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Dreams have always fascinated us and invited us to wonder about their meaning. Ancient cultures revered dreams as messages from the gods — we’ve always intuited that dreams come from a realm beyond and contain profound insights.
Most modern schools of dreamwork follow the theories pioneered by C. G. Jung. Jung’s focus on dreamwork as a tool for psychospiritual development and his rigorous approach created a way of engaging dreams that is both practical and profound, and has continued to be vitally relevant.
Jung believed that dreams come from the unconscious. He felt they communicated unique perspectives that can move us forward, get us unstuck, and help us grow. Dreams contain the wisdom of the unconscious and they nudge us nightly toward the fullest version of ourselves.
There is a catch, however. The dream maker doesn’t have access to the directed thinking of consciousness. It communicates in symbol, image, metaphor, and emotion. Learning the language of dreams takes practice, but it’s a skill that can yield rich dividends.
A Dream of a Gold Watch
Peter was a physician in his 50’s. After a long career, he felt burnt out and disillusioned. Beginning in adolescence, he had worked hard to get into a good college, then into medical school, then to make it through residency, and then to be a good doctor. Now, all that effort seemed a bit empty. What could give his life direction and meaning as he neared retirement and left behind the strivings of the first part of life? Around this time, he had the following dream:
I’m holding my gold watch and notice that one of the tiny screws has come out. While I try to find it, several other pieces of the watch fall off and I realize I will need to take it to a watchmaker. There are two old men who fix watches. They have set up their shop in a hotel room. They are irascible and taciturn. They look at the watch and tell me that it’s a cheap movement and not worth fixing. I point out that the case is made of gold. They tell me that it’s just gold plate. I point out to them the 14- karat stamp, but they tell me that is only true of a small part. Most of it is just gold plate. They hand me my watch back in many pieces. The crystal is cracked, and it wasn’t before I brought it in. I complain to them that they cracked the crystal, but they insist I gave it to them like that. I am leaving with it in a plastic bag, upset that my watch is in pieces and that they don’t understand its value.
Begin by Gathering Associations
Jung was clear that dreams cannot be understood without the associations of the dreamer. Dream dictionaries provide set meanings for common dream symbols, but these do not consider the personal significance that any given element might have. What matters is what the image means to you.
Therefore, begin working with your dream by making a list of key dream elements, and then note the memories, feelings, and associations connected with each one. You’re looking for the essence of the person or thing, so there’s no need for a lengthy list. A few short sentences that feel emotionally resonant will usually suffice.
Peter noted that the watch in the dream was one that he purchased for himself with money his grandparents gave him after he graduated from college and was headed to medical school. His grandparents had been children of immigrants and had longed to have a child or grandchild become a physician. Peter had finally fulfilled this ancestral dream. The watch was an image of the culmination of several generations of striving and ambition. It represented academic and professional achievement and the values he had inherited from his family and that had guided him through the first half of life.
Find the New Perspective Being Offered
It is difficult to interpret our own dreams because the dream maker has a very different view of things than does our conscious mind. It might tell us something we would never have considered on our own. It might even tell us something that is hard for us to hear because it challenges cherished assumptions.
Dreams will always tell us something we don’t know – or don’t want to know. Peter woke from the dream and was certain that it related to a recent interaction at work in which he felt that others were trying to take advantage of him. The dream seemed to portray a familiar story of being unseen and undervalued, but this understanding didn’t bring anything new to conscious awareness. If we wake from a dream and think we already know what it means as Peter did, we can be pretty sure that we haven’t received the dream’s message.
We tend to “side” with the plight of the dream ego – the I in the dream. However, dreams invite us to consider wildly different perspectives. For this reason, one of the best ways to get started with a dream is to ask yourself, what if the attitudes and assumptions of the “I” in the dream – the dream ego – are wrong?
Waking Peter was just as upset with the watchmakers as dream ego Peter had been in the dream, but he asked himself the question, what if “I” were wrong in the dream and the watchmakers were right? Then he could see that the watchmakers were telling him that the watch – something that he had cherished and believed to be of great value – was worthless. It had fallen into pieces and wasn’t even worth reassembling. The values that had served Peter so well during the first half of life – symbolized by the watch – were now worthless. As he neared retirement, it was time to orient to life in a new way.
An Inner Companion
Dream interpretation builds a relationship with the dream maker, our inner companion. When we have this relationship, we are never alone. The dream maker will faithfully show us when we are off course, point out where we are deceiving ourselves, and provide comfort when we are heartsick. Peter’s dream encouraged him to let go of the old attitude so that he could embrace a new perspective. In the following months, he stepped back from his work to have more free time, something he never would have done when he was younger. He found that he savored this new outlook on life. He took up new hobbies and felt more relaxed and joyful than in many years.
A longer version of this blog was published at https://dreamwisebook.com/jungian-dream-interpretation/
