Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams

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

Darkness is unavoidable; dreams provide us with opportunities to understand it instead of being sabotaged by it.

In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams. —C. G. Jung

Though the unconscious remains distant from ego awareness, we do have the symptom, or the dream, that is conscious, and each visitant has one foot in the dual realms. By respecting and tending this manifestation of the unconscious, we can finally begin to discern the direction of the psyche’s desire for us.

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

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.

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

If we pay attention to our dreams, instead of living in a cold, impersonal world of meaningless chance, we may begin to emerge into a world of our own, full of important and secretly ordered events. —Marie-Louise von Franz

I do not believe there is such a thing as a “bad” dream. Though we may not like its contents or its summons to accountability, or we are even frightened by it, all dreams are part of the psyche’s effort to heal, to correct, and to solicit a more informed engagement. Jung described this activity of the psyche as the “transcendent function,” namely,