Jungian Analytical Psychology:

Carl Jung

In Jungian analytical psychology dream analysis plays a central role in the therapeutic process. Jung considered Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory of dream interpretation as repressed desires to be crude and unsophisticated. His belief was that dream interpretation reflected the unconscious in its entirety, which was divided into personal and collective elements. In his theory, the human psyche was a living organism with the potential for self-regulation. This regulation leads the unconscious realm of the mind to compensate for conscious attitude by engaging in their very opposites.

The collective unconscious, shared universally among humanity, held generic, idealized archetypes of people, places, objects, or concepts. These archetypes manifest themselves in dreams through symbol representation as figures, images, or the like. Each archetype is representative of a single unconscious attitude that the conscious mind is unaware of. While the dreamer sees these archetypes as external figures, they are in fact a functional part of their overall psyche. Their function is to make the dreamer aware of unconscious attitudes in an attempt to integrate all the distinct parts of the psyche into a unified whole. Jung believed that this process leads the dreamer to a holistic understanding of the self, which he considered essential.

• The Self - the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuality


• The Persona – the mask or appearance one presents to the world.

Archetypes of the Unconscious Mind:

• The Shadow - the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities that the ego does not identify with but possesses nonetheless.


• The Anima – in males, the expression of the feminine personality of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual.


• The Animus – in females, the expression of the masculine personality of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual.

Jung stressed the importance of individuality and situational variables in dream interpretation. The quick assertion of dream symbols and conformity to predetermined ideas, without insight of the dreamer’s personal circumstances, could lead to false impression. While archetypes were considered by Jung to be universal, he also contrasted this theory with the concept of signs. The signs, or symbolic meaning behind images, must be considered in respects to a personal significance. In this sense, dreams express a wide versatility in representation or meaning as they have the ability to present archetypes in different manners relative to individual experience. Jung used a method of “sticking to the image” in order to an individual’s personal association with the particular images, or archetypes, manifested in their dreams. Thus, the context of dreams played a significant role in their analysis.

Jung believed that dreams weren’t as misleading as once theorized, and that it was in their nature to become deciphered. Their surrealistic and ambiguous elements were merely the result of the unconscious’s own system of language, developing a system of logic incongruent from that of the conscious mind. He also hypothesized that dreams were more than just repressed wishes. They had the potential to contain unconsidered truths, philosophical declarations, fantasies, past memories, future plans, irrational experiences and even extrasensory visions. To Jung, the unconscious mind was merely a integral part of the human psyche that was nocturnally activated and interpreted in dreamlike fantasy.