”. The practical example shows how this approach is used in practice, how dreams are used to gain access to the disassociated traumatized memories and how they help reintegrate the lost part of the self.