by Ruth Snowden
* * *
Insight
Homeostasis is a term commonly used in physiology (the science of living organisms and their parts). It refers to the tendency that biological systems have to achieve balance and equilibrium between different elements of themselves.
* * *
Archetypes in dreams
Jung stressed that it is important to understand the individual in the context of mankind’s psychic history, as well as looking at his or her own life experience. This means that the analyst needs to have a good grasp of mythology as well as experience with personal dreams. Archetypal images and figures that appear in dreams are not the archetype itself, they are simply representations of it. For example, a dream of the Virgin Mary might be one way of representing the divine mother, or goddess archetype, which is a basic pattern built into the human brain. These archetypal patterns are closely connected to human instincts. Instincts are physiological urges that can be perceived by the normal senses, but they can also manifest as symbolic images – these are the archetypes. In other words, the archetype gives a definite form to the energy of the instinct, which makes it easier for us to understand.
Jung says that dreams often work in a compensatory way, following the homeostatic principle. If our psychic energy sways too far one way then an archetypal image may be produced in our dreams to show us where the imbalance lies. This is the means by which the unconscious gets through to the ego. So when we begin to analyse a dream, it is often helpful to ask ourselves what conscious attitude it compensates for. For example, if we are feeling left out and needy in some way then we might dream of a divine mother archetype who is giving us food. She might appear as our own mother, or perhaps as a cook or a dinner lady.
Jung’s idea of discovering and freeing balancing energies in this way seems much more relevant than Freud’s reductive method of boiling dreams down to images that mask childhood sexual trauma. It enables us to work with the present and the future, rather than merely unravelling the past. Interestingly, archetypes quite often appear in children’s dreams, such as Jung’s own phallus dream. Jung gives an example of a whole series of dreams recorded and drawn by a ten-year-old girl. The archetypal content in these dreams is very strong, and as far as Jung was able to discover, was not related to any mythological ideas or religious beliefs that her family held. This supports Jung’s idea that the archetypes are inborn in us.
Analysing dreams
For Jung, a dream was a complex intuitive structure, which must be viewed as a whole, rather than being picked apart. The idea, therefore, is not to interpret the dream, so much as to amplify it by looking at the imagery in it and identifying the general mood and feelings associated with it. Each image in the dream needs to be considered in turn, always looking at it within the context of the dreamer’s own life. For example, supposing someone dreams that they are using a stick to beat down a door – for Freud this would be an obvious sexual symbol, with the stick representing a phallus; but Jung pointed out that it could mean something else entirely. The unconscious has deliberately chosen this particular symbol and the analyst’s task is to find out why.
Even common dream themes such as falling and flying must be viewed in terms of the dream itself. Each dream arises from the individual psyche, in answer to specific circumstances and emotions. It is not possible, therefore, to lay down general rules for dream interpretation and we should be careful never to impose a meaning on somebody else’s dream. We can never fully understand another person’s dream and so it is vital to keep our own flow of associations in check. So:
the dream should always be treated as a fact; we should make no previous assumptions about it
the dream is a specific creation from the unconscious that somehow makes sense, even if we cannot immediately see how
we should explore the content of the dream thoroughly to try to find out what unconscious message is trying to emerge.
Jung emphasizes that because symbols always convey more than is immediately apparent, it is important not to reduce them down to a single meaning. Instead, we should stay with them, meditating upon different aspects of their meaning, and always taking into account what they mean to the individual.
Dreams have a tendency to occur in series, with each separate dream conveying the underlying message in a slightly different way. Jung found that as a rule a series of dreams was more useful for interpretation than a single dream. This is because important points become clearer with repetition, and mistakes in interpretation are often corrected by analysing a subsequent dream. Not only that, but we can also observe progress as the psyche slowly resolves the problem it is working with.
A dream can be approached in various different ways:
Objectively – the dream is considered in terms of the person’s real life in the external world. For example, if you dream that your car has broken down, the dream may be telling you that it is time to take your car in for a service.
Subjectively – the dream is considered in terms of what it represents within the person’s own personality. This time the car might represent yourself – perhaps there is a hidden health problem nagging away at your unconscious mind and it’s time for a visit to the doctor.
Collectively – if the dream contains numinous, archetypal symbols, then we can look towards the collective unconscious and mythological interpretations. This time the car might represent a vehicle that is taking you on your life’s journey, so the dream is pointing out that you need to give attention to your spiritual progress.
Of course, many of our dreams are only remembered in small snippets, but Jung said that some can be recalled as a whole story that can be looked upon as a little private drama. He sometimes found it helpful to break the story down into four stages:
Exposition – this is like the beginning of the play, or the prologue. It sets the scene and introduces the main characters.
Development of the plot – this is a tool used by all successful writers to build up the suspense and make us wonder what is going to happen.
Culmination – at this point something decisive happens, or a complete change occurs.
Lysis – this is the conclusion or solution. It is sometimes only reached later on, by working with the dream.
Breaking the dream down into stages in this way may help us to understand the dream more fully. We can begin to ask questions, such as why the dream was set where it was, and why certain characters appear in it. It is also interesting to observe sequences of dreams where the same setting and characters appear but in slightly different ways. This can point to the unconscious trying to get closer and closer to the centre of an issue and presenting it from different angles. The point of culmination may be quite different in subsequent dreams in a series as we get closer to the truth of the matter.
Jung’s house dream
Jung gives an example of a dream that he had about a house and uses it to describe some of the possible pitfalls of interpreting another person’s dream. In this dream he was exploring a house on various different levels. He began on the first floor, which was furnished in the style of the eighteenth century. Below this the ground floor was dark and appeared to be furnished more in sixteenth-century style. The lower he went into the house, the more primitive the floors became, until the bottom cellar was Roman. In the floor of the cellar was a stone slab, which revealed the way down to a cave full of prehistoric bones and skulls.
When Jung analysed this dream he realized that it was a sort of summary of his own life. He grew up in a house that was about two hundred years old, and his parents’ attitude was in many ways medieval. The lower levels illustrated his passionate interest in ancient history and palaeontology. However, when Jung discussed this dream with Freud, Freud became obsessed with the image of the skulls. He kept returning to them over and over, insisting that Jung try to find a wish in connection with them. Jung soon realized that Freud was hinting at a hidden death wish.
Jung concluded that this was his dream, a
bout his own private world. This was important because he came to understand that dream analysis is not a technique that can be learned and applied by following strict rules – it has to be done by means of discussion between two people. The danger is always that the analyst’s interpretation might dominate that of the patient. Jung gave up using hypnosis for the same reason – it gave the therapist too much control over the patient.
* * *
Insight
In modern dream analysis it is often assumed that a dream house can represent oneself, or one’s life, because a house is ‘where one lives’. Analysing dreams in which houses appear can be very revealing and give one a lot of fresh insight.
* * *
Sometimes a dream or vision cannot be understood however much one tries to investigate it. Jung says that it is best then to leave it in the back of one’s mind because it may become clearer at a later date. Often an external event will clarify a dream that one has been mulling over. Jung says that if one carries a dream around for long enough some sense will always emerge from it.
For Jung, dreams and symbols are never pointless or meaningless. On the other hand they are often not connected directly with worldly concerns, which is why many people tend to dismiss them as being unimportant. Jung says that to him it is incredible that although we get messages from our unconscious psyche almost every night, most people cannot be bothered to explore their meaning, and often even mistrust or despise them. He wonders, in fact, what the unconscious thinks of us! Jung was never able to agree with Freud that a dream is merely a façade, behind which lurks a meaning that is already known but is being withheld from consciousness. Dreams for Jung are often difficult to understand because they are expressed in symbols and pictures, which form the language of the unconscious. They are not deliberately deceptive, they are simply natural attempts by the unconscious to express ideas in its own way.
* * *
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Dreams were very important to Jung throughout his life and took a central place in his new psychology.
He saw dreams as evidence of natural psychic activity and growth, rather than as neurotic symptoms as Freud had done.
Jung suggested various different functions that dreams can serve: to act as compensation for areas of the conscious mind which are deficient or distorted in some way;
to bring back archetypal memories from the collective unconscious;
to draw attention to both inner and outer aspects of our lives of which we are not consciously aware.
A dream is personal to the individual and can help with the individuation process. Interpretation should be carried out by means of talking to the dreamer about the actual dream itself.
The dream can arise from many different sources but it always has a meaning that is relevant to the dreamer.
Dreams are not just about hidden wish fulfilments. They can reflect many different aspects of the life of an individual and can also extend beyond the individual psyche into the world of the collective unconscious.
Jung saw dreams as complex, intuitive structures and so he always tried to amplify their meaning and work with them creatively, rather than trying to analyse them by picking them apart.
The analyst needs to have a good grasp of mythological ideas so that dreams can be looked at in a collective context when archetypal material emerges.
It is often helpful to look at a whole series of dreams that have a connecting theme, because this will lead to fresh insights.
* * *
7
The personality and relationships
In this chapter you will learn:
key facts about Jung’s theory of personality
how the individual personality develops
the influence our psychological type has on our social life.
The psychology of consciousness
Jung was interested in studying the conscious aspects of the mind as well as the unconscious, but he pointed out that any study of the human mind is difficult to carry out scientifically. In any other science it is possible to apply a hypothesis to an impersonal subject. In psychology, however, one inevitably comes up against the fact that it is a case of one psyche studying another, or worse still, studying itself. This means that human relationships and the personality of the investigator always get in the way. This is particularly true when an analyst is working with a patient: no matter how impersonal the analyst tries to be, once he or she is fully engaged in conversation with the patient it is impossible not to bring subjective factors in.
Jung felt that a broad understanding of the different ways in which people relate to the world would help analysts and their patients towards understanding the dynamics of their relationships. This was one of the main reasons that he was interested in developing a theory about different types of human personalities, which he called his ‘psychology of consciousness’. He also explained that if one was made aware of the strengths in one’s psyche, one could then begin to work on the weaker areas, and so achieve more balance. Jung observed that human behaviour tends to follow certain basic patterns, which often operate as pairs of opposites. During the course of development, one emphasis often comes to be preferred, so the person tends to develop that mode of behaviour and act according to its characteristic aspects. The preferred mode of behaviour gradually becomes habitual and leads to predictable personality traits and ways of behaving.
Jung eventually developed a theory of psychological types that is still used today in modified forms. It was Jung who first gave us the well-known idea that people could be ‘introverts’ or ‘extroverts’. These are what he called the two ‘attitude’ types. He explained that this way of dividing people into groups is only one of many possible generalizations, but it helps people to understand themselves and one another. For example, it can highlight difficulties that commonly arise if a patient belongs to one group and the analyst to another. Jung later decided that the two attitude types were too broad and general, so he added four ‘functions’ – thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition.
A person’s personality is made up of any combination of the two attitude types and the four functions. The two attitude types are:
introversion – the psychic energy is turned inwards, towards the subject
extroversion – the psychic energy is turned outwards, towards the object.
The four functions are:
thinking – this type of person relates to the world via logic and the intellect
feeling – this type makes value judgements about the world
sensation – this type relies mainly on sensory impressions
intuition – this type perceives the world mainly through the unconscious.
A person is basically either introvert or extrovert, and their primary function can be any of the four described above. But the personality is not fixed – it is possible and even desirable to develop opposite characteristics and functions in order to become more balanced.
As is the case with all Jung’s theories, his theory of psychological types was too complex to have emerged fully formed all at once, and he was constantly working on it and modifying it. In 1921 he published a large and complicated volume called Psychological Types, in which he attempted to explain his theory. But the origins of his ideas about personality went back a long time before this. As early as 1904, when he was working with patients at Burghölzi on word-association tests, he began to sort their responses into two large groups which he called ‘egocentric’ and ‘impersonal’. Originally he related these to the psychiatric classifications of hysteria and schizophrenia, but he soon realized that they could have wider implications for general psychology. In 1913, he delivered a paper to the 4th International Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich, entitled ‘A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types’, which outlines some of the theories he was later to expand upon in Psychological Types.
Between 1918 and 1920 Jung had begun to realize that for him the goal of psychic developme
nt was individuation – the finding of the Self. Psychological Types is an attempt to provide some sort of framework for people to work with in the individuation process. When the book was first translated into English in 1923 by H. G. Baynes, it had an added subtitle, The Psychology of Individuation. This was a subtitle that had actually been suggested by Jung, and it reflects his main purpose in trying to formulate a theory of personality.
Introversion and extroversion
Jung’s theory divided people into two basic types according to the orientation of their psychic energy, or libido. The two different attitudes were called introversion and extroversion and the two psychological types introverts and extroverts. These terms are so well known today that people take them for granted in everyday use of language. Everyone has both attitudes to varying degrees, but there is a tendency for one of them to dominate.
Introverts withdraw psychic energy from the world and direct it towards the ‘subject’ – they are more interested in their own inner world of thoughts and feelings than the external world. Their behaviour is governed mainly by subjective factors. They are reflective, hesitant people, with retiring natures, preferring to keep themselves to themselves and disliking large groups. They are cautious, often shrinking away from new objects and situations, and may appear to be somewhat on the defensive. Introverts need privacy and personal space and spend a lot of their time in contemplation. An extreme form of introversion appears in autism and some types of schizophrenia.