Overview
This chapter introduces a general theoretical framework on the subject of dreams in relation to the other research subjects. Dreams as important origins of symbolic imaginaries and cultures, and their specific significance, roles, and functions in the latter, are presented. Next the main theoretical fundaments regarding the concept of dream are discussed. The dream is conceptualized as a natural product of the unconscious and its symbolic function. Dynamics and functioning of the unconscious are explained through the dream as its embodiment. Possible relations between dream and subjectivity—the ways dreams can express or reveal subjectivity and social reality—depend on interpretative and hermeneutic outlooks, which are presented.
3.1 Dream, Culture, and Symbolic Imaginaries: Historical Import
In stark contrast to our modern Western view on the dream, historical and anthropological studies1 have evinced the vast importance dreams always had across prior cultures and ages. Like its brother myth, the dream was usually connected to the very foundations of a culture and society—their particular cosmology, anthropology, religion and cult, language, medicine, ideas of individuality, and social roles—and was seen and understood through such specific cultural traits, forming distinct dream cultures. If seen anthropologically, therefore, dreams are always bound to the culture in which they originate, and cannot be completely dissociated from it2 (Shamdasani, 2003). As a vital cultural factor, the dream had many-sided social functions in important decisions and prophecy, in institutions such as initiatory and passage rites, in dynamic cultural changes, in art and other creative acts: it was a fundamental factor of the symbolic imaginary and its corresponding practices.
A distinguishing characteristic of such prior societies was that their main symbolic formations and narratives—their mythical and religious imaginaries, which sustained and shaped the whole of culture—were indissociably intermingled with dream. Indeed, some societies do not even make clear distinctions between dream and myth (Kracke, 1987). The similarities between dream and myth seem quite clear: both are imaginary narratives, consisting of symbolic images that are full of meaning for both the collective and the subject. As Jung put it, myths are dreamlike structures (CW5, §28), and so have been seen as collective or social dreams since the beginnings of psychoanalysis. Freud wrote that myths were the “age-long dreams of young humanity” (1908/1925, p. 182), and for Karl Abraham (1913), myths were the dreams of a culture, and dreams were the myths of the individual.
3.1.1 Dream as Origin of Symbolic Imaginaries
The dream’s vitality and importance for cultural life were consistent with its mythic character, and related to its being seen as of divine origin, as a form of communication with the heavens, the netherworld, or the spiritual world.3 To use a symbolic image, the dream was the messenger of gods (and of daimons, spirits, etc.): as the premier expression of the symbolic function, it conveyed the “messages” of the archetypes, the primordial images—which, projected, were seen as gods, demons, or spirits.
Symbols were never devised consciously, but were always produced out of the unconscious by way of revelation or intuition. In view of the close connection between mythological symbols and dream-symbols, and of the fact that the dream is “le dieu des sauvages,” it is more than probable that most of the historical symbols derive directly from dreams or are at least influenced by them. (Jung, CW8, §92)
If the représentations collectives that made up social imaginaries were at first symbolic images originating in dreams and creative fantasies (Jung, CW18, §579), then dreams were part of the very foundation of culture. As the most natural, spontaneous, and primeval expression of symbolic thought, dreams were the main source of natural symbols (CW18, §497), which, through continuous development and refinement, became the cultural symbols that constituted sophisticated imaginaries.
That is the reason why cultural imaginary forms (myths, religions, etc.) were always intermingled with dreams: they all spring from the same source, our “inner pantheon”, the symbolic function of the unconscious psyche, which shaped all experience of reality.5 The dream, however, is naturally the more subjective or direct experience of such primeval substratum of life: it is its nocturnal half (Bastide, 1966).
However, the expression “nocturnal half” is a bit misleading. From the so-called primitive cultures up to early Greek antiquity, the dream was not seen as completely separate or even essentially different from “reality”, nor as a mere “imaginary experience” or illusion. There was no sharp distinction between reality and dream. For the ancient Greeks, for instance, the dream was an objective datum, not something one had6 but that rather happened to one, as real as the lightning and the stars.7 In sum, there was no schism between the everyday, “outside” or waking world, and the dream world. The dream itself was chiefly a nocturnal experience—the nocturnal imagination; yet its world permeated the waking state as well, for imagination and symbolic thinking were integral to psychic reality.
Such view is characteristic of societies in which the symbol lived and was paramount; societies in which nature and culture were united and shone with numen and awe; societies in which the symbolic imaginary permeated all life, in a fundamental union of the inner, oneiric, and symbolic world of the unconscious with the “outside” world. If the psyche is naturally and originally symbolic, and our experience of reality is always psychic (psychic reality), then reality is symbolic: symbolic life.
Symbolic life means a life in which the symbolic function in each one lives and is united to and expressed by the social symbolic imaginary. As we have seen, with the primitive the archetypal realm was projected upon people and things, upon the world, impregnating it with a mysterious, fascinating, numinous, sacred character. In symbolic cultures, such mythic, imaginary worldview not merely persists with, but can be considered as foundational for the development of rational, logical culture and individuals. For the ancient Greeks, our utmost example of the cultural and human wealth that derives from the union of symbol and reason, it produced a characteristic passion, an “admiring wonder ” (Arendt, 1978, p. 148): Plato’s and Aristotle’s thaumadzein, wonder at and reverence for the enchantment of the world.8 The Greeks still lived in an enchanted world, the world of sacredness, symbol, and imagination: the world of dreams.
3.2 A Concept of Dream: Jungian Theory
Let us begin with a synthetic conceptualization of dream. For Jung (CW8, §505), the dream is the spontaneous self-portrayal or representation, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious. Being the most natural product of the unconscious psyche, the dream reflects its characteristics and functions.
3.2.1 Dream and Its Imagistic Symbolic Language
The first and most important characteristic for us is that its form of expression is symbolic: it speaks the symbolic language of the unconscious psyche. As the concept of symbolic language (and symbol) has already been discussed, let me just remind the reader of some of its general characteristics: it is an imagistic language, poetic, fantastic, and metaphoric, that engenders creative, imaginative narratives through flows (trains) of images, associated through analogy and contiguity. Oftentimes its representations and narratives are sensed as being full of meaning and value, which is a reflection of its symbolic character: the symbol represents meaningful ideas of an irrational nature, charged with emotion and value (which are equivalent to its libido-charge). Jung calls such symbolic language “the emotionally charged picture-language of dreams” (CW18, §464).
In (…) The Symbolism of Dreams [1814], Von Schubert declared that when man has fallen asleep, his mind starts thinking in a ‘picture language’, in contrast to the verbal language of waking life. For a while both languages may flow parallel or mingle, but in dreams proper only the picture language (Traumbildsprache) remains. It is a hieroglyphic language in the sense that it can combine many images or concepts into one picture. Dreams use a universal language of symbols, which is the same for men throughout the world. (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 205)
(…) in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There it is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare from all egohood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream. (Jung, CW10, §304)
In relation to the conscious psyche, which represents the “surface”, as it were, symbolic thinking expressed as dream and fantasy is a continuous process that flows in such depths, underneath conscious, logical, or rational processes. As the expression of the non-stop unconscious psyche, it represents the basal psychic functioning underground. In other words, we are always dreaming (or fantasizing), even while fully awake, but only perceive it when there is an abaissement or a voluntary concentration on the objective fantasy. Dream-thinking, the symbolic function of imagination, therefore defines our very psychic functioning.10 Jung expressed such continuous flow of the unconscious process as “the dream that is going on all the time in your unconscious” (Jung, SVI, p. 25).
3.2.2 Dream as Nature: A Symbolic Expression
Such concepts of natural unconscious language and thinking underlie Jung’s stress on the natural and spontaneous character of dreams. Having its own language and form of thinking, there is no reason to imagine that the unconscious distorts or dissimulates anything. Nature is not deceitful—quite the opposite: it is often crudely direct and blunt. As the unconscious psyche is by definition autonomous in relation to consciousness, the dream represents the autonomous voice of Nature in us, our daily experience of the “nocturnal realm of the psyche” (Jung, CW16, §325).
Vieira (2003) points that the language of symbols and dreams thus resembles the parable, which does not dissimulate but teaches, a concept that connects Jung to Jewish hermeneutics: Jung (CW12, §41) takes from the Talmud the idea that “the dream is its own interpretation’. In other words I take the dream for what it is” (CW12, §41). Seeing the dream as a natural symbolic expression implies that its image and meaning (signified and signifier) are one and the same thing, are a unit in the symbol: the dream is its own meaning.
Such hermeneutical and symbolic view represents the antithesis of the Freudian theory on dreams, which has become a hegemonic part of collective consciousness. For Freud, the dream-image (manifest content) always represented something else (latent content), which was already known a priori (the wish or desire: the instincts or drives, distorted by repression). Through seeing repression as inescapable, Freud split apart the dream-image: then signifier and signified are alienated from each other by definition. In defining the dream-image as a distorted product, Freud proposes a semiotic consideration of dream (and by extension of any unconscious product) in which the dream itself is rendered useless: one can dream about a hat, or a key, or stairs, or any other image—the images will always refer to the (sexual) theory given a priori. In other words, the dream and its meaning are replaced by ideology (Freitas, 1991).
By contrast, for Jung the unconscious images of fantasy, seen as symbols, are found pure in the dream—not distorted, not repressed, not as symptoms, not as signs: pure. Walter Benjamin (1916/1982) expressed it very lyrically and imaginatively: “Fantasy is also the soul of the dream. To dream means to pluck/catch/harvest the images in their purity11” (p. 157). If we recall that the symbol always expresses something unknown, thus being of unconscious origin, we reach one of the most important conclusions for us: it means that the dream is an objective datum, an objective fact that carries an irrational quantum, something unknown that wants and needs to be known. Such unknown factor is the discourse of the unconscious, its objective perspective on the dreamer and the world, expressed autonomously and symbolically. “The dream presents an impartial truth. It shows the situation which by law of nature is” (Jung, DAS, p. 204)—no matter how terrible, or beautiful, or vitriolic, or tender, or grotesque, or sacred its dream-portrayal is. J. V. Foix (1953/2004) expressed an age-old truth when he wrote “It’s when I sleep that I see clearly12”.
3.2.3 Dream as Drama or Narrative: The Oneiric Structure
- 1.
Exposition: The narrative begins with the dramatis personae, time and place of the action, and a presentation of the problem or theme with which the dream will deal.
- 2.
Development: There happens a complication of the drama’s theme, some tension in the initial situation; “the problem stated at the beginning starts to have an effect, it gets complicated, the plot thickens” (Jung, SCD, p. 380), which leads to a
- 3.
Culmination or peripeteia: There is a conflict or crisis, “a certain escalation, a climax, a turn of events” (ibid.); something decisive must occur.
- 4.
Solution (lysis): Reasonable and meaningful ending for the crisis and the initial problem (in ancient drama, the solution usually came deus ex machina). Sometimes the solution is lacking in the dream (i.e., it ends with an unsolved situation), which is also meaningful. The end of the dream usually presents a new problem (ibid.).
For dream interpretation, it is also important to notice that, for Aristotle and Jung, “drama” means action (Meier, 1986; Vieira, 2003). Hence it is essential to perceive how the dreamer acts in the dream, that is, his/her positioning regarding the problem posed by the dream, and how the drama changes because of it. That is called ego attitude, for ego consciousness is represented by the dreamer himself or herself in the dream narrative: it is his or her conscious subjectivity.
3.3 Subjectivity and Interpretation: Subjective and Social Dimensions in the Dream
The ways the dream reflects, expresses, and represents subjectivity are contingent on the way one looks at and tries to understand the dream: they depend on its interpretation. Interpretation will necessarily reflect the theoria (Greek: to look attentively at), the specific ways one looks at the object. In what follows I present possible interpretative strategies, how they are embedded theoretically, and how they may unveil subjectivity and social-collective dimensions in the dream.
3.3.1 Two Levels of Interpretation
Jung (CW7) proposes two different levels of interpretation: on the objective level, and on the subjective level.
In the interpretation on the objective level the oneiric images and contents are seen concretely, that is, as objects. Here the dream expresses something about the persons, figures, and situations that appear in it “as they exist objectively”, in “outer reality” (Meier, 1986, p. 111). It refers the oneiric contents concretely to external situations. For instance, if someone dreams with “a friend from work”, in this interpretative level one would see the dream as referring to the friend concretely. This interpretation is justified as long as the conditions that exist in the dream are a known part of the dreamer’s external world (Meier, 1986). On this level the dream shows its view on the dreamer’s subjectivity presenting the way the external world has influenced it—and how the subject reacts to, experiences, and assesses external reality.
In the interpretation on the subjective level, “all the contents of the dream are treated as symbols for subjective contents” (Jung, CW7, §130). This means that we should take everything that happens in the dream as psychological, symbolic personifications of elements in the dreamer’s own psychic system or personality (Meier, 1986): that is, as parts of the dreamer’s subjectivity, or subjectivities. Here the oneiric contents are not taken concretely, but symbolically: the dream is seen as an expression of the symbolic function of the unconscious, through its symbolic language. This level thus corresponds to a symbolic interpretation, the hermeneutic method (Jung, CW7, §131).
The personifications of subjectivities in the dream correspond to the complexes.15 As we have seen, complexes are partial personalities that tend to appear personified; in dreams, they also tend to be acted out as dramatic narratives. In the same way that they tend to be projected upon the environment (and especially on other people), in dreams they appear projected upon the oneiric objects (other people, animals, things, etc.). Seen this way, all the dramatis personae in the oneiric drama are parts of the dreamer’s subjectivity as it is seen from the standpoint of the unconscious. The energy with which such subjective contents are charged appears as the emotional tone they elicit or carry in the dream (their libido-charge corresponds to the affect, the emotional value of their representation). Accordingly, important dreams will appear very vivid, dramatic, cathartic, and affective; their drama usually fills the dreamer with a seemingly alien, autonomous emotion.
As individuals we are not completely unique, but are like all other men. Hence a dream with a collective meaning is valid in the first place for the dreamer, but it expresses at the same time the fact that his momentary problem is also the problem of other people. (…) Moreover, every individual problem is somehow connected with the problem of the age, so that practically every subjective difficulty has to be viewed from the standpoint of the human situation as a whole. (Jung, CW 10, §323)
If we take the expression “problem of the age” as signifying the main forms of influence that the cultural ethos has on each of its subjects’ psychic configuration, then presently we have much more reason to take the cultural factor into consideration: our age is characterized by massification, that is, “subjective” problems and forms tend to be more and more of a collective nature.
When one tries to apply both levels of interpretation, the dream can offer the possibility of seeing the relationships between the social (social imaginary, collective consciousness) and the subject from the standpoint of the unconscious. This view assumes that dreams have both cultural and individual significance, which lies in their capacity for furnishing an objective (or transcendental) discourse on both culture and subject. In fact, this view on dreaming is historical and traditional: it seems to be the most commonly found notion of dreams across cultures and ages (Lincoln & Seligman, 1935). In fact, it is this methodological proposition of applying simultaneously the interpretations on the subjective level and on the objective level (Jung, CW7) to the empirical night dream that situates the dream as object of study of the dialectical relationship between individual and culture, and reflects the idea of psychological dialogism put forward by cultural psychology (Valsiner, 1989, 2002).
Based on such view, in this proposal the oneiric image is seen and interpreted both in its subjective and objective significance: it is meaningful as a symbol of a subjective psychic process, but also as depicting the social aspects that shape and form the latter—the collective consciousness, the imaginary of consumerism.
As the reader might have guessed, the example I have in mind is that of McDonald’s and McDonaldization, seen in the prototype dream. In it, “McDonald’s”, seen subjectively, represents the dreamer’s subjective identity with the meanings, values, significations that McDonald’s embodies for her, and the effects it has in her psychic system; seen objectively, it represents such meanings, values, and so on, in culture, in our consumerist imaginary, and all their concrete, objective, and psychic effects (i.e., McDonaldization, the world as McWorld).
Looked at in this way, the oneiric appears as the interface between the collective (the social imaginaries), the unconscious psyche, and subjectivity—having the subject as mediator, a participative, and (possibly) active actor in the symbolic drama. However, as the dream is orchestrated and directed by the unconscious, it will inevitably feature clashes with collective consciousness—and especially with the dreamer’s perception or view of the latter. This work is especially interested in such clashes between the nocturnal, natural imaginary and the social imaginaries of consumption and how the subject is positioned, or positions her-/himself, in relation to them in the dream—for that defines her/his subjectivity.
3.3.2 Interpretation: Causal and Final Viewpoints and Functions of the Dream
In analytical psychology, every psychic phenomenon must be tackled via two complementary viewpoints: causality and finality. If the dream is seen strictly from a causal standpoint, it will be regarded as a mere result of some previous factor (day remnants, instinct, or even biological phenomena). This implies a semiotic interpretation: if the dream was merely caused by a factor, and there is nothing else to see in it, therefore it is seen as a sign, whose meaning is already known a priori: its value is that of a symptom of something that already happened. This is a causal-reductive approach16 and is useful in itself, that is, it represents a possible and at times valuable way of looking at the dream-image.
Nonetheless, for Jung the psyche as a whole has a telos, a finalist character, which is expressed by the autonomous unconscious psyche: this idea implies that the dream has a meaning, a direction and reach of its own, and its own value. This is a symbolic standpoint: being symbolic, the dream always has some hidden (unknown, unconscious) meaning, of which it intends to be the best expression. Such hidden meaning, and in fact the whole dream, expresses the finality of the unconscious psyche: as self-regulation, but also as creative activity.
Self-regulation refers to the axiom that the psyche, like the body, constitutes a self-regulatory system, whose finality will therefore be homeostasis. Again in analogy to the body, the processes by which the psyche seeks equilibrium are essentially unconscious (autonomous, involuntary) in nature; and dreams are its expression and tool: “Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system” (Jung, CW18, §248). Through them, the unconscious—as an autonomous organ—seeks psychic balance, which is an adequate and parallel relation between the ego (system of consciousness) and the unconscious system. Such finality will appear as certain qualities or functions of dreams. With the compensatory function, the dream attempts to compensate for some one-sidedness in the conscious attitude with the opposite material or attitude (i.e., the oneiric image stands more or less in opposition to the conscious attitude). The complementing function means that the unconscious content complements (i.e., attempts to make complete) the conscious picture of the dreamer’s situation with something that was left out of it (i.e., that was repressed, judged wrongly, etc.). The reductive function is also compensatory but in a negative way: it works through a reduction or depreciation of a conscious attitude. Its expression, the reductive dream, tends “rather to disintegrate, to dissolve, to devalue, even to destroy and demolish” (Jung, CW8, §496). This function appears mainly in individuals whose internal reality is rather different from the one presented outwardly, the persona with whom the ego identifies.17 The creative function of dreams appears under many guises; one of them is revealed in its prospective function: a dream’s “symbolic content sometimes outlines the solution of a conflict” (Jung, CW8, §493); it anticipates future events through combinations of possibilities.18 Besides these functions, it must be borne in mind that the dream is a fruit of unconscious imagination: the source of all creativity and inspiration.
If we assume that the unconscious tries to rectify or modify the conscious configuration through the dream, as a general rule the dream and its possible meanings (its possible interpretations) will have to be seen in light of the conscious attitude (Meier, 1977), the conscious situation of life that constellated or elicited that particular dream (or answer) from the unconscious. However, as further discussed in the chapter on Method, this requisite can be waived when one uses series of dreams.
One important point that is repeatedly stressed in this work is that the dream ought to be seen as a possibility, rather than a determinist decree; it usually shows a picture of the psychic situation and its tendencies. In fact, one can affirm that one of its main virtues is its “aptitude for revealing different points of view” (Jung, 1933/1994, p. 39). If we see this process dialectically, the tendencies, viewpoints, compensations, and so on—as expressions of the unconscious brought by the dream—stand as antitheses to ego consciousness. The synthesis at which they aim is creative, a third term which unites conscious and unconscious, and is expressed as a symbol. The oneiric symbol is therefore an expression of the hitherto unknown, a synthetic and paradoxical formation that tends to unite the opposites, creating a new situation. It is the bridge uniting the psychic poles; the basis and way of expression of what Jung called the transcendent function of the psyche.19
3.3.3 Dreams, Projection, and Ethical Trial: Subjectivity as Individuation
Positing the possible integration of the psyche through the oneiric symbol requires that we see the dream through a synthetic approach: the interpretation on the subjective level. Here the unconscious contents of the personality, the complexes as subjectivity, will appear personified and projected unto persons and objects. Seeing them on the subjective level implies that the dreamer has to confront his/her projections and acknowledge that they are parts of his/her subjectivity; they are aspects of and in him-/herself, in his/her psychic system. What is usually projected unconsciously on the environment (in participation mystique, which “empties” the subject) here appears as dream symbols, which need to be integrated into consciousness. That requires conscious differentiation: the dreamer has to distinguish between what is part of her/his subjectivity (or individuality) and what is not (what is the Other, the collective); it involves a moral and value judgment (is this tendency good or evil, creative or destructive, mine or alien?).
Through confronting the projections, the dreamer can be reunited with the unconscious parts of the personality that also make up subjectivity: ego consciousness then assimilates the qualities and contents that were projected and is thereby enhanced. The process of differentiation also involves recognizing what is not subjective: the collective in his/her psyche (i.e., archetypes and collective consciousness). It might be said that the process of acknowledging and reconciling with the Other in oneself is the condition for recognizing and reconciling with the Other exteriorly.
Therefore each meaningful dream represents an ethical trial, a plea for self-knowledge through self-examination: a moral task. As Meier (1987, p. 137) wrote, “Jung’s interpretation of the dream ‘on the subjective level’ means that there is no more evading implacable self-awareness”: the dream demands responsibility for acknowledging and assuming a critical positioning regarding oneself (one’s unconscious tendencies and contents) and the objective world, the collective consciousness and the Other. Yeats (1914) expressed this idea poetically: “In dreams begin responsibility”.
That can represent a dialectical process through which the unconscious becomes progressively conscious, that is, is assimilated by consciousness, and the personality thereby becomes more whole: the subject becomes more individual. This process of integration of the personality is the telos underlying each dream: the process of individuation.
3.3.4 Self and the Dream as Ethical Trial
One important question remains from such theoretical discussion on the dream. In and through the dream, what (or who) confronts us with such ethical task? What expresses our contradictions, criticizes us with acumen, and aims at a wholeness that by definition transcends our conscious knowledge?
Meier (1987) answers it concisely: “The phrase ‘Dreams come from the self’ would be very consistent with Jung’s ideas” (p. 137). As mentioned, the Self (Selbst) is an ethical center in the unconscious, the actualization of which corresponds to the entelechy of individuation. Again, the historical origin of such idea, and in fact of the concept of self,20 is to be found in the pioneer theoreticians of the imaginary, the unconscious, and dreams: the German Romantics. The closest forebear of Jung’s concept is found in Von Schubert. In his Symbolik des Traumes (1814), he postulated the existence of a second center in the psyche (Seele), which gradually emerged from the unconscious: he called it Selbstbewusstein,21 the inner poet in us who, in dreams, speaks the poetic, oneiric, imagistic language of nature—Traumbildsprache—and calculates, by a superior algebra or knowledge, the relations between the past and the future, today and tomorrow (Béguin, 1954; Vieira, 2003).
The dreamer is the author of his dream but the dream imposes an image of himself and of his relation to others which he might reject in his waking state. The dream introduces a problematic relation between oneself and one’s self. (p. 28, e.a.)
According to this tradition, dreams are expressions of the Self, through which such superior knowledge can be conveyed to us. The dreams interpreted in this work attest to that.
3.4 Final Remarks
If the dream is the most natural expression of the unconscious and its symbolic imaginary function, then to apprehend the dream means to apprehend the unconscious psyche. And, as C. G. Carus asserts in the epigraph above, if the unconscious psyche is the foundation of the whole psyche (soul), in order to understand the psyche—the subject, the psychological human being—one needs to understand the dream.
If, however, the objective is not to understand, but its opposite: to conquer, colonize, and commandeer the psyche, then one will necessarily seek to colonize the unconscious, the roots of the psyche and the imaginary, and the symbolic function that defines us as humans: one will attempt to colonize our dreams. In the next chapter, it will be argued that the colonization of subjectivity by the imaginary of consumerism attempts to consummate precisely that, through its artificial dreams : consumption dreams.