WELCOME TO Module 4

 

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

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  Module 4: Objective & Subjective Dream Interpretation

THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL EDITED TRANSCRIPT

 Joseph: In this module, we’re going to talk about differentiating between the objective and subjective interpretation of a dream. Jung was predisposed to think of dreams as predominantly subjective, but once in a while the unconscious wants us to know something about the outer world that it finds important, so we’re going to talk about that also.

Deb: Let’s define what Jung meant by a subjective versus objective stance in dream interpretation. If a person dreams of her partner, for example, the partner at a subjective level would be a representation of her own inner partner, a figure representing a type of energy in her. Psyche uses the people in our world to create images of an inner dynamic or situation. At the objective level, this person’s dream partner might be about the actual, external-world person.

Lisa: In previous modules we talked about Jung’s orientation to dreams, so this isn’t new. As a review, we could simply say that Jung believed dreams were meaningful and were constructed by the unconscious as a way of communicating with the conscious mind. Dreams are purposive and help us regulate and not become too one-sided and out of balance. When we think about interpreting a dream, we start with the assumption that there’s information in it for us–something we don’t already understand. This is important when we consider the subjective versus objective viewpoints, because often people will come in with a dream about someone, maybe a person who upsets them, and the dream seems to affirm what they already know in waking life: that the person’s a jerk, for example. So we might start to wonder what’s behind the surface of the dream.  What else is the dream saying? Because if we think we already know the meaning—oh yes, that’s exactly how my mother-in-law is–we probably didn’t understand the dream.

Joseph: On a conscious level, we often want our stance to be reaffirmed. One of the reasons personal growth can be so challenging is that we’re predisposed to collect evidence that  we’re right. We might have a dream, let’s say about a mother-in-law with whom there is a problematic relationship. Of forty elements in the dream, we are likely to focus on the ten elements that correspond to and reaffirm our righteous negative feelings about her. But often what’s important are the other thirty nuances in the dream. For example, I’ve never seen my mother-in-law wear that color dress or that kind of jewelry–or perhaps there’s something on the table which is totally different from anything she would actually have. The unconscious will often bring forward subtle differences around a known image as a way to introduce new information.

Deb: The dreams are compensating for some kind of imbalance in consciousness, and supply important missing information.

Lisa: I like what you said, Joseph, about our desire to be reaffirmed, and I think it’s true. Someone who is relatively new to dream work will often come in with a dream about a coworker, a mother-in-law, or a partner, and immediately assume that the dream is about that person. Then it can usually be read in a way that reinforces the known conscious attitude. So when working with dreams, one of the first tasks is to orient to the idea that it might be subjective or symbolic.

Deb: When we use the word subjective, we’re looking at the images in a dream and finding a way to map them onto our internal life. Every figure is then seen as part of the dreamer’s personality, out-pictured in this dream drama. Also, dreams are purely autonomous and do not come from the ego. Jung says, “One does not dream, one is dreamt. We suffer the dream. We are its objects.”

Lisa: That’s a great quote.

Joseph: A lot of times when we start working with dreams, our waking personalities will think I just made that up, attributing the creative process of the dream to the ego level. In order to really dive into our own dreams, we have to imagine there is something deep and wise at the center of consciousness that we know very little about–but it knows a lot about us, and is communicating in a way that has nothing to do with our waking opinions.

Deb: I’m thinking about the example of the mother-in-law, where the dreamer’s conscious position might be one of resentment. But in our hypothetical dream example, the mother-in-law could be stylishly dressed and wear some beautiful jewelry, and that would correct an imbalance in the dreamer’s conscious position. The dream shows that the mother-in-law is very attractive–she has a sense of style and knows how to present herself. The dream would add the balance positive attributes provide, which are also part of the mother-in-law. Her attractiveness in the dream is the new information that the dreamer could potentially integrate in waking life.

Lisa: That would be an example of an objective understanding of the dream–it would be about the actual mother-in-law and not about an internal dynamic.

Deb: This is where it starts to get tricky, because there is an outer world mother-in-law about whom this might be true, but there’s also the internal world of the dreamer and her own characteristics being imaged as her mother-in-law. That internal attitude might be toward female authority figures in general, and the dream maker chose an image. It could be the boss, it could be the mother-in-law, it could be the crabby neighbor down the street. How much is the dream image about that particular person and how much is it about one’s own inner attitude toward people who represent threats or arouse negative feelings in the dreamer?

Lisa: Subjective and objective viewpoints sound like distinct categories, but it’s not so clear that they’re purely differentiated. There can be elements of both in many dreams.

Deb: Absolutely. The dream maker picked a particular person to appear in the dream both for what it symbolizes in the dreamer’s own psyche and perhaps also for the role that that person plays in the dreamer’s waking life.

Lisa: It’s worth emphasizing that this needs to be parsed carefully when you dream of someone who’s currently present in your life. It’s easier if you dream of a wolf outside your bedroom window. There’s no question that this is not an objective dream–unless of course you happen to live where there are wolves. Or if you dream of a tornado, a tsunami, or a bear, we understand these symbolically almost all the time. However, if you dream about your partner, your parents, your best friend, your boss, or your coworker, we have to try to make a differentiation about what elements might be subjective and what elements might be objective. There’s a temptation to think about it objectively–this is about my boss–instead of this is an image of an aspect of me or this is about my attitude toward authority or this is a representation of how my attitude toward X is out of balance.

Joseph: When someone we know well is in a dream, and the dream image of the person seems like a fairly accurate portrayal of the outer person, that can let us know that the unconscious is commenting on the outer person or the dreamer’s relationship to the outer person. If your mother opens the front door in your dream and she looks exactly like herself, we would lean toward the objective. But if you have a dream of your mother and she’s wearing a clown suit, that would be such an odd way of imaging your mother that we wouldn’t be likely to consider it an objective dream.

Lisa: I have here a dream we could try to parse in this way. This dream was sent by a thirty-four-year-old woman who is a therapist. I’m helping my ex-husband search for biological parents, as in the dream he was adopted. A part of me keeps reminding me he is not adopted, which is true in real life. We are looking online and behind things all over town, but we don’t find them. The context of the dream is that she has been divorced for about six months, and she notes, we’ve had our ups and downs trying to co-parent and get along. The feelings in the dream were anxiety, curiosity, and confusion. For further context, she notes, my ex is not actually adopted and was raised by his biological family. The family wasn’t a contributing factor to our divorce. So what do you think: subjective or objective?

Joseph: I would probably start with an objective lens with this dreamer because the ex-husband is known. Although the dream might be revealing some hidden information about the ex-husband or her attitudes towards the ex-husband, I would probably keep it in the orbit of the relationship with him.

Lisa: Because the dream emphasizes that he’s adopted and that’s not true in waking life, it would flag that we also need to look at this on the subjective level.

Deb: I’m thinking about what it means to the dreamer that in the dream her ex-husband is adopted. It seems to me there might be a question about belonging here.

Lisa: It brings up the archetype of the orphan.

Joseph: If I were to think of it objectively, the dream maker wants the dreamer to look at the external-world husband, absorb the fact that he feels orphaned by the divorce, and have some compassion for that. Her waking personality might be positioned against feeling that he’s vulnerable, or perhaps she just has negative feelings toward him.

Lisa: The ex-husband might also be a picture of an inner dynamic, a sort of inner partner. The dream might really be a commentary on this woman’s animus–that there’s an orphaned feeling in her that perhaps hasn’t been known before.

Joseph: That would be an example of the two lenses, objective and subjective. The figure of the ex-husband could be about her personality, or there could be new information about the outer person that the unconscious knows but the ego is defending against.

Lisa: How do you really know if it’s subjective or subjective? One of the reasons I liked this dream as an example is that it features someone who is close to the dreamer. They were married and now they’re trying to co-parent, but there’s a significant discrepancy in the dream from waking reality. A new fact is introduced: he’s an orphan. To me, this would point toward a subjective understanding of the dream.

Deb: I think both can be true. On the objective level, the dream portrays the dream ego in a position of compassion. She’s helping her “ex” look for his parents. That might be the new information: I hadn’t been aware of how I still feel partnered, compassionate and supportive toward my “ex.” On the internal level, a part of her own animus–her contra-sexual inner other–is feeling orphaned. That’s being imaged as her ex-husband. So using the subjective lens, the dream ego is looking for a lost and orphaned part of herself. Both could be true. How do we know? When we’re working with someone, there is affect and a sense of yes, that’s it. There’s a moment of recognition and feeling when meaning clicks.

Lisa: Yes. I think it’s always good when in doubt to start with a subjective lens. What would this mean symbolically? If that doesn’t really turn anything up, and feels like a dead end, then turn to what it would be like if I thought about it objectively? What if this really is about my ex-husband? Maybe as you said, Joseph, the unconscious is trying to give me new information about the other person.

Deb: We can’t know about this dream and this dreamer, but if she worked with her own dream, she would know, because feeling would be evoked in her, such as I do also feel compassion for him, or I am looking for a lost part of myself–or both.

Lisa: One of the things that’s hard for people who are just starting to work with their dreams is shifting into the subjective lens. When someone first comes in and hasn’t done dream work before, the default every time is, this is really about my ex-boyfriend or this is really my boss. It can take a long time working with someone and gently asking, what would this mean if it were a part of you? What if we looked at it this way?  Moving out of a tendency to interpret dreams literally is a bit of a heavy lift and requires some discipline. Joseph, as you alluded to before, it involves a willingness to let conscious attitudes be challenged.

Deb: So as a rule of thumb, we might consider that every part of the dream and every character is a part of the dreamer. The wolf that you mentioned earlier, Lisa, translates to where is your inner wolf? And what part of you is your inner mother-in-law? And ex-husband? Just consider that as a possibility. And what does my inner wolf feel like? How can I relate to that part of myself consciously? Or my mother-in-law or my ex-husband?

Lisa: We’ll be going into more detail in future modules about ways to relax into those kinds of imaginations. But for now, we’re suggesting there are two lenses through which to look at dreams.

Joseph: In terms of using these two stances, it’s very difficult to use them simultaneously. It’s challenging to create an interpretive stance at all, which is what we’re trying to do. To start looking at a dream objectively and then interpret things through a subjective lens leaves people in a kind of mush. If I were to think instructionally, I would say marry yourself to one lens or the other as the approach to the dream. Come up with a conclusion from that lens, then set it aside, use the other lens and make everything fit according to that. It’s a way to practice and it’s also a discipline. If we were to take the dream about the ex-husband and think about it as purely objective, we would keep everything circling around nuances and new revelations about the relationship to him, like aspects of his character and experiences the unconscious is feeling, but the ego is defending against. Jung was deeply interested in how to drop deeply enough into our own psyches to find a shared field of energy with other people and the environment. We can come into such a deep and astounding level of knowledge about other people that our egos can be shocked. Again, if we commit to using one lens and then the other, I think it can be a little easier to find meaning. If it’s the subjective lens, what we’re really doing is detaching the image from the external world. There’s a discipline with the subjective lens: that is not my outer ex-husband, and these are not his issues. Everything is brought inside and considered a part of the dreamer. That is a tremendous psycho-spiritual discipline that we call the symbolic attitude, and it is important.

Lisa: The subjective stance does take awhile to cultivate–it really does. Even now, I sometimes wake up from a dream about a friend and immediately think, oh, that’s about her. And then I have to ask myself, what would this mean symbolically? What does she represent in my psyche?

Deb: The good news is that this can begin as a cognitive practice. It may take awhile to move into a place that feels connected and real using the subjective lens. But as a doable practice, you can simply tell yourself, the people in my dream are aspects of myself. What would it be like to consider this heinous dream figure as a part of myself? And if you think that, and it doesn’t really feel real, so what? It will take awhile or it may not hold for you in this particular dream. Nevertheless, you can hold it in mind rather than automatically thinking that the people and situations in your dreams are about the external world.

Joseph: Since we have focused on human figures, another real, almost poetic stretch into the dream is to consider that every element of the dream is part of our personality. Jung says this beautifully when he likens the dream to a theater in which the dreamer is himself, the scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public, the critic, and the props on the stage! I used to work with dreams by asking someone to narrate the dream from the view of the cat, if there’s a cat in the dream, or if you were the chair in the dream. You can describe what’s happening in a way that creates a rich mutability of perspective. Sometimes people can suddenly see something in a dream that is surprising and useful.

Deb: The theater production image is a way of bringing one’s inner landscape to light. What if you were the cat? What if you were the yellow wall? This really gets closer to your own creative interiority so you can connect in a felt way with what the unconscious has presented in the dream. I have another dream to consider from the standpoint of the objective and subjective lenses. In the first scene, my guy and I are watching each other masturbate over Skype. He’s in his house on his real wood floor. In the second scene, we’re in my parents’ house. They aren’t there, but there are children’s toys around. He masturbates himself on their laminate wood floor. I’m anxious about this and clean up. In the third scene, I arrive at a cavernous Victorian restaurant below ground level in London. The first chamber is a men’s urinal and lots of men are pleasuring each other. It’s a lively scene and they invite me in, but I refuse. I move to another chamber, which is a spa, but I don’t go in. In between the two chambers is a lecture theater and my guy is giving a work presentation to an audience. He doesn’t acknowledge my arrival. I sit next to the projector under the chairs where the audience is sitting, and watch him present. He won’t be able to see me as he’d be blinded by the projector, but I can see him. For context, the dreamer says he’s been seeing the man in the dream for almost three years and they are in love. The other man is married, although the marriage has been difficult, and he’s been torn between trying to make the marriage work and leaving. The other man’s husband doesn’t know about the relationship with the dreamer. The dreamer says his lover is wonderful sexually. The dreamer would really like to live with him and has never been so much in love before. He’s disturbed that his lover will not give up his husband to be with him.

Lisa: This is a dream we discussed on the podcast. We wanted to bring it up here because it’s such a good example of how subjective-objective tensions circle around a painful outer-world situation.

Deb: There’s a very real man in this dreamer’s life. What is the dream trying to communicate that the dreamer doesn’t know? If we take Joseph’s advice and look first through the subjective lens and then the objective lens, what do we come up with? With the subjective lens, everything in the dream is part of the dreamer’s own psyche. What the dream portrays is two images of males that are separate, watching each other over Skype. This indicates that there’s a separation internally between the dream ego and a part of himself imaged as his lover. When “they” go to the places in London, the dream ego part doesn’t do the pleasuring or go to the spa, and in the lecture theater those two parts are again not connected. The dream ego can see his lover but the lover can’t see him. There are images of internal disconnection.

Joseph: I find myself wondering from the subjective lens what the lover might represent in the psyche of the dreamer. The lover could represent a masculine aspect of the dreamer that the waking mind finds exciting and wants union with, conjoining in a way that’s committed and sustained. If we think about this as something split apart internally that is longing to come together, we could imagine this as neurotic suffering, because part of our own psychology has been split off and we haven’t permitted ourselves to bring it into consciousness. When I think of him seeing the masculine other, aching to be in union but unable to sustain it, I’m curious about what kinds of capacities he longs to have. Sometimes we call this golden shadow. If this person were here in the room, I might ask, what are the positive qualities of the beloved that you wish you had more of? That might lead us to what he’s aching for.

Lisa: There is something in his creative life that he’s yearning for, perhaps a professional accomplishment, that is being projected onto his lover. The lover in the dream is carrying those qualities. He is an image of what the dreamer longs for in himself.

Joseph: It could also be something like extroversion. For instance, if the dreamer is a quiet, introverted person, and the inner beloved is on a stage, out in front and successful, that capacity to be confident and extroverted could have an erotic quality. For people who feel deeply shy or lack self-confidence, that can seem almost superhuman, yet they long to be connected to that capacity in themselves.

Lisa: That can feel like longing for a beloved, and what makes it so poignant–if that’s what is happening–is that it’s about a potential in us that we sense but can’t connect with well.

Deb: That’s part of what makes it so hard to work with subjective level of the dream. Everything in us often tends to say, but that’s really not me. I don’t have those potentials at all. I would never want to lecture in front of a huge audience. We find qualities that potentially belong to ourselves in other people. We may feel positive about them and long for them, as in this dream, or there may be a strong dislike, but it takes some practice and repeatedly acknowledging part of me is that.

Joseph: I’d like to go into another aspect of possibility with the subjective lens. Depending on how much of Jung’s model of the psyche we’re familiar with, we can make this increasingly more complicated and multidimensional. If we imagine that the dreamer is perhaps introverted or shy, and that the beloved is extroverted, skilled at presenting information, and has achieved status, the dream ego is able to see the potential in the dream. It’s not totally unconscious, but he sees it from a distance through the projector, and seeing the potential is intensely exciting. There’s an arousal when we see our potential in another person, but it can also create envy. In the dream, the envy is discharged, so that the golden shadow doesn’t become hated. He’s looking at the beloved, it’s exciting, the tension gets high, and there is a release of all that longing. It protects him from feeling envious and also allows him to enjoy the golden shadow vicariously. This is something parents have to do all the time: they see wonderful potentials in their children that can also evoke envy. One of the psychological tasks for parents is to enjoy that new potential vicariously through the children, so they can cheer them on. That little redirection in the psyche needs to happen for the relationship to maintain its positive feeling. We can map several layers that trace where libido is going and how it’s coping with the neurotic split.

Lisa: In this dream, there’s always frustration of libido. The dream ego is never quite met.

Joseph: Right! There is arousal, discharge, and longing from a distance. From a feeling level, we can all identify with wishing we could become a particular person. One of the reasons we fall in love with movie stars is because they carry a potential for us and for the culture. People long to have some experience of what a star’s role represents, so we go to the movies and we live that role vicariously through them.

Deb: If we change gears now and consider this dream from the objective level, what would we come up with? What I’m aware of is that there are repeated images of disconnection in the relationship. There is the first image of having a sexual encounter over Skype–a visual connection but no physical connection. The lover has a real wood floor, the dream ego has a laminate wood floor…

Lisa: …that is in his parents’ house. If we’re looking at this on the objective level, we might see that there’s a power differential between the dreamer and his lover.

Deb: And the dreamer is back in the realm of childhood: he’s in his parents’ house, another example of a power differential. Then they go to a cavernous Victorian restaurant below ground level, meaning below consciousness. Again, there are images of disconnect: the dream ego doesn’t go to spa chamber or another place where people are pleasuring each other. Finally, there’s the lecture theater where the lover is giving a presentation but the dreamer can’t be seen.

Lisa: Those images of the room where people are pleasuring each other, the spa room, and the lecture room in the middle show a split between sexuality and intellect. It’s a curious juxtaposition.

Joseph: That’s also the tension between monogamy and a kind of Dionysian sexuality, which I think people in the gay community find a powerful differentiation. Will the person stay single or continue to have multiple partners? Is one person going to be chased and the other person funnel all his sexual libido into a single relationship? I think all couples have to somehow hold that tension.

Deb: The dream seems to culminate in the vivid scene of the lover standing at a lectern with the bright light from the projector making the dreamer is invisible. Again, there’s a power differential.

Lisa: Yes. The lover is up high and the dreamer is seated below, in the audience. Objectively speaking, when we are in a relationship with someone who is married to someone else, we are the “other woman” as it were—a position of being less powerful.

Joseph: Being the hidden one.

Deb: In waking life, the dreamer says he loves a married man. He is in the classic position of the mistress who has the erotic connection but not a lived union.

Lisa: He can’t claim the relationship. It’s a secret that has to be lived in the shadows–in an underground world.

Joseph: In terms of what the dreamer might not know, the dream confirms he’s having an affair and he knows the other person is married, but the pervasive atmosphere of sexual tension leads me to be curious about how unconsciously exciting it may be to be the mistress, to have the secret. The fruit is grasping the exciting moments. We could say it’s frustrating and not fully consummated, but what might be there to enjoy about that? There’s something about the illicit affair that is compelling.

Deb: Stolen pleasures and secret alliances can add to a neurotic connection.

Joseph: Even in the beginning of the dream, there’s the ejaculate that has to be cleaned up quickly so that the evidence is hidden. In the commentary of the dream, the statement is I love him so much. I want to live with him. I want to be together. But the unconscious might say, yes, but you are enjoying being this secret one. It’s very sexy not to have constant access to your partner, and it creates a heightened state when you do encounter each other. That might fade if you saw the person every day.

Deb: And there is the erotic and exciting projection onto the lover. It’s imaged quite literally in the dream: the lover is giving a lecture and a projector is shining on the screen. We often have an image of desire to live with the lover and for a union to be complete. But then there’s the daily humdrum of married life.

Lisa: Nothing gets rid of projection like picking up someone’s underwear off the bathroom floor day after day.

Deb: All those quotidian realities come into full being, versus the excitement of the love affair, a cocoon where the real world doesn’t intrude.

Lisa: Yes. And the way the sexual and sensual stuff is cordoned off from the lecture hall says something about how these things have been compartmentalized in the dreamer’s psyche.

Joseph: I have another fantasy about the dream. If we think about the eroticization of the affair, the dream ego sitting in the audience is almost like spying on his lover on stage. There’s an interesting voyeuristic equality that’s happening and it’s in the same realm as sex dungeons. It’s possible that the middle room of spying on your lover giving a lecture could be just as illicitly self-pleasuring and erotic as the rooms on either side.

Lisa: That’s really interesting but it’s not the feeling I have when I read this dream. That part made me feel sad. Our felt reactions to dreams can be important.

Joseph: These lenses are ways of exploring all kinds of metaphors and narratives, to analyze it in all kinds of ways. I think even the interpretations you feel couldn’t be true are interesting to meditate on.

Deb: As we’ve discussed and explored this dream using the two lenses—subjective and objective–they open up all kinds of possibilities for meaning. These two lenses help us wonder about those possibilities and introduce us to levels of meaning in the dream.

Lisa: I have a dream that’s a good example of an objective dream. It comes from a woman who is twenty-nine and studying to get a master’s degree. I dreamed that I was in my parents’ house, but this house was bigger. I was in my room and I heard down the hallway my mother say that my father was not doing well. I think this is so typical of my family, never hearing news firsthand. I go to my parents’ room and he has many nurses helping him. One of them warns me that he is mentally ill. He is having the delusion of believing he is the Queen of England, but when I go to visit him, he has a moment where he is just himself. But the nurses don’t want to know that he has this delusion because it can affect him very deeply. They take his cell phone where he had sent crazy messages. But when I start talking with my father, he says, “I know I’m not doing well. I’m really not sure why. Maybe it is something related to the heart.” The nurses approved because he also has a heart problem but I said, “maybe you had an aneurysm from traveling and that also affected your mind.” The dreamer says for context that she just moved to England to do a master’s degree. Before that, she had to live with her parents for a short time. Her father had recently retired and wasn’t as active, and she felt lack of work had aged him quickly. He did not understand that being rehired was not going to happen, and her mother seemed preoccupied. She said the main feeling in the dream was worry about what was happening. I wondered if this might be a dream about her actual father who is beginning to fail. The dream could be elucidating aspects of that experience in quite a refined way.

Joseph: Sometimes with an objective dream, we might surmise that the unconscious is picking up on an actual neurodegenerative process the father is undergoing that has yet to be discovered medically. Sometimes it’s worth filing that away, and maybe suggest that her dad talk to his doctors to see if there is a physical correlate.

Deb: Yes, especially since she lived with her parents before moving to London. The physical proximity of living in the same house enables us to pick up subtle signals, because we resonate deeply to people we live with. This gives more credence to the hypothesis that this is an objective dream with information about her father.

Lisa: She says her mother is worried, too. To some extent, this already seems conscious but it also sounds like there’s a family pattern of not discussing things. So it’s known but unknown—perhaps it’s one of those things we choose not to know.

Deb: She also says that it’s typical of her family never to hear news firsthand, which might lend even more credence to how the unconscious has to pick things up since they’re not expressed outwardly in the family.

Joseph: We could imagine that the nurses are symbols of this kind of understanding. The family can nurse each other and take care of each other, but they can never speak the diagnosis or the full truth for fear of aggravating the situation…

Lisa: …by forcing people to face an uncomfortable truth. There’s a sense of hiding–a psychological element of this dream, although we are choosing the objective lens. I wondered if there was a wound at the level of heart between father and daughter that might be a part of this. Sometimes such wounds come to the fore when a parent is failing.

Deb: I noticed that all the characters in the dream except for the father are female. There’s the mother, the dreamer, the nurses, and the father’s delusion that he’s the Queen of England. I would be curious about that, which would take us the subjective level of the dream. We just have to be aware of when we are switching gears.

Lisa: We could, per Joseph’s suggestion before, do one pass through the dream that was purely subjective, and a second pass that was objective.

Joseph: The overarching approach in Jungian dream interpretation is that most dreams are subjective. Most dreams seem to be attempts by the Self to hold up a mirror to waking life and show things that are generally hidden from view. Those things are shown in symbolic forms that provide a glimpse of something going on in the psyche that may be rather mysterious to consciousness. We call that a subjective lens. Once in a while, when we dream of a figure we know really well, and that the figure does not seem terribly distorted in the dream, we might interpret that objectively–that the dream is truly about the external person. It could be about what’s going on inside them, what’s going on in the relationship, or how we’re orienting toward the living person. The unconscious thinks it’s time for us to become more aware of that. We’re hoping that as dreamers look at their own dreams, they will use the subjective lens and then try the objective lens.

Lisa: I want to lift up one more small piece: sometimes we dream about someone we knew a long time ago but haven’t seen or heard from in a while. That would lead to a more subjective understanding because the dreamer is not currently in relationship with them.

Deb: It’s my overall impression that objective dreams occur when the person you’re dreaming about is in your immediate physical and psychological field, and there’s a daily connection, an emotional connection—and a lived connection. The objective lens probably wouldn’t be relevant to somebody you haven’t seen in a long time.

 

© This Jungian Life 2021 all rights reserved throughout the universe in perpetuity, in any and all media now known or hereinafter devised.

 

By Deborah Stewart

“I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level. In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself. This I call interpretation on the subjective level.”

C.G. Jung

I often use the image of a sports stadium to illustrate the difference between the subjective and objective lens in dream work (and life). If you are on the field playing, your focus is in the moment. The game may be going well on a crisp September day—or you may be getting banged up on a muddy field in the rain.

One way of the other, this is akin to the subjective lens, and it has a definite feeling component.

Up in the in the skybox you see the entire field. The guys up there (and they are guys) see from the top down, spot patterns, and suggest strategic changes. No surprise: the thinking tasks of the skybox are less arduous, especially in lousy weather. No wonder we tend to work with our dreams from the objective skybox rather than being thrown into the subjective tumult of the game.

Jungian dream interpretation starts with associations to the dream figures, setting, and more, so it tends to activate the objective lens at the outset. When I dreamed of Walnut Hill Park, across the street from my childhood home, I could easily reach memories and associations: it was, for example, where I didn’t learn to ride a bike when Philip Nelson aimed me down the big hill and let go. Memories, relationships, values and feelings came to life, which we hope can serve as a springboard to the subjective meaning of the dream. In this case, “park” turned out to represent my ambivalence about a new life direction: self-determination and empowerment—or failure and injury?

But sometimes objective associations remain stubbornly in place, especially when dreams image waking-world people and situations. When I dreamed of my tall, silent grandfather, for example, I could not relate in a meaningful way to a query such as “where is your own silent grandfather”? I had never been able really to love this remote man, nor did I embody this characteristic. Anyone who knew me would have agreed that whatever else I might be, silent I was not. Subjective understanding of this dream image was a 180-degree pivot I couldn’t make. So the dream maker gave me a shove by providing a dream that defied objective interpretation.

I dreamed I was riding a slow-moving buffalo-ish beast into a canyon out west to meet the priestess who ruled it. A man on horseback also wanted to ride into the canyon. The priestess, the very definition of authority, was dressed in robes and stood on a ledge at the threshold of the canyon. She forbade the rider entry, and when he defied her, she killed him. “I” was stunned. Then the priestess beckoned me forward into the canyon.

This dream demanded the subjective lens, for personal associations were irrelevant in helping me orient to this dream. I had no experience of the west, shaggy beasts, priestesses or anything depicted in the dream. I would have to get into the game, starting with my shock at the dispassionate execution I had witnessed. Yes, the man had been arrogant and disrespectful of the priestess–but death? It was a stretch for me to align with these feelings. Jungian analyst Pat Berry teaches that the least reliable attitude in a dream is often that of the dream ego.

My Jungian-oriented therapist asked about my inner priestess. Surely, I did not possess her authority, much less her power…and I could not imagine simply striking someone dead. I had been horrified as a child to read how the Greek goddess Diana killed a mortal hunter, Actaeon. He had seen her bathing in the woods, so Diana changed him into a stag. Then his own hounds chased him down and killed him. It’s hard to say whether it was Actaeon’s murder or the malicious method Diana selected that was more shocking.

And yet…part of me had been thrilled to see that arrogant man in my dream really get it. Part of me was awed by the priestess’ (my?) female power and unhesitating delivery of punishment. She (I?) had given him fair warning. It turned out that I could find in myself a powerful governor of my own sacred realm—not to mention my capacity for ruthless retaliation.

The next step would entail finding my own inner beast: shaggy, slow and dumb. My conscious mind could not relate to this image, but the dream maker could be counted on to bring it more vividly to my attention as an outsize green monster living on a faraway planet.

Altogether–except for rare instances–the best use of the objective lens, like the view from the skybox, is to aid understanding of the subjective “game.” Jung is very clear that (almost always) everything in the dream represents an aspect of the dreamer—one we don’t know about. Furthermore, images of those unknown parts of ourselves come wrapped in feeling: revulsion, wonder, horror, excitement, pity, surprise–and more. We re-cognize ourselves through the experiences we have in dreams. We become more whole.

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Working with the following dream, try creating both a subjective and an objective interpretation. Try one first and write as much as you can, and then attempt the other.

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

Dreamer is a 28-year-old female.

My partner Ollie and I were in a room with this older woman who is in charge of the tour we are on. A very thin younger girl arrived and the older woman doted on her. Ollie and I did not really integrate with her. Then, I look up and Ollie is helping her take off her dress, and her thin body is exposed. She then helps him take off his clothes to change. I walk away but they don’t seem to care. I’m upset but question if I should be. We get on the tour bus and end up at my best friend from childhood’s house. I’m in her bedroom upstairs packing up my things and crying, expecting Ollie to come in. I go to the railing and find him sitting downstairs with the girl, hanging out. I tell him that he knows that was not okay what happened. He replies, saying, “You know, it has not been okay for a long time.” I go back to my room and a cousin from my dad’s side arrives. I try hiding my tears because I’m not sure if we are broken up. Then my aunt, mom’s sister, arrives and I can’t stop crying. I feel we have broken up and I did not have a choice. Eventually, I realize I’m dreaming and wake myself up.

There is a portal to another world, a tropical world as in Avatar. I step through and many humans are there, setting up but partying in a tribal way. They are a black mass of people – I can’t identify individuals. I know my sister and my ex-boyfriend were there. I had a bad feeling about this place despite the revelry. I try to call my ex on an old-style mobile phone, like a radio. He answers and I try to warn him about this. I only hear deafening silence, despite my cries. I see him with his mouth open but no sounds coming out. I fail to get through to him and he stays behind. I then contact my sister and tell her we need to leave, and eventually we do.

Feelings in the dream: Anxiety, panic and worry. Devastation that I couldn’t get through to him. I felt like he was making a mistake I had made, and I was trying to save him from this.

Context and associations: I was breaking up with him but was repressing this fact from myself I.e. not consciously thinking about it. I had had issues with him, not being comfortable with being in a relationship for some reason, and pushed him away leaving the relationship in a limbo for many months. I’m bisexual but have always been uncomfortable with the gay lifestyle and culture, and being gay. The culture I’ve always found to be dangerous, risky and a path to destruction with the partying and drug taking. I have engaged in it but feel guilt and shame about it. It is one of the main reasons the relationship failed.