Five Things You Need to Know to Get Started with Jungian Dreamwork
What is Jungian dreamwork, dream interpretation, or dream analysis-- and what do you need to know to get started? In this article, somatic dream coach Laura Beth Wenger shares some important tips and tricks to help you start to understand your dreams from an embodied Jungian approach.
1. Your dreams matter
What do our dreams mean? This is a question that humans have asked for millennia. Each night, the average person dreams 3–6 dreams. The images tend to fade away quickly as we awake, and when we do remember them, we often dismiss them as nonsense, or too confusing to understand.
Yet dream researchers now are recognizing what our ancestors intuitively grasped: our dreams matter. Though their messages often seem bewildering, they seem to play an important part in emotional regulation, helping to consolidate our memories while processing difficult or distressing emotions (Hartmann, 1998).
Jung believed that dreams acted as messages from our unconscious mind, showing us a more objective and holistic viewpoint than our waking, conscious mind can grasp. In this way, dreams can often point us toward a needed change when we feel stuck. Jung suggested that dreams can often compensate for something that's missing in our waking life — like an objective friend who shows us what we've been missing, or where we are out of balance.
"Dreams are the reaction to our conscious attitude in the same way that the body reacts when we overeat, or do not eat enough, or when we ill-treat it in some other way. Dreams are the natural reaction of the self-regulating psychic system." — C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice (The Tavistock Lectures), CW 18: The Symbolic Life, p. 123
In Jungian dream analysis, dreams give us a rich source of information that we can use to better understand ourselves and our lives.
2. Dream symbols have their own logic
One of the most confusing things about our dreams is that they don't speak in language that we easily understand. Instead, they use symbols and metaphors that don't always make immediate sense to our daytime, rational brain.
"[Dreams] do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise, but naively announce what they are and what they mean. They are irritating and misleading only because we do not understand them… We can also see what it is that makes them so strange and so difficult; for we have learned from experience that they are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand." — C.G. Jung, "Analytical Psychology and Education," CW 17: The Development of Personality, par. 189
During dreaming sleep, our brain enters a hyper-associative state in which it connects different events with one another. Researchers believe that this is our brain's way of processing events, defusing painful emotions, and helping us better understand their meaning in our lives (Hartmann, 1998). It does so by using metaphoric images: a giant tidal wave threatens to sweep us away, or we find ourselves hanging from a cliff.
Why metaphors? Metaphor is our body's best way of understanding and communicating. Traumatic events feel like a tidal wave about to engulf us, overwhelming our resources. The end of a relationship feels like a shipwreck (we're literally "breaking up"). Not knowing what's coming next is a literal "cliff-hanger."
The more time we spend with our own dream images, the better we understand them, because they are created specifically by us, for us. This is why googling our dream images, or using a dream dictionary, isn't always the best idea — instead, we should ask ourselves first, "What does that feel like to me? What are my own associations with that image?"
Let's take an example. Recently, I dreamed of a giant octopus. The first thing I did was ask myself: what are my associations with an octopus? How do I feel about it? I think of this animal as intelligent, alien, and friendly. I remember the movie My Octopus Teacher. I also think of them as being kind of scary.
If I get stuck, I can imagine that I'm describing the symbol to someone who has never seen one: "It's an underwater animal with eight legs, that is very intelligent in ways we don't understand. It can disguise itself and move elegantly, but it is also ferocious and will defend itself."
3. Dreams are not literal
One of the most important things we can understand about the language of dreams is that they are not literal. Dreaming about death, or violence, or sex with random people, can be very scary or uncomfortable, but it does not mean that you are going to die in real life, or that you have to rethink your relationship to your third-grade teacher. Dreams speak in metaphor. Something may be dying — a way of life, for example. Sex can be a joining-with something else: a union of attitudes. And oftentimes the terrifying thing chasing us is something — a new awareness that desperately wants our attention, but we're not ready to know about it yet.
This applies not only to events, but to dream characters. The individuals in our dreams don't necessarily represent the real person (although they could), but a part of ourselves. Let's take that third-grade teacher, for example. Why on earth is she showing up in our dreams? Sure, she might represent the real person, but it seems unlikely, when we haven't thought about her in 20 years. Instead, we can ask ourselves, as we did with the octopus above: "How would I describe my third-grade teacher?" Try to come up with a few adjectives — rigid, sensitive, mean-spirited. We could then ask ourselves: does that describe a part of me? What part of me is rigid, sensitive, and mean-spirited? Does that remind me of anything that's going on in my life right now?
4. We don't always get an answer, but when we do, there's no denying it
"I need not try to prove that my dream interpretation is correct... but must simply help the patient to find what it is that activates him." — C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)
One of my favorite things about Jungian dreamwork is that it places the authority with the dreamer. While other people might have ideas about what your dream means, until the answer or interpretation "feels right," we don't believe we've found the solution.
How do we know when it's "right"? There's a jolt of familiarity, an unmistakable sense of, "Yes, that's it!" It's the same sort of recognition that you feel when you're on your way to work, and know you've forgotten something at home, but what is it? You check and you think, no, I've got my phone… I have my wallet… I have my ID card… what is it? Oh, right! My lunch! That "aha" moment is something you feel physically in your body.
A correct dream interpretation feels exactly like this, because it's a recognition of something we've known, deep down, but haven't been able to consciously access. When we recognize that part of us has been feeling rigid, sensitive, and mean-spirited, it feels like a full-body "aha" moment. Suddenly a new understanding of ourselves slots into place, giving us new insight about a situation, and ourselves.
It's also true that we may not get an immediate answer when we work with our dreams. Sometimes we may find ourselves feeling confused or lost. Nevertheless, when we work with our dreams with someone else, the process itself can be helpful as we take a more objective view of our lives, asking, "What could it mean that I dreamed this?"
"On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it. This something is not of course a scientific result to be boasted about or rationalized; but it is an important practical hint which shows the patient what the unconscious is aiming at." — C.G. Jung, "The Aims of Psychotherapy" (1931), CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 86
5. Dreamwork is best with a partner
Because our dreams are often dealing with our "blind spots," it can be quite difficult to work on them by ourselves. Writing them down is a good start. From there, telling the dream to another person — even if it's just a friend — can help us "hear" the dream with fresh ears. Oftentimes, the other person can reflect back to us what sounds odd or unusual — things we ourselves didn't notice, because our conscious mind would rather not notice them.
In my client work, I first ask the client to tell me the dream, and then I repeat it back to them. This process alone is often quite clarifying: they remember details, or make connections that weren't immediately obvious. Then we can begin to explore the dream together. What symbols stand out to them? What does this remind them of? Sometimes we might "step back into the dream together," to take a look around, or "dream the dream forward," asking, "What do you think would happen next?" Whether we are working in person together, or online virtually, the somatic element is key: when the client "feels" the truth resonate in their body, we know we've hit on a truth.
If any of this resonates — if you've been waking up with images that feel important but hard to decode on your own — you don't have to figure it out alone. My embodied dreamwork sessions bring together Jungian dream analysis with a somatic approach, so we're not just talking about your dream, we're paying attention to what it stirs up in your body as we explore it together.
Sessions are held virtually or in person in Stuart, FL. If you're curious whether dreamwork might be a fit for your healing process, I'd love to chat. Click the button below to schedule a free 20 minute discovery call.
Hi, I'm Laura Beth Wenger, a somatic coach helping folks navigate the effects of chronic
stress and C-PTSD through NARM, somatic coaching, and embodied dreamwork. I see clients online and in person in Stuart, Florida.
References
Hartmann, E. (1998). Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory of the Origin and Meaning of Dreams. New York: Plenum Press. (Revised paperback edition, 2001, Perseus.)
Jung, C. G. (1931). "The Aims of Psychotherapy." In Collected Works, Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy (p. 86). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern Man in Search of a Soul (W. S. Dell & C. F. Baynes, Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Jung, C. G. (1935). Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice (The Tavistock Lectures). In Collected Works, Vol. 18: The Symbolic Life (p. 123). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1946). "Analytical Psychology and Education." In Collected Works, Vol. 17: The Development of Personality(par. 189). Princeton University Press.
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