The Dream World, Interpretation and Amplification

Maybe you wonder why I concentrate more on C G Jung's work with dreams, instead of Freud's. The reason behind my choice, depends on my earlier studies of the Jungian Psychology. I found his psychology very interesting, and I believe Jung was before his time. Today, the Jungian psychology has got greater importance among Psychologists and in Psychotherapy. I totally understand why. I began to study my dreams more thoroughly during my studies and afterwards. It has been an uplifting experience.

"Everything in me was searching for something yet unknown."

C.G. Jung

When Jung worked with a dream, the starting point for him was not the interpretation, but the amplification - to go inside the atmosphere in the dream and to establish its mood, but also in detail its images and symbols in a way so that the dream itself would be amplified. Then the impression reinforces the impact it make in the conscious mind.
According to Jung's teaching, every symbol includes more than one can say about it. He wanted to investigate its implications in an archetypal lighting, and to let the symbols reveal their various facets for the conscious mind.

In Jungian therapy it is common to deal with a dream in three stages:

• First one must establish the context of the dreamer's life in order to be able to understand something of its personal importance.

• Then the cultural context needs to be defined, because a dream has always a connection to the environment and time in which the dream appeared.

• Finally, the archetypal context is explored in order to let the dream be put incoherence with the human life in its whole, because the dream on the deepest level is a link between us and our ancestors ancient experiences.  

In practice, it's seldom possible to keep these three stages apart, because of the interaction between the personal, cultural and archetypal components of the experiences, and even the perception of its meaning. Jung was humble about his work and confessed in 1929: "I really don't know how dreams emerge, and I am not sure if my way of dealing with dreams even deserves to be called a method."
Most of Freud's hypothesis have been proven unsustainable, while Jung's have survived the trials of the time.

"The philosophical criticism has helped me to see that every psychology-even my own-has the nature of a subjective confession."

C.G. Jung

In my next post I will look at the compensatory function of dreams.