Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams

Jung distinguished a symbol from a sign. Signs represent something specific: stylized images of a man and a woman indicate public restrooms; a red light signals stop.

“If the word is a sign,” wrote Jung, “it means nothing. But if the word is a symbol, it means everything.”

Finally, dreams are usually about the inner world. The dream maker is mostly interested in us. In waking life, the external world demands our attention; we turn our faces outward to interact with others, accomplish tasks, and achieve goals. However, the dream maker remarks primarily on things happening in the interior. We are often tempted to see d

the “I” in the dream is usually the least trustworthy part. Often at night our dream ego—the “I” in the dream—is confronted by figures that frighten, denigrate, or frustrate. Upon awakening, we tend to side with our dream ego and assume that the figures that have crossed us in the dream are mistaken or threatening. Usually, however, the new attitud

dreams present a fresh perspective. The dream maker’s views can differ radically from our conscious mind’s opinions and values. Jung said dreams are “invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand.”

dreams are symbolic. Your dream maker seldom has access to the directed thought and straightforward language of your conscious, waking mind. The dream maker is an ancient part of us that speaks in image, metaphor, and symbol, and relies on intuition and feeling instead of linear thinking and explicit expression.

complex is an autonomous center of energy formed by memories, sensory experiences, images, and ideas that coalesce around an archetypal core. Jung discovered complexes through his word association test early in his career: subjects’ responses to stimulus words were delayed or inappropriate if a word was emotionally loaded and caused unconscious int

Archetypes are the inherited, dynamic, and autonomous structures of life processes and patterns that make up the collective unconscious. All archetypes are bipolar—they have creative and destructive aspects. Because they embrace the wide range from instinct to spirit, archetypes have a powerful emotional charge that can overtake ego. Archetypes the

Having studied myths, symbols, and religious material, Jung posited a collective unconscious, a deep layer of psychic experience common to humankind. This concept is unique to Jungian psychology. The repository of prototypical, instinctual human experience over millennia, the collective unconscious is a wellspring of inherent, universal patterns an