WELCOME TO Module 2

This Jungian Life @ www.thisjungianlife.com

Lisa Marchiano, Jungian Analyst, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Joseph Lee, Jungian Analyst, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Deborah Stewart, Jungian Analyst, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL EDITED TRANSCRIPT: Recalling Your Dreams

(Dreams and client references are used with permission.)

 Deb: In this module, we’ll talk about dream recall, but first let’s take a step back to honor the importance dreams have had across cultures and throughout recorded time. We’ll have lots of tips later, but first we want to provide some historical context. People seem always to have recognized that dreams mattered, that they had something important to communicate, and they tried to make meaning of them. Sometimes dreams were seen as predictions of the future, or as ghosts coming back to haunt the dreamer, or other kinds of interpretations often related to cause and effect. Jung says that the mind can no more be a product without history than the body in which it exists. So we find the history of dreams validating and fascinating.

Joseph: This tells us something we know in our bones, in our evolution–that we are drawn to the mystery of dreams. That this has been true in cultures all across the world indicates that we have an instinct to move toward the dream world.

Lisa: Yes. I think the first recorded dream in history comes from Sumer around 2200 BC. People have been interested in dreams for a long time.

Joseph: As we were preparing for exams in our Jungian training, one of the things we had to roll up our sleeves and study was how dreams were managed or responded to historically. I found myself interested in an ancient Chinese treatise that recorded a great number of dreams and much information about them. This treatise is thought to be from the fourth or fifth century BC. There is a lot of material in it, a lot of perspectives, but one of the things that really struck me was how they interpreted the presence of spirits and ghosts in the dream world. One of these ancient dreams recounts a sage and ruler who executed a citizen for failing to control a flood in the region. In this ruler’s dream the spirit was transformed into a yellow bear that entered this world, and as it presented itself, the other dream figures worshiped it and several dynasties sacrificed to it. The leader who had performed the execution played a ritual role and offered very specific sacrifices to it. Now that may seem very general, but the idea is that when ghosts have a place to return to they are no longer evil spirits. Consequently, if the ghosts of the dead are not responded to correctly, there is a kind of malevolent force that begins to manifest in the individual and even in the culture. This may seem strange to our modern sensibilities, but I have come across some recent analogues. I have been deeply inspired by a movement that occurred in the last couple of decades and is depicted in a documentary called Healing a Soldier’s Heart. It’s about a group of Vietnam vets who were deeply wounded by their wartime experiences. They were haunted by memories of the actions required of them and mistakes they felt they made. They were guided back to the same Vietnam villages where they fought, and under the guidance of Buddhist leaders, participated in rituals of forgiveness and acceptance in the arms of the people they had treated as enemies. In this experience, which is incredibly moving to watch, you can feel the way the ghosts they had been holding of the people that they had killed were returned to their place in the world, and the soldiers experienced an incredible catharsis. I think this is an essential piece of the healing process. When I work with vets and active duty military now, like those who have come back from Afghanistan, often they do feel haunted by the requirements of military service. They have to undergo a process of where to place the ghosts that are haunting them. There is something universal about haunting dreams and trauma that was seen thousands of years ago as well as now.

Lisa: That’s a great linking of this ancient practice with what we know to be psychologically true. I want to lift up another piece of dream wisdom from the ancient world. In the second century, in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, lived a man named Artemidorus. He wrote a multi-volume work called the Oneirocritica which translates from the Greek as Interpretation of Dreams–which became the title for another famous work on dreams, the one Freud published in 1900. Artemidorus took an empirical approach to dreams. He believed that dreams could predict the future, and he was considered a seer. He traveled throughout cities in the Eastern Roman Empire collecting dreams, and noted what followed. He was trying to make a causal link: “If you have this dream, then this happens.” In the ancient Greco-Roman world, there was a general belief that, for example, dreams of having sex with your mother could portend various things, and could be a good sign if you were seeking power. Julius Caesar was anxious the night before he made his fateful decision about whether to cross the Rubicon. That night, according to Plutarch, he dreamt that he was committing incest with his mother, and this was interpreted to mean that he would take possession of his mother country. And that influenced his decision: when he crossed the Rubicon it precipitated the Roman civil war, which led to his becoming emperor. Artemidorus took this to another level. What is interesting about this is that although it’s not exactly a symbolic interpretation, it’s not literal either. It’s almost an analogy: something we see in dreams stands for another thing.

Joseph: It’s interesting to imagine this evolution of the symbolic function. As I referenced from this ancient Chinese manuscript, the dreams were often taken very literally. If you dreamt you had been beheaded, the shaman in the community might say, “You will die in the next campaign.” It was a very concrete and causal relationship. So it seems rather extraordinary in terms of evolution of consciousness to hear how people interpreted dreams in Artemidorus’ time.

Deb: However meaning was made of dreams in various cultures, what stands out is that dreams have always been important enough to make meaning of—to try to understand in waking life.

Lisa: Yes, and in some of these cultures, people who could interpret dreams had very high status.

Deb: Yes. We are all familiar with the Old Testament and the dreams that Daniel interpreted of Nebuchadnezzar. Joseph, who was abducted and brought into Egypt, was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. They were taken to have literal, prophetic meaning in the external world. From Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and seven thin cows, Joseph predicted seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Pharaoh’s next dream was seven fat ears of corn and seven skinny ears of corn. Although Pharaoh had asked all his wise men, necromancers, and sages to interpret these dreams, Joseph’s prediction carried the day, and it was decided to store grain in order to set aside enough for the coming seven lean years. It seems that in the ancient world a lot of dream interpretation had to do with predicting the future, but that is not the only use to which dreams were put.

Lisa: No. In some cultures, people believed dreams were sent as divine guidance from the gods. At other times, dreams were used for diagnosis and healing.

Deb: Yes. As Jungian trainees we all read about the temple of Asclepius in ancient Greek times. Asclepius was a Greek god, one of the many sons of Apollo, and he was the God of healing and medicine. People would go to the temples of Asclepius in order to heal through a dream incubation process followed–hopefully–by a healing dream. There were rituals of purification and cleansing and setting one’s mind to request a healing dream from the gods. Since the Greeks believed that snakes were messengers for revelation, healing, and even resurrection, non-venomous snakes were loose in the temple, and were believed to whisper dreams into the sleeper’s ear. This is a great example of dreams as an internal source of information and healing about what was going on inside each dreamer.

Lisa: Yes. Dreamers would go to these temples such as the one at Epidaurus. They would go through these rituals and were instructed to go to sleep and remember the dream that the god sent.

Joseph: There was a feeling that not only would the snakes that travel around at night in the temple, but a snake would lick your ear in order for the healing transmission to occur.

Lisa: People would travel from all over to visit these temples and receive healing dreams.

Deb: It seems to me that this practice, which is always cited in our Jungian training as an important part of dream history, represents a development around dream interpretation that wasn’t quite as concrete. It wasn’t to predict the future as much as it started to honor sacredness, and the interiority of the dreamer.

Lisa: Right, and to see the dream as medicinal, which is part of how we see it as Jungians.

Joseph: And authoritative. These dreams came from the gods, so they had to be taken seriously. The gods required something of them, having spoken to them.

Deb: At this point, let’s leave the history of the ancient world and fast-forward to the end of the 19th century and early 20th century with Sigmund Freud, who brought dream analysis into modern times. He realized that dream objects were expressions and manifestations of the inner world and the desires of the person he was working with. He also felt that dreams were disguised images in order to cover up repressed ideas, which were usually sexual or aggressive. For Freud, that was the libidinal drive, and he tended to reduce things, as we all know from the Oedipus complex, to forbidden sexual desires that dreams had to disguise in order for the person to be able to maintain sleep.

Lisa: Yes, there was an inner censor to hide the fact that you really wanted to sleep with your mother, for example. The dream censor would disguise that with symbolic language.

Deb: Freud said clearly that the majority of the dreams of adults are filled with sexual material and give expression to forbidden wishes. Going back to the example you provided from ancient times,  “Oh, so you want to sleep with your mother.” Now it’s kind of a comedic trope.

Lisa: Right, and by the way, Freud knew about Artemidorus, but had never seen the parts where Artemidorus talks about the meaning of those dreams of sleeping with your mother. Because I think the translation that Freud saw didn’t include those parts. Freud felt that dreams were expresses of wishes, so dreams were about …

Joseph: …wish fulfillment. And managing the fact that there are many things that we want and long for. It’s uncomfortable to be in a state of constant longing, so Freud thought it was fairly creative that the imagination could provide the things that we might never encounter in the outer world. That would salve us and allow us to move on to more appropriate objects.

Lisa: Jung looked at dreams very differently from Freud.

Deb: Yes, and the way that Freud and Jung differed eventually led to a terrible split that we still talk about. They were originally very close, a father-son kind of partnership. Jung felt the dreams were not a disguise, but a language of image, symbol and affect that we had to learn how to understand. They weren’t trying to disguise what was going on.

Lisa: In fact, they were the best possible expression of an inner conflict.

Deb: Yes. And Jung felt that dreams were not always about repressed aggressive and / or sexual urges. Dreams could be a commentary on all kinds of things going on in an individual’s life.

Joseph: That really was the core of their rift. Freud was very explicit about maintaining the sexual theory of libido, and he insisted very strongly that his protégées adhere to that. Jung, through observation of his own patients, thought that didn’t match up with what he was observing. He also didn’t say that it was never true. As analysts, we often see that sexual energies play a substantial role in people’s lives and psyches, but there are many other drives that are important–many other sources of energy and focus–that provide a kind of engine that is visible in the dream life about the overall direction in which a person is moving.

Deb: The other great difference from Freud was Jung’s discovery of the collective unconscious, a vast storehouse of experience over millennia of human evolution–psychic energy that is a universal substrate common to all mankind. A symbol such as a crossroads, tower, hero, or witch–the list is very long–is part of the collective storehouse of symbol and memory of everyone in the human race. This was a digression from Freud, who felt that the unconscious was personal–what you had experienced and had to repress–your traumas and unique, separate individual experience. That was a gigantic difference between the two of them because it opened dreams into the transpersonal realm of archetypal imagery and symbols.

Joseph: An idea that fascinates me is that Jung felt Freud interpreted images in the dreams as highly structured science–that dream images were iterative and predictable, in a way. Freudians could even create a kind of dictionary–this means that. A lot of our modern symbol books are in that spirit, telling readers definitively that a tower means a penis, and a tunnel means a vagina. But Jung felt that was not adequate, that there was a much greater mystery. Here’s a quote from Jung’s Collected Works, Volume 15 where Jung writes of the difference between him and Freud: “Those conscious contents, which give us a clue to the unconscious background, are incorrectly called symbols by Freud. They are not true symbols, however, since according to his theory, they have merely the role of signs or symptoms of the subliminal processes. The true symbol differs essentially from this and should be understood as an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way.”

Lisa: That’s a great quote. He also said that the symbol points beyond itself–it’s the best possible expression of something that cannot be fully articulated

Deb: It’s loaded with affect, with feeling, so that when anyone dreams of something that’s especially moving, the key feature is that there’s mystery there, and it has affected the dreamer. It’s a numinous experience that can’t simply be reduced to words, and shouldn’t be.

Lisa: Right. The dream comes with a quantum of energy and affect, and it’s creative. It’s a new image, a new way of seeing something.

Joseph: The dream is part of the natural process of development for the personality, but Freud generally thought dreams were neurotic symptoms. Freud was concerned–and rightly so–that the waking personality had been split away from instinctive life, which for him was driven by sexuality. Jung could agree with that occasionally, but he said there were many other things happening in dreams, and the dreams were trying to resolve an issue, not simply confirm Freud’s suspicions.

Lisa: Another difference between Freud and Jung is that Freud’s method of working with dreams involved free association. He invited the analysand to say the first thing that came into his mind. Jung used techniques he called association and amplification.

Joseph: Both Freud and Jung were interested in the very personal context of the dream. So if I dream about a red tricycle, I might have very vivid personal memories of a red tricycle. Freud was interested too, but didn’t seem to take it a step further.

Deb: Jung writes about the importance of getting the patient’s associations and uses the example of a table; the analyst needs to know what kind of table it is. Is it a wooden table? Is it a picnic table? Is it a table that the dreamer can associate with his personal home or some other place he saw this table–and so it goes. Jung devotes a whole paragraph to how very important it is to get the dreamer’s associations to the table that appeared in that person’s dream, and then he could move on to the amplification. Let’s use another example, a ship’s anchor. What does that symbolize? Where is that in the collective? What else holds something in place? How else do we anchor our lives and our thoughts? You’re building that part of the symbol out, so that you have a much more generalized framework and access to the symbolic function of the anchor. There might also be literary references or artwork–other forms where that symbol is rendered.

Lisa: Even the etymology of the word sometimes has a clue.

Joseph: What that does is to allow the dreamer to temporarily abandon a purely personal process and bring in the metaphorical possibilities of the dream. And that can offer a whole new perspective on what the dream may mean, in addition to the personal feelings that can be tremendously liberating.

Deb: Yes, it does something that we call relativizing the ego. You’re part of a great stream of symbols and literature, history and cultures. You’re part of a universal field with the method of amplification. It’s heartening to realize that one’s experience is part of something bigger. We fit in.

Lisa: One of the questions we get asked most often from listeners of the podcast is: “What if you don’t remember your dreams? Is there any way to facilitate dream recall?” So we’re going to spend some time now talking about how to develop better dream recall. I think as most people know, science tells us that we dream multiple times every night. So this is a resource, but some people—frustratingly–rarely remember dreams. There are ways to improve that.

Joseph: One of the things that’s encouraging to me is that the unconscious mind can help us out, and many of the gestures the ego makes to approach the unconscious are received with some enthusiasm by the unconscious–and then it can assist you. We train ourselves so that the first thing we do when we wake up is to reach for a recording mechanism and immediately make an entry. Even if it’s just, “no dream today” or a tiny thread, like the image of a tomato. People are often shy about recording things that seem nonsensical. Maybe it’s just a sentence or two about a dream, and it doesn’t weave together as a narrative. But all of those nuances convince the unconscious that you’re taking it seriously, and it tends to improve the dream recall, sometimes within just a few days.

Lisa: Right. I want to back up a little bit though. ‘Job one’ if you’re trying to cultivate dream recall is to record your dreams. And you can do this in writing or a recording feature on a phone or another recorder.

Deb: And even before that happens, I think there has to be an intention to remember your dreams, and having a dream journal or a recorder can be a message to psyche: “I am ready.” There is a journal, a pen or a recording device. The person can ask and hope for a dream and you are saying to psyche, “If you send me a dream, I am ready to record it.” And then engage in the practice Joseph was talking about in the morning– getting in a rhythm where the first thing you do every morning is to write something down.

Lisa: Right–write something! I always like to encourage people to get a specific journal that they’re going to use for writing down dreams. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive but if you’re going to go to the local drugstore and pick up a journal, get one that you like, get a color on the cover that appeals to you. The unconscious really responds to color.

Deb: And the unconscious responds to the waking mind’s conscious desire to be in touch with it. We turn a friendly face to the unconscious or to psyche. There are dreams every night, and by reaching out to them with conscious intention, you’ve made a step. You’ve thinned the veil, so to speak, between the worlds. You’re much more receptive and ready to receive what may be coming up to meet you.

Lisa: So just another word or two about this kind of method of capturing dreams with a journal. Another tool you might want to consider is a pilot’s pen, which is a ballpoint pen that has a little light on it. If you click it twice the light comes on and allows you to write in total darkness, which can be helpful if you sleep with a partner and don’t want to wake him or her up. And it can also be helpful in facilitating dream recall because you don’t have to turn on the light, which can wake you up more.

Joseph: Yes, I think that the transition from sleeping to waking involves a pretty sophisticated neurologic shift, and to tease a memory forward is often a delicate process. As Lisa said, the more interference we can push away, the more likely we won’t be distracted. I often find for some people that even the act of writing, which involves a lot of the conscious brain, can violate the memory of the dream. So some people may find it easier to record a dream as a voice memo, or as speech-to-text. It’s okay if it comes out mish-mashed or out of sequence–just capture it. You can always go back and make it a more precise.

Deb: I also find it helpful to wake up naturally, maybe on a weekend, when you don’t have to wake up to an alarm clock or be on a schedule. Often dreams will come up right before waking, and then I just lie there and go over the dream in my own mind. Then I go over it one more time and put it into language:  “Okay, first I was in the park, and then I saw a woman walking a dog, and then all of a sudden, I was someplace else.” So now I’m translating it into language and then I will write it down in my dream journal, now that I’ve had a couple of rubbings, as it were, by going over it twice in my own mind. I often find that when writing a dream, I will remember additional parts as I’m writing. So my advice is not to be too careful or precise about how you write it down. If you think this might have happened or that man in your dream might have been Uncle George, just write down ‘Uncle George.’ Let the writing flow off the tip of your pen, without over-thinking it.

Lisa: Yes, to build on that, I want to go back to something you said earlier, Joseph, because I think there’s a really good point. Sometimes I’ll say to someone, “Have you dreamed recently?” The person will say, “No, I really haven’t, but there’s this one thing from last night.” It may be a very fleeting image, but those can be incredibly rich. And Deb, you were talking about signaling the intention to the unconscious to take it seriously. If you say, “Oh, it didn’t matter,” or “I just dreamt that because I took the dog to the groomer yesterday,” or “it was only one image–it wasn’t really anything,” you’ve just sent a strong message to your unconscious that you’re not valuing the dream. So even if you wake up and all you remember is something like the color yellow, just write down “the color yellow.” You may not be able to do anything with it, and you can’t necessarily take that to your analyst and work very far with it, but you’ve sent a signal to the unconscious that you’re listening. That’s also your point, Joseph about writing down “no dream recalled.” What you’re doing is getting into a habit of writing something every single time you wake up, which is going to prime the pump for a dream.

Deb: We do dream every night, every single one of us, except for very rare neurological conditions. So they are there, and they are accessible to us with intention and some practice.

Joseph: I want to come back to something you said, Deb, about the value of waking up naturally versus to an alarm clock. This was a very important discovery for me. When I’m sleeping deeply and my alarm clock goes off, there’s a little rush of adrenaline, particularly if you have a partner in the room. I’m kind of grabbing to turn it off quickly and I find that surge of adrenaline wipes my mind clean. It’s often not until Saturday morning that I have the luxury of not gasping myself into wakefulness.

Lisa: Yes. Although I discovered by accident something that I’ve since seen others reference. When I was a teenager I liked to ride my bike in the early morning hours before there was any traffic. So I would set an alarm and wake up super-early and go for a bike ride. Then I would come home and go back to sleep, which strikes me as strange now. What I found is that the practice of waking up early, being fully awake, and then going back to sleep often resulted in vivid dreams. Now, that is not something everyone can afford to do but if you have the luxury of experimenting with it, you might try it. Some people experience intense dreams when they nap, so again, your life may not be set up where you can have a deep nap in the middle of the day, but maybe you could try it occasionally.

Joseph: And just to be reassuring, when people first take an interest in their inner life, it may take a little while for dreams to become apparent. In the meantime spontaneous daydreams can be very instructive. Years ago, I spent a lot of time on the road for the work that I was doing, and I would frequently fall into a kind of highway hypnosis and have vivid, spontaneous imaginings. I’d be that guy waving his hands in his car! When I learned about Jung’s work, I realized I was talking to my unconscious.

Lisa: Yes. Another thing that works sometimes when you’re trying to recall a dream, and you’ve just woken up, is to shift positions with your eyes still closed, and try putting your body back in the same position as when you had a dream. That somatic shift can sometimes trigger a dream memory. If you wake up and you’re just on the edge of sleep, you might not recall something. You might feel like there’s something there, but you can’t quite reach across and pull it across the threshold. Try playing with your body position in bed.

Joseph: Like using muscle memory to help.

Lisa: Yes, it can sometimes provoke a memory. What I also notice sometimes is that I don’t have a dream upon awakening, and I’ll be going through my day. Maybe I’ll read something in the newspaper, or someone will say something to me, and suddenly it’s there–I remember the dream. That’s tricky, because you have a dream journal next to your bed, but if you’re at the office, what do you do? If possible, what I do is make a note of it–maybe I just write down a couple words in the ‘notes’ function of my phone. When I get home, and before I go to sleep, I’ll write down as much of the dream as I can remember in the journal. Just try to capture it no matter when it occurs.

Deb: A few key words are often enough to open the entire dream up… park, dog, Uncle George…

Lisa: Yes, it can come flooding back. I’m also thinking that we can help create intention to remember the dream by creating a ritual. Rituals and symbols speak directly to our unconscious. I know someone who liked to facilitate dream recall with a special stone. She put it under her pillow as a little ritual every night. Then she would place the stone on her dresser in the morning and before she went to sleep at night would again take the stone and put it under her pillow. It was just a little ritual to signal her unconscious on a nightly basis: “Hoping to remember a dream.”

Joseph: She was really determined to open that channel up.

Deb: Yes. I say to my psyche, “If you send me a dream, I promise to write it down.” You can ask for commentary on a specific thing, such as a decision, saying, “I would appreciate any help you might be able to provide.” A request sends a signal to psyche: I’m open and listening.

Lisa: That’s a kind of dream incubation.

Joseph: That reminds me, Deb, that a long time ago, I heard this little phrase about how to encourage people to do that. As we go to sleep, the light is off, and we’re just starting to relax, we can ponder a question or something we wish we could know more about or find a solution for. As you drift off to sleep, repeat this phrase, “Old friend, old friend, what would you do?”

Lisa: That’s really lovely, and so is your wonderful phrase, Deb, “I promise to write it down.” Those could both be part of a ritual.

Deb: Yes. And of course people can devise their own rituals—see what works for you. There are lots of ideas and suggestions and you can adapt them to your own personal style and what works.

Joseph: All of them are expressions of the archetype of the covenant. You are trying to establish a sacred covenant with that deep part of the unconscious, and receive and honor the way in which it is trying to help you.

Lisa: We wanted to take a little time at the end to talk about an African fairy tale. I have always felt it exemplified this process of what it’s like to try to bring a dream across the threshold into consciousness and honor the archetype of the covenant. It’s an African tale called The Name of the Tree. The story begins with drought in the land, and nothing to eat. All the animals were starving, but they knew that there was a magic tree with the most wonderful fruit. It would lower its branches if you were able to speak the name of the tree. All of the animals gathered under the tree but none of them could remember its name. So they decided they would go to the mountaintop and ask the mountain spirit the name of the tree. The gazelle went first because he was fastest. He ran up the mountain and said, “Mountain spirit, what is the name of the tree?” The mountain spirit yelled, “Alongolina,” and the gazelle raced back—but when he got back to the tree, he couldn’t remember the name. One by one, the animals took turns going up to the mountaintop to ask the mountain spirit the name of the tree, and the mountain spirit always said, “Alongolina”–but when they got back, they had forgotten it. Finally, the tortoise said, “Let me try.” The tortoise went step by step up the mountain and asked the mountain spirit the name of the tree. The mountain spirit again said, “Alongolina.” As the tortoise returned, with every step he said, “Alongolina, Alongolina, Alongolina.” He got back, said the name of the tree, and the tree dropped its branches. All the animals ate.

Deb: That’s perfect for dream recall.

Joseph: And it really speaks to the mysterious process of bringing something back from the spirit world.

Deb: Bringing something back from the depths of the unconscious and holding on to it intentionally so that it can really find a home in consciousness.

Lisa: And that can be a difficult process.

Deb: Absolutely.

Lisa: You have to practice.

Deb: Yes—and fortunately, there are ways to practice. This is not the magical mystery tour. There are things you can do to practice dream recall, like remembering the name of the magic tree.

Lisa: Right, and it’s the tortoise who does it through steadiness and hard work. The tale gives the sense that if you just put one foot in front of the other, and keep at it, it will happen. In one version of the tale the tortoise manages to remember it by turning it into a song, which I think adds a different flavor, because it says that accessing a creative capacity can be helpful in opening up a channel to the spirit world.

Joseph: I also love that this word, this idea, is brought from the unconscious / spirit world into solving a real-life problem. When this kind of revelation is introduced into waking life, and applied to the problem, sometimes circumstances respond, because an extraordinary thing has been given and retrieved.

Deb: It gives us access to our own fruits, and also poses the question: what are the fruits from our own depths that we need to have access to?

Lisa: Yes, and it’s a magical tree that produces fruit when nothing else does. So there is a sort of drought in the land of consciousness, but there’s still a place of plenty we can find within.

Joseph: Indeed.

Copyright © 2021 This Jungian Life.  All rights reserved in all domains.

 

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Tips for Improving Dream Recall

In this month’s Discussion, we shared the following techniques for improving dream recall:

1.  Write your dreams down every day even if they are fragments.
2.  If you don’t remember anything at least write “no dream recalled.”
3.  Consider using a voice recorder.
4.  Try to wake up naturally if possible (no alarm).
5.  Lie in bed and review the dream in your mind before writing it down.
6.  If no dream comes, try getting back into your last sleep position to see if a somatic reminder jogs your memory.
7.  Consider experimenting with early morning awakening or napping to see if a dream comes.
8.  If a dream comes back to you later in the day capture at least a few key words so you can write it down later.
9.  Consider creating a dream ritual that will signal to your unconscious that you are willing to receive a dream.
10.  Make your last thought before sleep a promise that you will write down any dream psyche sends.

My Life in Dreams

Deb Stewart
Some people—and I wish I were one of them—take, save, and organize photos. The story of my life is in the giant loose-leaf notebooks that hold my recorded dreams. They weigh a ton, take up space, and might strike an onlooker as weird. But all those dreams are how I became whole. I recorded some dreams in college and as a young adult because occasional vivid dreams got my attention. I would go over them in my mind and relive the feelings and images. After college, shortly followed by motherhood, I abandoned myself to the demands of early and middle adult years.

By the time I ‘came to’ my kids were grown, I had changed jobs 5 or 6 times, moved across the country twice, and hadn’t had a dream I remembered for years. My life in the so-called real world felt dismal, so when my Jungian analyst (selected from the Yellow Pages for her convenient location) suggested we work with my dreams, I signed on. At least one of us had a game plan.

I was going to need some dreams, so before sleep I sang to myself: Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, a ritual that put me in a hopeful ‘child mind’ state, like wishing upon a star. When I received a dream, I would not speak a word until I had written it down, for any verbal exchange bounced me out of the dream space. Then I discovered it helped to lie in bed and go over the dream twice, first by rerunning it as a silent film and then by telling it to myself in words. After that, I’d scribble in my dream journal as fast as I could, lest I forget something. In time, I found I could trust the thread of the dream to hold and now usually meander through dream recording. Later, I would type the dream into my computer, having discovered that in this process yet more detail rose to the surface. This dual process still works for me: the tactile connection of hand, pen and paper, followed by the automaticity of typing and more words and details arising.

I discovered simply through practice how to access my dreaming mind, or more accurately, the dreams that arrive in my mind. Play, experiment, and find what works for you. Your dream maker speaks to you every night, wants to meet you, and will be as interested in you as you are in him…her…them.

Dream Journaling through the Decades

Lisa Marchiano
A few months ago, I had a wonderful surprise. I stumbled across a box in my attic filled with dozens of my journals from years ago after having nearly given up hope of ever finding them again. They were all there, starting with journals I had kept in middle school. When I read my journal from my freshman year of college, I was surprised to find that I was already writing my dreams down – and that I even had a natural inclination to relate to them symbolically.

Dreamt that a poor crumpled man was dirty with brown hair and beard and four eyes, two extra ones below his normal ones, and all of the eyeballs were turned up so that the dark iris was almost hidden. At first, I was terribly disgusted by him, but duty conquered this revulsion and I insisted on bringing him with me to be fed at the dining hall. I awoke at this point, but a feeling of foreboding was beginning to build, as if he too, like the others, might turn and murder me in a hideous fashion as in the other dreams like this.

After the dream, I wrote the following in my journal: “How can I interpret this? Should I fear an ugliness and poverty within myself?” I didn’t make a full commitment to writing my dreams down until after I began reading Jungian authors when I was 28. Ever since that time, I have kept a dream journal and I now have dozens of notebooks filled with dreams. Sometimes I choose beautiful, expensive journals for this purpose but most of the time I prefer a simple spiral bound notebook. I find it easier to write in one of these since you can fold it back and then it lies completely flat. This is especially useful when writing lying in bed.

I love handwriting my dreams. Using technology first thing upon rousing tends to jolt me too quickly out of the liminal space between sleeping and waking. However, I do wish that I had a way to quickly find old dreams. For a time, I experimented with keeping a dream journal on my computer. I also used an app called DreamKeeper. Recording dreams digitally allowed me to tag them by people or theme, making retrieval easier when I was looking for something. For example, I have had a number of dreams about whales. Tagging them allowed me to find all of the whale dreams I had had so that I could see themes emerge over time. Using my phone to capture dreams was also convenient for those times when I suddenly remembered a dream halfway through the work day.

In the end, I went back to writing my dreams down in simple spiral notebooks. I just missed the intimacy of taking pen to paper. I’m still open to a digital solution but I don’t feel I’ve found the right one just yet.There have, of course, been times in my life when I was very diligent about capturing dreams and other times when I wasn’t as consistent about it. I certainly feel more motivated to attend to my dreams when I am experiencing inner turmoil. I do definitely find that my dreams are more prolific and speak to me with greater clarity when I am writing them down regularly and spending time with them. It is as if my inner dreamer is an always ready interlocutor who greets me eagerly when he sees that I am seeking him.

I find that when I am recording dreams nightly, a conversation can get started. My dreaming self tells me something. I write the dream down and think about it that day. Sometimes I think I come to an understanding of it. The next night, there is another dream. Perhaps it treats the same theme but in a slightly different way, letting me know that I apprehended the message correctly. “Yes,” the dream seems to say, “that’s it. But there’s also this other thing.”

There have been big dreams that shook me to my core and stayed with me for decades. An analyst once remarked that big dreams are like the tall ships that can’t come all the way into the harbor but must anchor off shore and be offloaded by smaller vessels bit by bit. So it is that big dreams reveal their secrets only a little at a time. Sometimes it takes many, many years to understand them. It is especially important to write such big dreams down.

My dreams have been there for me at critical junctures, warning me of things I have overlooked, offering a corrective to my conscious attitude. Sometimes, they have even offered me encouragement and solace. I still marvel at the inexhaustible well of wisdom that are our dreams. Each night, they are there for us.

The Dis-membering and Re-membering of our Dreams

Joseph Lee

Our dreams are vestigial impressions of actual psychic events that happen when the ego descends into sleep. This psychological process was intuitively understood and captured by the ancients in religious belief: each evening the sun descended into the western ocean and traveled along the sea bed, heroically battling various monsters until it rose victoriously the next morning. The night-sea journeys of our sun-like egos are dream adventures with inner forces set in motion by the Self to confront the ego with what it refuses to know – but could.

 Some lack of self-knowledge can be reasonably attributed to the human condition with its limited insight — but what do we make of the active refusal to know? Willful not-knowing is familiar to all of us. Freud wrote about the various ways that the ego defends against insights that create anxiety. He felt the dream was merely a defense against waking when unwanted stimuli threatened a good night’s rest. Jung, however, experienced the inner landscape as more unpredictable, peopled with forces that had wills of their own and secret agendas to thwart or help the conscious personality. One sign of inner adversarial forces is the dismemberment of dreams. For example, we may enjoy weeks of remembering dreams in great detail followed by periods of waking with nothing at all. Let’s use the myth of Osiris to muse on this.

 In the beginning the god Geb (the earth) mated with Nuit (the sky) and brought forth five children. Osiris was the first. Osiris was said to be an extraordinary Egyptian king who, along with his sister/wife Isis, civilized the ancient world, sharing the secrets of fermentation, religion, cultivation of wheat and the secrets of fertility. Their very presence caused the vast kingdom to flourish. But Osiris’ brother Set was filled with envy and longed to supplant his brother. He planned a great celebration and tricked Osiris into a coffin which he locked and set adrift in the ocean. When Isis discovered it, Set struck again, this time cutting Osiris’ body into 26 pieces and scattering them. With her sister’s help, Isis retrieved all Osiris’ parts except the phallus. She carved one from wood and bound all in cloth to hold them together. With the secret of resurrection stolen from the Sun, and help from by the god Thoth, Isis used alchemical magic to bring Osiris back to life. Isis then transformed herself into a hawk, fluttered above his body and drew his seed into her. Osiris, being incomplete, withdrew to the underworld where he weighed the hearts of the dead and judged whether they should be granted eternal life. Isis gave birth to hawk-headed Horus the younger, who rose up and killed Set, rescuing the kingdom from chaos.

 The Self is the author of our dreams. It holds the archetype of wholeness – personal and collective. Our limited ego is ever held against the fullness of the Self, and found lacking. Each dream is a gift that presses us toward embodying another quality of our potential. In the beginning of the myth Geb and Nuit, the primal opposites of earth and sky, beget Osiris, the image or dream of an ideal man in perfect relationship with his anima, Isis. Through each of our dreams, the Self holds a mirror up to our ego and shows us images of who we are and are becoming. If we welcome this instruction, our soul companions the new image, making it fertile and linking its vitality to our inner kingdom. This allows the wisdom of our dream to offer its civilizing and creative secrets to our ego – it can allow us to flourish. When the living Osiris is visible and related to Isis, the dream is in right relationship to the anima. Images of active dream wisdom, linked to the psychic landscape by the soul, promote the evolution of the personality, offering attunement to nature and human creativity.

 As the myth unfolds, Osiris’ brother Set becomes threatened by the power and wholeness of Osiris. Set feels murderous envy, plots his brother’s destruction – and succeeds. He longs to sit alone upon the throne and wield power without compromise or counsel. Set is the image of an ego divorced from life, fearing the power of the Self and its ability to instigate change without the ego’s consent. He wields the ego defenses that attack the representations of the Self and shreds our memory of dreams. He refuses to cede authority to anything or anyone greater than himself and attacks the manifestations of the Self by devaluing inner life, dismissing synchronicity, annihilating the non-rational, and dissociating nightly sojourns. He is the atavistic regressive force we must all face — again and again.

 But like Isis, the soul is resourceful. Stricken by grief, Isis is unceasing in her quest to restore her husband. With the help of her sister and the scribe Thoth, god of magic, they find the parts of Osiris and bind them together. Like Isis, the essence of the anima archetype holds the drive to link inner and outer objects. In the human psyche she links the ego to the collective unconscious and fosters relatedness. Like Isis discovering the corpse of Osiris, our re-membering of a lost dream must begin with a sense of grief. Each morning that we record, “No dream remembered,” we must tolerate sadness and loss. Those feelings can lead us, like Isis, to seek the images holding the life of the dream. One at a time, each image seems to spark a pheromone trail, like a bee signaling the location of a flower. Following our deep instincts and trusting the scent that rises from each image, we are led to the next. It is fitting that Thoth is the essential assistant. As a god of the moon, he is acquainted with the secrets of the night – as the scribe, he is the holder of all memories, even the memories of the gods whose influence marks the evolution of worlds. Thoth is the inner sentinel who records every moment of our lives but cannot revive the images. Only the soul can breathe life into them.

 Having tricked the Sun into revealing its secret of rising each morning, Isis performed magical alchemy and brought Osiris back to life. The Sun that dies each night and returns in the morning holds the secret of resurrection. Osiris must be imbued with the nature of the Sun; once revived, he turns green, flourishing under the Sun’s gift of life. But Osiris’ phallus was lost, eaten by the Medjed fish. It was thus returned to the great primal generativity of the ocean. Resourceful Isis carved a phallus of wood and added it to Osiris’ form, an archetypal compensation for his lost capacity.

 As we work to restore a dream, we must accept that sometimes essential images are lost to us. If we listen to the soul, we can be guided to the underlying archetypal theme or image that restores its potency. To do this we must trust something more ancient than our intelligence – the wisdom of our inner Sun. The Sun, like Geb and Nuit, is an image of the Self, capable of bringing about fertility. Even when our waking mind is lost, the inner companion can offer what is missing in its rarified form.

 Returned to life but no longer whole, Osiris could not rule as he once did. Yet the destructive power of Set was brought to an end. Isis transformed herself into a hawk and hovered over Osiris’ wood phallus, fluttering her wings to imbue the wooden form with the breath of life. In response, his seed rose and impregnated her. Like Set, the ego can become inflated and demonic. Having dispatched the image of wholeness held in the dream, it wreaks havoc on the inner and outer world. Devoid of the balancing wisdom of the Self, the ego can fall into savage one-sidedness, splitting off any images, feelings, attitudes or information that challenge its fantasy of potency. A Set-like ego then projects these qualities onto others and calls them enemies.

 When this comes to a crisis the anima will abandon the ego and regress to the hidden Self deep in the psyche; there she can re-dream the true image of the ego. This often constellates a corrective depression, a sign of ego’s dwindling access to life force. The re-membering and resurrection of the dream image is not enough, for a fragmented selection of images lacks the power to impregnate the waking life. It must be fanned, hovered over, until its potential is roused and seeded in the soul. Pregnant with the image, the personal unconscious gestates new capacity to lay siege to the false self.

 Isis gave birth to Horus, hawk-headed as was she during his conception. He carried the power to rule sanctioned by the Self, for he reflected its pattern. The new image laid siege to the false self and triumphed. Similarly, the new image of our ego is revealed progressively in each dream we recall. It challenges and erodes false attitudes, and tends and nurtures the capacities necessary to manifest the Self in the outer world. If the fertile dream seed is brought to birth, it will correct the false self and dethrone it, incarnating the true image of the Self in the outer life.

 The war between creative and chaotic forces besieges us. At times the dream that would change our world is a medicine so fearful it is cut to pieces and scattered across the personal unconscious. Our inner landscape always includes a dreadful graveyard, the place we most fear to encounter because it is haunted by our unlived life, and it is vengeful. With the help of certain gods and ancient alchemy, those shards can yield new life.

 With the reign of Horus secured through his triumph over Set, Osiris established his throne in the underworld. He judged which souls were worthy of resurrection into eternal life; the unfit would be devoured. Horus is the new personality born of the soul and the seed ideas that issue from the re-membered Self as the re-collected dream. Once fully metabolized and adequately understood, the Osiran dream retreats into the great subterranean archives of psyche. There it is not inert, but is an ethical and moral force that weighs our actions and attitudes, discerning whether we have integrated its correcting force or disregarded it to our peril.

 Call upon Thoth to re-member your dreams. As you record them, imagine them returning to life. Let the seed images take root in your imagination throughout the day. Lovingly tend the new attitudes and creative ideas that emerge. They are surely your inner children – Horuses that can remake your world.

Copyright © 2021 This Jungian Life. All rights reserved in all domains.

 

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RecallYourDreams

 

Copyright © 2021 This Jungian Life. All rights reserved in all domains.

 

If you don’t already have a dream journal or another place where you record dreams, your assignment this month is to get one. If you will be recording your dreams in a physical journal, pick one that speaks to you. Maybe it is a very special, beautiful journal, but it doesn’t have to be. If you choose a spiral notebook from the drugstore, just make sure you pick one in a color you like. If you decide to use an app or another method to record dreams, go ahead and set that up. If you are going to keep your dreams somewhere on your phone, make sure they have their own special place.

Next, write your dreaming self a letter. Let it know that you are making a commitment to attend to your dreams and that you plan to record any dreams you receive. With reverence, let your dreaming self know that you would welcome any and all dreams it cares to send you and that you will value them all.

Reminder: Share your letter with fellow students on the forum!

My boyfriend and I are walking through an old city that reminded me a bit of Edinburgh, and we are walking through an outdoor train station or subway platform. We both need to urinate and go down an old stone stairway outside and find a public restroom. The door is ajar and there is red light coming from inside. There is a man inside, loitering, looking in really rough shape. It seems like he is cruising, looking for someone to have sex with in the restroom. His presence is disturbing to me. My boyfriend goes ahead and pees at a urinal while I stand there. I do not want to urinate because of the presence of this other man, and say “come on, let’s go.” We exit the restroom and my boyfriend turns around to push the door closed all the way—when the disturbing man pushes the door back open and starts coming after us, trying to grab my boyfriend. My boyfriend gets away from the man but he is still coming after us. I am frozen in place, unable to move, and facing the man. He comes up to me and he looks like a zombie, very pale white face, and somewhat diseased looking or like he’s strung out on drugs. I stare into his face, and suddenly the man begins to dissolve like dust.

Main feelings in the dream: discomfort, unease, fear

Context and associations: I was having a difficult time at work and feeling like quitting. This dream occurred the night after Thanksgiving, and I had some tension with my boyfriend at Thanksgiving dinner, feeling that he wasn’t giving me enough attention or treating us as a couple. I have been in non-monogamous relationships in the past, but my current boyfriend (who is in the dream) and I have discussed keeping the relationship monogamous for the time being.

Once you’ve spent some time thinking about this dream and perhaps discussing it with others, listen here to what the three of us thought about it.

For context, here’s the text of the dream again. 

My boyfriend and I are walking through an old city that reminded me a bit of Edinburgh, and we are walking through an outdoor train station or subway platform. We both need to urinate and go down an old stone stairway outside and find a public restroom. The door is ajar and there is red light coming from inside. There is a man inside, loitering, looking in really rough shape. It seems like he is cruising, looking for someone to have sex with in the restroom. His presence is disturbing to me. My boyfriend goes ahead and pees at a urinal while I stand there. I do not want to urinate because of the presence of this other man, and say “come on, let’s go.” We exit the restroom and my boyfriend turns around to push the door closed all the way—when the disturbing man pushes the door back open and starts coming after us, trying to grab my boyfriend. My boyfriend gets away from the man but he is still coming after us. I am frozen in place, unable to move, and facing the man. He comes up to me and he looks like a zombie, very pale white face, and somewhat diseased looking or like he’s strung out on drugs. I stare into his face, and suddenly the man begins to dissolve like dust.

Main feelings in the dream: discomfort, unease, fear

Context and associations: I was having a difficult time at work and feeling like quitting. This dream occurred the night after Thanksgiving, and I had some tension with my boyfriend at Thanksgiving dinner, feeling that he wasn’t giving me enough attention or treating us as a couple. I have been in non-monogamous relationships in the past, but my current boyfriend (who is in the dream) and I have discussed keeping the relationship monogamous for the time being.