Dreams Of Something More

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Dreams of something more

Dream characters

whoever and whatever they remind -

are the different hypostases of the sleeper himself.

Davis Robertson "Manticore"

What comes to us in dreams? This question has occupied people for millennia. However, no final answer has been received. Analytical psychology (Jungianism) has been studying dreams since the founding of this trend in psychology by Carl Gustav Jung. Svetlana Plotnikova, a psychologist of the highest category, chairman of the Perm Association of Analytical Psychology, talks about dreams, their meaning, projections into reality.

Svetlana, there are a lot of definitions of a dream. What do Jungian psychologists understand by dreaming?

- There are really a lot of definitions. Freud was the first to emphasize the importance of dream analysis. He believed that at night he dreams of something that the psyche cannot process during the day. In a dream, according to Freud, our repressed repressed desires appear, which we cannot realize in everyday life. Sleep turns our thoughts into visual images. He put the main emphasis on such themes of dreams as ambition, sexuality, death.

If we talk about the Jungian school, then the dream is seen as an important message from our unconscious, which needs to be deciphered. The ego is lucky: it has become the center of consciousness. But we should not forget that there is also an unconscious in the human psyche. It contains what we are not aware of, repressed parts, conflicts, traumatic parts, our resources and potentials, which are also called the "golden shadow". The unconscious is the source of creative energy, growth, strength. To say that only the ego is important, only the conscious part, in my opinion, the view of a Jungian psychologist, is at least unreasonable. The inner world is a reality that sooner or later we will have to meet face to face.

How can the inner world of the unconscious reach us? One possibility is dreams. I repeat, these are some messages that the psychic world sends to our consciousness. For example, someone says about himself: “I am a responsible, active, punctual person,” listing all those aspects that are approved in society. Our consciousness is firmly holding on to these attitudes. But the world is bipolar. At the opposite pole, in our "dark" unconscious part, irresponsibility, indifference to people, passivity will accumulate. And the more persistently we push out our "shadow", the more stress our psyche will experience.

Another example: we see in someone some kind of wonderful quality that we would also like to possess, but we, alas, alas, do not have it … So we think. As a Jungian psychologist, I may ask: how did you discern this good quality in the other? How did you find him? A person cannot see what is not in himself. Why does he not see these qualities in himself? For some reason, they were pushed into the unconscious. There is simply no access to this "gold". But on the other hand, a person perfectly recognizes them in others. Through a dream, we get the opportunity to conduct a dialogue with our inner world and get to know parts of our "I" unknown to us hitherto.

Through dreams, our unconscious sends images, symbols, fantasies, patterns of behavior. Anything! Up to fabulous plots. There are often nightmares. For what reasons do they appear? Oftentimes, people are oblivious to their dreams. If we are talking about a terrible dream, the person begins to somehow react, think about it, tell it. Our unconscious has no purpose to scare us with eerie dreams. This is just a way to convey information.

Unfortunately, our world today is so arranged that we are extremely far from our natural part. Society ignores or suppresses it. How many people do you know who would be interested in the same dreams? Parents that they would ask a child in the morning: "What did you dream about today?"

- Well, the unconscious is trying to convey something. But we speak different languages with him. How to understand what is in dreams?

- Yes, all these letters are written in the language of images, symbols. Each of them carries a lot of information. Dream images tend to confuse people. It is important to realize that they are symbolic and should not be taken literally.

To decipher a dream, of course, requires a certain skill. Of course, the easiest way is to take a dream book and read what is written there. But how does this relate to you, to your personality? Each dream, like each person, is individual. This is how it is necessary to approach working with dreams.

If you really want to reveal your dream, you should understand what its images mean for you, how they reflect your personal history. It is advisable not to look directly into the dictionary of symbols. Having understood at the individual level, you can refer to the dictionary to read what meanings different peoples put into this image-symbol. Please note that we are not talking about dream books …

- What functions does sleep perform?

- There are many of them. You can consider such as reactive, compensatory, presentational and prophetic.

With the reactive function, the dream processes what really happened to us, specific life situations. These events return to us again, but in the form of images. It doesn't matter if it was an event of the past day or childhood. The image of the pursuer is very common in dreams. If you start to analyze, you should pay attention to who or what is persecuting us, what happened in the past days in our lives.

Another aspect can be considered: in different images of sleep, different components of ourselves appear. The question arises: am I not a persecutor in relation to myself? What am I not allowing to manifest in my life? What am I not paying attention to? How can all dream images reflect myself?

With the compensatory function, the dream acts as a compensation for our conscious attitude. For example, there is a very good mother who gives all her time to the child. In a dream, the opposite image may appear to her: a mother destroying her child. In my practice, I have met the dreams of mothers who were on parental leave. One of them had a dream in which she was driving in a car, saw a grave from the window, stopped, approached the tombstone, and reads the name of her son on it. And she realizes that this is the grave of her child. You can consider this dream as a compensatory one. The ego is captured by the thought that one has to be a “good mother”, not paying attention to the fact that something new and important has already matured in the psyche and wants to manifest itself. And if in the human psyche there is a need for the realization of its other sides, then this will manifest itself through compensation in dreams, which show that it is no longer enough for a woman to embody only the maternal function, that there are other parts that require attention and implementation. The unconscious thereby balances the conscious attitude.

There are people who trust their inner world and are looking for ways to interact with it through dreams. There are those who do not attach any importance to this, who believe that dreams are some kind of rubbish that can be ignored. If the unconscious is constantly ignored, there is a high probability that it will enter and be realized through the fate of a person. That is, certain events will begin to unfold in real life without a person's desire for that.

Probably, for many it sounds too strange. Can I have some example?

- A man deliberately builds a career. In his organization, he started from the bottom, gradually rising up the career ladder. He came to my appointment with the theme of fears that appeared, that appeared and tormented him with shortness of breath, which happens when you go up for a long time. These symptoms were more inappropriate than ever. A new promotion was coming. He was tormented by the question: why is all this happening to him now?

In his recurring dreams, he constantly climbed the mountain, but invariably for various reasons, slipping, stumbling, returned back to the foot. The dream depicts an internal situation, a reality that is not recognized by consciousness. If in our unconscious there is a certain obstacle to a career and at the moment "being higher" in the career ladder is not included in his plans, then these symptoms are an opportunity to rethink what is happening in our life.

Are you saying that in response to a dream, a person should stop building his career?

- No not like this. Dreams are given to us so that we understand something new and important about ourselves, open ourselves from the other side. Consider: Am I only identifying with a career-building figure? Or there is something else in me that needs implementation. If the unconscious has already begun to break through with psychosomatics, this does not mean that we should immediately quit work or caring for a child and do exclusively something so beautiful only for ourselves. Compensatory dreams send us signals of imbalance in the psyche. The fact that some part of us has grown excessively. Through dreams, you can understand what will happen if I continue to upset my balance and bend in one direction. Whether being a mother, a career is just one part. Say: "I am a person who is realized only in work!" or "Well, yes, I decided to realize myself in motherhood!" - isn't it too meager for human nature?

Very often, in response to messages from the unconscious, we say: “I can't change anything now! I have extremely difficult circumstances! " But "circumstances" are what will always be. There is no special date in life to start listening to yourself. And when the unconscious part begins to manifest itself somehow unpleasantly for us in life, one should not be surprised: “How so! I was striving for something else!"

Another question is whether we want to know the information about ourselves that comes to us with dreams. It happens that even a person with a serious illness says: “I don’t want to look inside. I don’t want to know what’s stored there.” Indeed, it is almost impossible for someone to realize that there is something besides conscious life, this is too scary.

One of the reasons why we are afraid to look there is a loss of control. After all, everything is scheduled: I know what I will do in five minutes, where I will go in two hours. The established order is great. In no case do I want to get the impression that the ego, our conscious part, is what gets in the way. Recognizing that there is such an important part of our life as the unconscious is not an experiment that turns everything upside down. On the contrary, the values of the conscious part must be preserved. It's not about either-or. Always about "and-and". Acquaintance and encounter with the unconscious is necessary with the assistance of our strong ego.

Meeting your shadow is never easy. Let's say you understand that you have an envious or arrogant part that eats you up, that huge aggression or greed has accumulated … The unconscious stores something that we push out every day, something socially and ethically disapproved of. But fear, anger, resentment are our natural feelings and manifestations. What happens when we drive them inside? They don't seem to exist. Instead of keeping in touch with all of our manifestations, we unconsciously begin to project these qualities onto other people: “Well, we must! How many scoundrels are around! How many evil people! And they are cashing in on my kindness! Let us give ourselves an account: it is impossible to define in another those qualities that are not in you, with which you are not familiar.

Svetlana, so far there are difficulties. Dreams are difficult, and for some it is impossible to interpret. There will be rejection of their shadow sides. But that's not all. Many people simply do not remember their dreams. Someone even thinks that he is not dreaming of anything. Although dreams are by definition …

- Yes, there are dreams. This is confirmed by research. REM sleep is the "place" of dreams. You are talking about dreaming activity … An interesting fact: in the Indian tribes only one who has dreams, who remembers them, could become a leader. Dreams were one of the criteria for choosing the head of the tribe.

You can learn to memorize your dreams. When you wake up, you do not need to jump out of bed. Lie with your eyes closed. Sometimes there is a feeling as if he had just left some kind of dream. Stay in your inner space, look in different corners. Perhaps some kind of image will emerge. He can become a thread, grabbing which, it will turn out to "wind" the whole ball of sleep.

Having remembered the dream, it is better to repeat it, describe it in words, try again to follow its plot. It's even better if the dreams are recorded. Thus, you can observe the tendency and changes taking place in your dreams, and, accordingly, in your mental world. On the basis of working with your dreams, it is possible to form and accumulate your own personal symbolic vocabulary.

Even if a person does not remember his dreams, he can retain the feeling of them. Sometimes the question helps: "If you had a dream, what would it be about?" In response, a person begins to give a reflection of his inner world and the images that fill him.

We have two sleep functions left behind the scenes. Presentational and prophetic …

- With the presentational function, a dream can demonstrate what mental processes are currently taking place in the unconscious. What is the situation, with what complexes the dreamer interacts with, how they manifest themselves.

If we talk about prophetic dreams, then they are rare. Through them it is possible to diagnose in which direction the psyche is developing, what events can manifest, to see the prospect of development. It is no secret that there are dreams, the images of which are then embodied in reality.

Is that really so? Or is it an attempt by a person who had a dream, then "to pull him by the ears" to real events?

- It really is. An example from a personal family history. My grandfather told me a dream that he had during the Great Patriotic War before the offensive. In a dream, he lost his mitten and while looking for it, he injured his arm. In battle, he was wounded in the arm, and he was threatened with amputation.

We're getting to the topic of synchronicity. This concept was introduced by Carl Gustav Jung. Look: there is a conscious part, there is an individual unconscious and there is a collective unconscious, under the influence of which we are, whether we are aware of it or not. And if our psyche has a certain sensitivity, it can penetrate into the collective unconscious, connect with it, where, as in a matrix, everything is imprinted. In such cases, there may be a synchronicity between dreams and reality.

All this looks extremely mystical, because there is no rational explanation for this. Today mathematicians argue that we live in the information field, in connections that cannot be recognized by the five traditional senses.

Do you want to say that a person has a certain sense organ that reads information from the “field” and projects it to us?

- There are connections that we are not aware of, but which do exist. They are available, or rather, may be available to our psyche.

We again returned to the question of the correctness of interpretations. You never know what could have dreamed? You never know how this can be interpreted?

- Jung reflected that the dream will never be fully deciphered. It's like a nesting doll with countless figures. We open one, we find the meaning there. There comes a time when this meaning is not enough for us, we open another "figure" and find another meaning, and so on ad infinitum, constantly plunging deeper and exploring the storehouse of the unconscious.

Of course, I want certainty. This is clear. The mind is anxious in uncertainty. But there will always be some doubt about the understanding of dreams. Consciousness tends to doubt. Nevertheless, dreams remain tempting to us. We cannot consign them to oblivion and constantly return to this topic. There is something attractive about them.

- You mentioned the Indians. How not to ask about lucid dreaming?

- I do not deal with this topic. In my opinion, there is already a lot of consciousness and control in our life. In my opinion, it is precisely about penetrating the unconscious with consciousness. I wonder how the question arises: why also control what happens in a dream? Why do I not want to be content with what is given by my natural part, but want to subject my inner world to the influence of consciousness?

Our ego can be realized in daytime, conscious life: set goals, achieve them, move from one space to another.

There is a great way from Jungianism to enter the dream space without disrupting its intentions. This is a method of active imagination. You can "make" any of the images or objects of your dream and get in touch with this part. You can continue the dream, develop it as you would like. For example, if you are constantly running away from someone in your dreams, what will happen if you stop and look at your pursuer. Why does he even run after you, what does he want? The method is best used with an assistant, with a person who will accompany you at the moment when you stop and turn to the pursuer. This could be a psychologist or a trusted person who is familiar with this type of work.

We can say that "active imagination" was used by people living in a tribal system, close to nature. In some tribes, people, waking up, sit in a circle and tell each other their dreams. They understand that through dreams there is some information, a message that may be important for the entire tribe.

A strange question, but nonetheless. Many people drew dreams. The first who comes to mind, perhaps, is Dali. These thin-legged elephants - can it really be seen in a dream?

- There are very extraordinary dreams. Their description can be found in the works of Jung. For example, a seven-year-old girl described and sketched images and motives from her dreams, which she had never met due to the lack of such life experience. She dreamed of interpretations of biblical stories. The ability to descend to the collective unconscious was available to her psyche. It has absolutely everything.

Your question concerns the accessibility of information of the unconscious. But are we not afraid to see these thin-legged elephants? What conclusions can a reasonable person draw in response to such pictures? "Everything! Elephants started dreaming on mosquito legs! What happened with me?!"

We can say that creative, brilliant people penetrate into such layers of the psyche, where there is an opportunity to come into contact with the collective unconscious. They are not afraid to do it. The famous photograph of Einstein showing his tongue. What will a very conscious person think of him? At the very least, the one in the photo looks extremely strange. But Einstein could penetrate into those depths that a person with tight control and a rational mind simply cannot penetrate. There is a fear that something will take over and consume you. Some even say: “I'm afraid to look there. It looks like madness. Suddenly I won't be able to get out of there."

And I understand these people. Everything is good in moderation and always with certain knowledge. We need to learn how to benefit from those aspects of our psyche that are unfamiliar to us. If there is a desire to engage in your dreams, to know yourself and your capabilities, you need to get a skill in this, preferably with a specialist. It will probably be a good place to start doing your one-on-one analysis with a qualified professional. With someone who knows how to accompany, so that a person, having met with a "thin-legged elephant", could live it and connect with the source of his creative inspiration and a hitherto unknown area of his soul.

The interview was conducted by Karina Turbovskaya for Companion magazine.