Psychology of Dreams. Anthology Table of Contents Carl Gustav Jung. Function and analysis of dreams.

Among these reasons are most frequent falling, flying, stalking wild beasts or enemies, appearance in public places in the nude or half-naked form or in ridiculous clothes, the state of haste or lost in a crowd of unorganized, unarmed combat in a state or a worthless weapon debilitating runaway to nowhere . The typical infantile motif is a dream with sprouting up indefinitely large or indefinitely reduced to small, or the transition from one to another - that we often see, for example, in Lewis Carroll in "Alice in Wonderland." But it should be emphasized that these motives should be considered in the context of the dream, and not as a self-explanatory codes.

Repeated sleep - a special phenomenon. There are cases when people see the same dream from early childhood to old age. Dream of this kind is an attempt to compensate for any single defect in respect of the dreamer's life, or it can be accomplished because of a traumatic moment that left a definite bias, prejudice, caused some damage. Sometimes the dream can warn you about some important event in the future.

For several years I had a dream motif, in which I "opened" in their home living space, whose existence is not suspected. Sometimes it was the room they lived in my long-dead parents, which my father, to my surprise, equipped laboratories, and there studied comparative anatomy of fish, and his mother kept the hotel for visitors to the ghost. As a rule, unknown to me until now a guest wing was of an ancient historical building, long forgotten, and yet, I have inherited property. Inside was an interesting antique furniture, and towards the end of this series of dreams, I found an old library with unknown books. In the end, the last dream, I opened one of the books and found an abundance of well executed symbolic drawings. I awoke with a pounding heart with excitement.

A little earlier, before I saw the final dream of the series, I ordered a bookseller one of the classic compilations of medieval alchemists. Looking through the literature, I found a quote, which had, as I thought, the connection with the early Byzantine alchemy, and wanted to test it. A few weeks after I saw in a dream an unknown book, the packet came from a bookseller. It was parchment is dated XVI century. It was illustrated with charming drawings of the symbolic, which immediately reminded me of those pictures that I saw in a dream. In terms of re-opening of the principles of alchemy, the incoming part of me rethink psychology motif repeated dream sufficiently clear. The house itself was a symbol of my identity and conscious of its area of ​​interest, and an unknown extension was an anticipation of the new areas of interest and exploration, of which the consciousness of the time nothing was in charge. More of this dream - and took over 30 years - I've never seen.

I began this work, noting the difference between a sign and symbol. The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while the symbol is always greater than its immediate obvious meaning. Characters also have a natural and spontaneous in origin. None of genius did not sit down with pen or brush in his hand, saying: "Now I invent a symbol." It is impossible to rationalize the idea of ​​reaching its logical or intentionally, and then give it the "symbolic" form. No matter how fantastic you can snap to fasten on the idea, it would still be a sign associated with conscious thought behind it, but not the symbol, hinting at something else unknown. In dreams, symbols occur spontaneously, as dreams are obtained, not invented, so they are a major source of our knowledge about symbolism.

But it should be noted that the characters are shown not only in dreams. They occur in a variety of psychiatric manifestations. There are symbolic thoughts and feelings, symbolic actions and situations. Sometimes it seems that even inanimate objects cooperate with the unconscious part of the formation of symbolic images. These are numerous, well-attested cases of stopping the clock at the time of the death of their owners. As an example we can point to the case of the pendulum clock of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci, which stopped when the emperor died. Other common cases - mirrors, giving the crack pattern, falling at the time of death, or unexplained small breaks in the house where someone has come an emotional shock or crisis. Even if the skeptics refuse to believe such reports, stories of this kind will still arise and multiply, and that alone should serve as proof of their psychological significance.

There are many characters that are by their nature and origin are not individual but collective. This is mainly religious images. The believer believes that they divine origin, they are given to man by revelation. An atheist or skeptic will claim that they simply invented, contrived, but both would be wrong. It is true skeptic believes that religious symbols and concepts are the subjects of the most careful and quite conscious design for centuries. Equally true - so says the believer - that their origins are so deeply buried in the mysteries of the past, it seems obvious that their vnechelovecheskoe origin. In fact, they are "collective representations" coming from the primeval dreams and creative fantasies. As such, these images represent the spontaneity and certainly by no means intentional inventions.

As I will argue below, this fact has a direct and important in the interpretation of dreams. If you think a symbolic dream, then obviously you will interpret it differently than a person who believes that the energy of thought or emotion is known in advance and only "in disguise" sleep. In this case, the interpretation of sleep has almost no sense, because you realize just what was known in advance.

For this reason, I always told students: "Learn everything you can about the symbolism, but forget all that when interpreting a dream." This advice is important in practice, and from time to time I remind myself that I could never well enough to understand someone else's dream and interpret it correctly. I do this to check the flow of their own associations and reactions that may begin to prevail over the turmoil and uncertain fluctuations in the patient. Since the analyst is most important to perceive as accurately as possible the specific meaning of sleep (ie, the contribution that the unconscious brings to mind), it is necessary to investigate sleep very carefully.

When I worked with Freud, I had a dream that can illustrate this. I dreamed that I was "home" on the second floor of a cozy living room, furnished in the style of the XVIII century. I'm surprised because I've never seen this room, and I wonder what it is like the first floor. I go down and find that there is fairly dark, but the room itself contains wall panels and furniture dating from the XVI century. And perhaps even earlier. My surprise and curiosity grow. I want to see what's inside the house.

I went down to the basement, find the door, followed by a stone staircase leading into a large basement room. Paul is lined with large stone slabs, the walls look very ancient. I am looking into the mortar and find that it is mixed with broken bricks. It is obvious that the walls are the Roman era. My excitement is growing. In a corner of a slab of stone I see a ring of iron. Stretch out the stove top - in front of me another narrow flight of stairs leading down into a kind of cave, seemingly prehistoric tomb. At the bottom are two skulls, some bones and a little broken pottery. Then I wake up.

If Freud in the analysis of this dream followed my method of studying its specific context and associations, you would have heard a very long history. But I fear that would have rejected it as an attempt to escape from a problem that really was his own. In fact, a dream to provide a summary of my life and be more specific - my mind. I grew up in the house, whose age was 200 years old, the furniture was three hundred years ago, and by the time my significant spiritual achievement was to study the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer. The greatest news is the opening of Charles Darwin. Shortly before that I was still living with medieval notions of their parents, who have ruled the world, and men divine omnipotence and providence.

Now, this view has gone. My Christianity has become very relative after a meeting with Eastern religions and Greek philosophy. For this reason, on the first floor all looked so dark, quiet and uninhabited.

In those days my historical interests have evolved from initial studies of comparative anatomy and paleontology while working as an assistant in the anatomical institute. I dragged finds of fossil hominids, including Neanderthals much discussed and highly controversial skull of Pithecanthropus Dubois. In fact, this was my real association in a dream, but I did not dare mention the turtles, skeletons and bones to Freud, because he knew that this topic is better left untouched. He lived implicit idea that I have a feeling his early death. He made this conclusion from the fact that I have expressed explicit interest in the mummified corpse found in the so-called town Bleykeller in Bremen, which we visited together in 1909 on his way to a ship going to America.

That's why I did not want to appear with his own ideas. Too much impressed by the recent experience, which showed almost unbridgeable gap between our views. I do not want to lose his position and friendship by opening his own world, which I thought would be strange to him. Feeling very insecure, I almost automatically lied to him about my "free association" in order to avoid the impossible task acquainted with my very personal and totally different internal structure.

Should apologize for this rather long story about the delicate situation in which I found myself telling my dream to Freud. But this is a good example of the difficulties faced by anyone who deals with the analysis of real dreams. Much depends on the difference in personality type analyst and analysand.

I soon realized that Freud looks at me some incompatible desires.

To test, I suggested that the skull which I saw, could relate to some members of my family, whose death for some reason I could wish for. This was welcomed, but I'm not satisfied with this, in fact, a false move. When I tried to find suitable answers to the question of Freud, he was suddenly startled thought on the role played by the subjective factor in the psychological sense. My epiphany was so stunning that I thought only about how to get out of this difficult situation, and found nothing better than to simply lie. Moral considerations have given way to the threat of a major quarrel with Freud, which I absolutely did not want for many reasons.

The essence of the enlightenment was also understood that my dream makes sense in myself, in my life and my world, contrary to theoretical constructs other external reason, constructed according to its own goals and objectives. It was a dream not of Freud, and mine, and I like when a flash of light, he realized its importance.

This example illustrates the most important in the analysis of dreams. Analysis itself is not so much a technique that can be learned and then applied according to the rules of the multicast as a dialectical exchange between two persons. If his conduct mechanically, individual psychological identity is lost and therapeutic problem is reduced to a simple question: whose will would prevail - the patient or the analyst? For the same reason I stopped the practice of hypnosis because they do not wish to impose their will on others. I wanted to healing was based on the personality of the patient, not by my suggestions, which may have only a transitory value. I have sought to protect and preserve the dignity and freedom of their patients, so that they could live according to their own desires. In the episode with Freud for the first time I realized that before you build general theories about man and his soul, we must learn more about the real human device with which we deal.

Individual - this is the only reality. The further we move away from it to the abstract ideas about Homo sapiens, the more often fall into error. Nowadays, social upheaval and rapid social change on an individual is necessary to know much more than we know, since so much depends on his mental and moral qualities. But if we want to see things in proper perspective, we need to understand the past of man as well as its present. For this reason, understanding the myths and symbols is essential.