Dreams and the Unconscious
An exploration. Explore further with the ChatGPT Jung Dream Guide — link at bottom of article
In the wide landscape of psychological theory, Carl Jung’s mystical insights into the human psyche stand as towering landmarks. His revolutionary understanding of the complex interplay between our conscious awareness and the mysterious depths of the unconscious mind continues to influence psychology, spirituality, and personal development today.
This article explores these concepts through my personal journey into Jung’s theories, using dreams, active imagination, and reflective writing as conduits to deeper self-awareness.
As a practical resource for your own journey, I’ve created a custom ChatGPT-based dream analysis tool that applies Jungian principles to help uncover the meaningful patterns and symbols in your dreams. If this calls to you, please see the link at the bottom of the article.
Accompanying this exploration is a diagram I created, inspired by Jung’s model of the psyche (see first picture). This visual representation serves as a guide through the intricate landscape of our inner world, illustrating the dynamic balance of opposites around the core self — the essence of Jung’s psychological framework. By examining these elements, we embark on a path that not only illuminates our personal experiences but also resonates with universal human themes encapsulated in Jung’s archetypal imagery.
In essence, the diagram expresses the union of opposites within the unified whole — the Self.
Everywhere we look there is a duality within the unified whole of our universe. Masculine and feminine, light and dark, within and without. In keeping with this universal pattern, our mind too reflects this. What comes up for me when I think on this is a quote by Rumi:
“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.”
The Architecture of the Mind: Conscious and Unconscious Realms
At the heart of Jung’s model lies the fundamental duality, the conscious and unconscious minds.
The Conscious Mind
The conscious mind refers to the aspect of our mind that we can think and talk about rationally. It is the part we are aware of; we use it for thinking, perceiving, discerning, and reading these words. We make decisions and reason from this place, and it is everything we can see, smell, hear and taste in this moment.
The Unconscious Mind
The unconscious is therefore everything the conscious mind is not. In some ways the diagram is misleading, as the unconscious is thought to make up around 95% of the total psyche, analogous to the gigantic submerged section of an iceberg.
At a relatively shallow level, this vast lightless aquifer is a repository for feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. Often these take the form of unpleasant or undesirable aspects that we repress for one reason or another. The unconscious mind significantly affects our beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes, often in ways we are not directly aware of.
We utilize the conscious mind much like an arcade claw machine, selectively reaching into the vast sea of recent memories that make up the personal subconscious. Just as the claw pulls specific toys from the pile, our conscious mind retrieves certain memories from the subconscious, especially those that are still relatively accessible — like remembering what you had for breakfast or recalling a friend’s name. These are memories that haven’t yet slipped deeper into the personal unconscious.
The personal unconscious, by contrast, holds all the forgotten experiences, distant memories, and suppressed desires or fears that have been pushed out of conscious awareness over time. However, certain triggers, like a particular smell or sound, can suddenly draw these forgotten memories back to the surface. This suggests that while much of our unconscious is hidden, it remains intricately connected to the conscious mind, like many deep and dark rootlings, ready to be reactivated when the right stimulus occurs.
The Components of the Conscious Mind
Starting on the left hand side of the diagram there are the external objects. These are the things that are perceivably outside of oneself, i.e the neighbours dog, the post person, the cup of coffee. They are things that the psyche interacts with, the primary feeding stimulus of the conscious mind. These things can be mundane, terrifying, or jovial, but everything experienced by the mind on the outside affects the entirety of the psyche to varying degrees within.
The conscious frontier of our mind is called the persona, the mask we wear in day-to-day life. This is our social face that we present to the world. The persona is a protective barrier, mediating between our true inner self and societal expectations. It allows us to navigate the roles required by modern life, whether in social niceties or professional settings. Therefore, in most interactions with acquaintances or colleagues, it’s the persona that governs our behaviour.
At the centre of the conscious mind is our subjective personality: the ego. It is who we think we are, our self-identity. The ego gets a lot of hate, but it is a vital part of our psyche. It is the great organiser; it provides continuity and stability through our waking existence in our thoughts and actions. It is by and large the anchor of our conscious mind.
It is of great benefit to the individual to develop a healthy ego, but one that is not inflated as is commonly insinuated when someone has ‘a big ego’. Bolstered where it is lacking, and chiselled where it protrudes, a well-developed ego allows one to step back and explore higher consciousness without losing grounding or falling into chaos.
This balancing act is crucial because the ego serves as our psychological container and navigator: too weak, and we risk being overwhelmed by unconscious content, leading to confusion, anxiety, or even dissociation; too rigid or inflated, and we become cut off from the vital wisdom and energy of the unconscious, trapped in defensive patterns and unable to grow.
Like a well-built ship on the ocean of the psyche, a properly developed ego provides both the stability to weather psychological storms and the flexibility to explore unknown waters of consciousness.
Just as every psyche-ship needs an ego-navigator, every navigator needs her compass and her north star. The Self then, is the divinely guiding combination of them both. It is the true core of our being — the sun around which all mental systems revolve, holding the tension of opposites between the conscious and unconscious minds.
The Self is the ultimate goal of Jung’s process of individuation, where an individual becomes fully aware of and integrates all parts of themselves. Through individuation (more on this later), one works to establish and strengthen the connections between these various aspects of ourselves and this central core. This integration doesn’t mean forcing all parts to become the same, but rather creating harmony between them while maintaining their unique qualities and roles.
Dreams: The Bridge Between Two Worlds
Between the conscious and unconscious, there lies the realms of dreams. When we experience a dream it is our dream ego that is conscious of the dream, but the many crazy people, places, and happenings we experience are all manifestations of the unconscious. I have been seeing a Jungian analyst weekly for the best parts of six months, and in each session we attempt to decipher the things that happen in my dreams, and try to glean some meaning from them in terms of the unconscious processes of the mind.
Even though words can be used in dreams to convey information, the language of dreams is primarily symbolic. Often the unconscious mind deals with desires, fears, and emotions that are too complex to represent with clumsy written or spoken language, but a symbol can convey multiple layers of meaning simultaneously.
The unconscious is chaotic and non-linear by nature and works through the process of association; we associate meaning to the symbol that arrives in our psyche. This can be rather unintuitive for the conscious mind to grasp, given the very linear nature of how we transmit information when we have a conversation, for example.
Dreams offer the dreamer symbols, and this is the beginning of a long and laboursome journey for the novice dream interpreter. As my Jungian analyst says: ‘It’s much like learning a new language, but one letter at a time’.
There are pretty much an infinite number of symbols that could be conveyed to the dreamer, but what is important is what the dreamer associates with the symbol in question. Interpreting a dream is an extremely personal experience, and for the most part, the unconscious mind has presented you with a symbol that only you can understand.
For example, I recently dreamt of a lion. Normally, I associate lions with danger, regality, confidence, and pride. But, just the other day I finished a book called the lion tracker’s guide to life, in which the author compared tracking a lion to chasing one’s life goals. Thus, the lion in my dreams, as looked through my idiosyncratic lens of association, represents in this context, a symbol of my life goals.
The Unconscious Contents: Archetypal Imagery
There are, however, more fixed(ish) so-called ‘archetypes’ within the dream space too. These archetypes are not just symbols but inherited patterns of behaviour that have shaped the countless human experiences throughout the course of our history.
Archetype: An archetype is a universally recognized, innate pattern or symbol in the human psyche, found in myths, dreams, and cultural expressions. Archetypes, such as the Hero, Mother, or Shadow, represent fundamental human experiences and are part of the collective unconscious, shaping behaviour and perception across all cultures and time periods.
Two archetypes that crop up for me regularly in my dreams, as they do for everyone, are the shadow and the anima. Within the diagram, the shadow is the unconscious opposite of the ego, the centre point of our unconscious thoughts, emotions, desires and fears.
If you are interested in learning more about the shadow, I have another article going into more detail here:
Judgement: A Path into the Shadow
The anima or animus is similar to the persona in a way, but it represents our inner facing self. While the persona helps us navigate the external world, the anima/animus guides us inward, representing the unconscious qualities we often suppress. These archetypal forces serve as a bridge between our conscious ego and the unconscious, offering insight into our emotional, creative, and instinctual nature.
The anima/animus represents the unconscious complement to a person’s conscious gender identity. The anima represents the unconscious feminine qualities in a man, while the animus represents the unconscious masculine qualities in a woman. These archetypal forces can in some ways be compared to a person’s soul. They represent the deep emotional inner life of a person, and a bridge to the collective unconscious.
My shadow and anima come to me in dreams regularly. The shadow comes as someone who is about my age and my gender, but I do not recognise, and often he will be up to something that my ego thinks is quite unsavoury. But as always, the dream is attempting to convey something to my conscious mind. For example, if the shadowy stranger is boasting a lot in the dream, then I would want to check my conscious behaviour to see if I was getting a bit too cocky.
The anima will come as a woman (and for women it will appear as a man) of any age, again someone who you do not recognise. Recently in my dreams, she has appeared as an older lady, and will often be pointing out where I have neglected a certain emotion, or she will be encouraging me to be more creative, as is the feminine energy that she embodies.
The nightly unconscious theatre is in this way a powerful self-correction mechanism — an intelligent force that reveals to you your blind spots. Through symbolic language, dreams offer insight into unconscious thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that your conscious mind may overlook or suppress.
The Collective Unconscious
Beyond the personal unconscious, and perhaps infinitely more vast, is the collective unconscious. This is the infinite data repository of the entirety of the human race that has been added to with every new experience since the beginning of time.
It is an ocean of wins, losses, glory, heartbreak, birth, death, trials and tribulations that we have inherited from a long chain of ancestors since our primal origins. These building blocks stack together to make energetic patterns that contribute to the larger archetypal imagery and motifs that can be seen in myths, fables, and fairytales throughout history, offering precious guidance to the fire-side beholder.
Jung noticed that there were similar myths, symbols, and beliefs that were shared by vastly different cultures, at vastly different points in human history. The good professor was said to have analysed 80,000 dreams in his lifetime, and in doing so noticed that people across different cultures and backgrounds often dream of similar archetypal figures, such as the Shadow, the Hero, or the Anima/Animus. These recurring dream themes reflect universal elements of a shared human psyche which lie deep within each one of us.
The archetypal energies can be seen sort of like templates, or the basis of our instinctual urges. For example, if a runaway pram was heading towards a moving car, most people would move to save it, possibly putting themselves in harm’s way in the process. This instinctual urge is an example where one could be possessed by the hero archetype.
These fundamental human experiences, simulated over and over again through time, have carved deep moulds in the collective unconscious, patterns which humans will forever be prone to embodying.
For example, if a person has resigned themselves to victimhood, they are possessed by the victim archetype; if a person is slaving away at a job that they hate, they are possessed by the prostitute archetype (all props to sex workers who love what they do — the prostitute archetype can be represented by the willingness to compromise one’s integrity or values for survival or gain).
People may go their whole lives under the influence of these invisible, primaeval titans and may not be aware of them — because they are an aspect of the unconscious.
This, I think, is where the importance of myth is so crucial to our existence as human beings. Myths, like archetypes, were created by no one in particular, but like a play their narratives reveals the nature of how these archetypal images interact with one another. They are purely a reflection of these mysterious forces playing out in the collective unconscious.
Having a greater understanding of myths may provide context to one’s current life situation. For example, understanding the concept of the Hero’s Journey may help individuals recognize their own personal struggles and challenges as part of a universal pattern of growth and transformation.
Personally, an archetype that has brought me great comfort of late is the wounded healer. I am in the process of training to become a functional health coach, however I have been struggling with a persistent and mysterious stomach problem. This had led to thoughts of: ‘How are you going to help heal people, if you cant even heal yourself?’. As much as I try to keep my self talk clean, a contradiction between what I want to do and what I have going on is apparent here.
The wounded healer is represented in the Greek myth of Chiron the centaur. The wise centaur was accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow that caused him unbearable pain. Despite his vast knowledge of healing, he could not heal his own wound, and being immortal, he was condemned to suffer endlessly. Eventually, he chose to sacrifice his immortality, exchanging it for Prometheus’ freedom, thus relieving himself from his suffering and allowing himself to die peacefully.
The tale speaks on the fact that suffering is an inevitable part of life, but it can be a source of wisdom, empathy, and service. How could one have the skills and knowledge heal others if they had not been through the ringer themselves? Even if, in the end, we can’t escape our wounds, a sacrifice was made for the greater good, for the collective.
Myths then, may reframe the way we think about people in general. By bringing hidden forces to light, it makes it easier to recognize when archetypal energies, like the Warrior’s aggression or the Trickster’s deceit, are dominating our behaviour. This awareness helps individuals regain control and make conscious choices, rather than being unconsciously controlled by these forces.
This is one example of how we are influenced from the depths of our unconscious architecture, just as we are influenced by everyday happenings in the outside world.
Information from external objects passes through the persona, is processed by the ego, and integrated by the self before being stored in the unconscious. Similarly, impulses from the unconscious, such as projections and creative insights, travel back through these layers, influencing our conscious thoughts and behaviours. This creates feedback loops, where external and internal realities continuously influence and reshape each other.
Synchronicity
Understanding our inner psychological landscape is immensely beneficial for navigating our external reality in day to day life. But sometimes, something very strange things happen where inner and outer worlds seem to coalesce together briefly.
For instance, you might think of an old friend at the exact moment they call, or a phrase you speak might be echoed in a song on the radio. Such moments, termed ‘synchronicities’ by Jung, are not only psychologically profound but carry significant meaning. He viewed it as yet another way the unconscious mind attempts to communicate with the conscious mind.
Individuation
Carl Jung saw synchronicities as crucial indicators that appear during times of psychological growth or transformation. They serve as subtle, sometimes unmistakable, guides that confirm you are on the correct path. Synchronicities reveal that our lives are shaped by patterns that reflect our deepest psychological and spiritual states, and these often manifest more frequently during the process of individuation.
Individuation: the journey of integrating unconscious aspects of the psyche (such as the shadow, anima/animus, etc.) into conscious awareness, leading to the development of a more whole and authentic self.
This is really the primary goal of analytic psychology, and the legacy of Dr. Jung. Individuation is the process of becoming who you are in all your glorious psychological wholeness. He believed that realising your full potential by transcending what the world expects from you, is the key to living a meaningful life. Individuation is not, however, about achieving perfection, but really about embracing and integrating all aspects of the self, including the contradictions and flaws.
Individuation is a journey of discovery that all can take through the dreamy pastures of ones own fertile kingdom.
Pursuing the individuated self has tested me greatly, and by all means it is a lifelong process, but the guiding principle as far as I can tell is balance. Fundamentally, it is about balancing the masculine and feminine aspects of ones mind.
For example, after a long week of exploiting your doing/yang/masculine energy, it feels good to relax, nurture yourself, and maybe undertake something creative with no apparent outcome in mind.
It is about finding moderation between gung-ho attitudes and the waxing passivity that would have you relax in bed all day. We need to use both of these energy sources in balance.
This balance can be tricky to navigate without reference, but this is where dreams come into their own. They are wholly indifferent to the small efforts you make to soften your words at family gatherings. If the Self prefers you to let provocative comments flow over you like a calm tide, your dreams will gently remind you to hold steady next time.
As with anything worth doing, it requires a great deal of intrigue and a willingness to delve underground into the unconscious caves that lurk in each of us. This can be achieved through the mediums I mentioned earlier: dreams, active imagination (more to come on this), drawing, writing, journaling. Letting whatever comes to your mind be articulated in these ways, judgement free , I’ve found is the best way to catalyse the flow of unconscious imagery and start on the journey of individuation.
So why not give it a go yourself? The best place to start is by looking at one’s dreams. For those interested I have created a ChatGPT bot that can serve as your very own Jungian dream analyst!
Start by giving it your dream. Then the bot will pick out the key symbols in the dream, and it will prompt you for your associations. List everything you can about the symbol in question — especially the juicy bits that you judge yourself for thinking — these are the gold dust.
After this, the bot will continue the dream interpretation for you, using a guide published in Robert A. Johnson’s book Inner Work. It will lay out inner dynamics, an interpretation of the dream, and some rituals that you should look into undertaking.
In my experience, a ritual that nods to a dream is like a conscious hat tip towards the unconscious, and it can set off many spooky chain reactions. That being said, obviously use this tool responsibly, and discern for yourself whether it’s conclusions resonate with you before accepting them fully. Please see the link below. Happy individuating!