Observations placeholder
Jung, C G - Memories, Dreams and Reflections - About dream meaning
Identifier
001995
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Jung at least seemed to make it a more straightforward challenge than Freud by saying dreams are not that convoluted just symbolic ….
A description of the experience
‘I was never able to agree with Freud that the dream is a ‘façade’ behind which its meaning lies hidden - a meaning already known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from consciousness.
To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbours no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can. These forms of life, too, have no wish to deceive our eyes, but we may deceive ourselves because our eyes are short sighted. Or we hear amiss because our ears are rather deaf – but it is not our ears that wish to deceive us.
Long before I met Freud I regarded the unconscious and dreams …. as natural processes to which no arbitrariness can be attributed ……. I knew no reasons for the assumption that the tricks of consciousness can be extended to the natural processes of the unconscious. On the contrary, daily experience taught me what intense resistance the unconscious opposes to the tendencies of the conscious mind.’