Carl Jung on Dreams Anthology

Carl Jung on Dreams Anthology

Dream Quotations:

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego-consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego.

Its essence is limitation, even though it reaches to the farthest nebulae among the stars. All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.
“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.304

No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams.

Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.
“The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.325

The dream has for the primitive an incomparably higher value than it has for civilized man. Not only does he talk a great deal about his dreams, he also attributes an extraordinary importance to them, so that it often seems as though he were unable to distinguish between them and reality. To the civilized man dreams as a rule appear valueless, though there are some people who attach great significance to certain dreams on account of their weird and impressive character. This peculiarity lends plausibility to the view that dreams are inspirations.
“The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits” (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.574

Dream psychology opens the way to a general comparative psychology from which we may hope to gain the same understanding of the development and structure of the human psyche as comparative anatomy has given us concerning the human body.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 476

A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity. just as human life is not limited to this or that fundamental instinct, but builds itself up from a multiplicity of instincts, needs, desires, and physical and psychic conditions, etc., so the dream cannot be explained by this or that element in it,’ however beguilingly simple such an explanation may appear to be.

We can be certain that it is incorrect, because no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream. In order to do anything like justice to dreams, we need interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 527

The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work.

But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
“On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.24

Dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. Usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many “bad” qualities, such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. People are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless.
“On the Nature of Dreams” (1945). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 532

Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.
“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.317

As in our waking state, real people and things enter our field of vision, so the dream-images enter like another kind of reality into the field of consciousness of the dream-ego. We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. They are obviously autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material.

We do not know the source of their motives, and we therefore say that dreams come from the unconscious. In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws.
“The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits” (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.580

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.
“Problems of Modern Psychotherapy” (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.125

The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy.
“The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317

The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.
“The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.304

The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.
“The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.317

As against Freud’s view that the dream is essentially a wish-fulfillment, I hold that the dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 505

The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that “big” dreams are dreamed only by “big” men – medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix.
“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324

Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. For dreams are always about a particular problem of the individual about which he has a wrong conscious judgment. The 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.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 123

Though dreams contribute to the self-regulation of the psyche by automatically bringing up everything that is repressed or neglected or unknown, their compensatory significance is often not immediately apparent because we still have only a very incomplete knowledge of the nature and the needs of the human psyche. There are psychological compensations that seem to be very remote from the problem on hand. In these cases one must always remember that every man, in a sense, represents the whole of humanity and its history.

What was possible in the history of mankind at large is also possible on a small scale in every individual. What mankind has needed may eventually be needed by the individual too. It is therefore not surprising that religious compensations play a great role in dreams. That this is increasingly so in our time is a natural consequence of the prevailing materialism of our outlook.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 483

I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare.
Psychology and Alchemy (1944). CW 12: P. 48

To interpret the dream-process as compensatory is in my view entirely consistent with the nature of the biological process in general. Freud’s view tends in the same direction, since he too ascribes a compensatory role to dreams in so far as they preserve sleep. . . . As against this, we should not overlook the fact that the very dreams which disturb sleep most-and these are not uncommon-have a dramatic structure which aims logically at creating a highly affective situation, and builds it up so efficiently that it unquestionably wakes the dreamer. Freud explains these dreams by saying that the censor was no longer able to suppress the painful affect.

It seems to me that this explanation fails to do justice to the facts. Dreams which concern themselves in a very disagreeable manner with the painful experiences and activities of daily life and expose just the most disturbing thoughts with the most painful distinctness are known to everyone. It would, in my opinion, be unjustified to speak here of the dream’s sleep-preserving, affect-disguising function. One would have to stand reality on its head to see in these dreams a confirmation of Freud’s view.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 485

Much may be said for Freud’s view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view-which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner, owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome-can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 473

Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance.
“The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.312

It is only in exceptional cases that somatic stimuli are the determining factor. Usually they coalesce completely with the symbolical expression of the unconscious dream content; in other words, they are used as a means of expression. Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 502

Considering a dream from the standpoint of finality, which I contrast with the causal standpoint of Freud, does not – as I would expressly like to emphasize-involve a denial of the dream’s causes, but rather a different interpretation of the associative material gathered round the dream. The material facts remain the same, but the criterion by which they are judged is different. The question may be formulated simply as follows:

What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. Everywhere the question of the why” and the “wherefore” may be raised, because every organic structure consists of a complicated network of purposive functions, and each of these functions can be resolved into a series of individual facts with a purposive orientation.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 465

The prospective function, on the other hand, is anticipation in the unconscious of future conscious achievements, something like a preliminary exercise or sketch, or a plan roughed out in advance. . . . The occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong to call them prophetic, because at bottom they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things but need not necessarily agree in every detail.

Only in the latter case can we speak of “prophecy.” That the prospective function of dreams is sometimes greatly superior to the combinations we can consciously foresee is not surprising, since a dream results from the fusion of subliminal elements and is thus a combination of all the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings which consciousness has not registered because of their feeble accentuation. In addition, dreams can rely on subliminal memory traces that are no longer able to influence consciousness effectively. With regard to prognosis, therefore, dreams are often in a much more favorable position than consciousness.
“General Aspects of Dream Psychology” (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 493

Another dream-determinant that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is; of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams.

But in acknowledging the phenomenon of telepathy I am not giving unqualified assent to the popular theory of action at a distance. The phenomenon undoubtedly exists, but the theory of it does not seem to me so simple. “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.503

Anyone who wishes to interpret a dream must himself be on approximately the same level as the dream, for nowhere can he see anything more than what he is himself. “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925) In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P. 324

Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one’s own dreams.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122

On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. “On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.199

The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.
“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.327

It is obvious that in handling “big” dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.’ But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man” (1933). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.324

If, on the other hand, people who ordinarily dream very little suddenly get into a phase of dreaming very much, this is a sure sign that an overloading of the unconscious has set in, usually because there is a problematical situation which the dreamer has tended to overlook or has not mastered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 182

I would be very chary of the assumption of “make-believe.” I have good reasons for doubting whether there is such a thing in dreams at all. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 185-186

The dream at the end of Jung’s school days taught him that he must
leave his No. 2 personality behind and go out into the world exclusively in his No. 1 personality. ~Barbara Hannah; Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 306

I dislike as a rule interpreting dreams of people whom I don’t know personally; one can easily be led astray. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 187-188.

After this dream I gave up drawing or painting mandalas. The dream depicted the climax of the whole process of development of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 199

The dream is in my opinion a look behind the scenes into the age-old processes of the human mind, which might explain your special feeling of happiness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol I, Pages 221-222

It is important to be alone and unhurried sometimes, for then we are close to Nature (as he was on the night of this dream); then we can hear the voice of Nature speaking to us. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 203

I asked of his [Jung’s] first impressions of the anima and he said it came in his dream of the white dove when the little girl stood beside him; she was like his eldest daughter. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 189

His ]Jung’s] study of alchemy had been foreshadowed in his dreams, and his work had always developed in this way – out of his own experiences and dreams. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 84

Speaking of dreams he said we must always ask ‘Whose dream?’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 289

Later we talked again, and C.G. said how interesting it would be if someone were to study the dreams people had under anaesthetics; he mentioned one or two examples. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 157

He [Jung] said it was always like this with his dreams; he would dream of what he would write – like the mediaeval house dream and the notion of the collective unconscious. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 83

He [Jung] spoke of unmindful coincidences, that is, coincidences which could not have been anticipated. He gave an example of a dream he had recently of Churchill, and next day he read that Churchill had just passed through
Switzerland. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 49

Then he woke and was glad, for he knew that Germany would be beaten by Russia. This, he said, was a collective dream, and very important. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 27

Your dream is really the stuff artists work with. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 232

A certain line of thought, for instance, is developed through a series of dreams; and I discover that I am the duplicate of my unconscious anticipation of myself; at the same moment I am filled with a sense of purpose as if a secret arrangement of my fate existed. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26th Jan 1940

However, the friendly lion in the dream seems to indicate that the looseness of the soul is not exactly desirable, since the lion compensates your condition in a very obvious way: the Zurich lion represents your localized instinct, firmly rooted in your earth, just as the lion’s soul-as with all animals -is securely fixed in its body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 306-307

Your dream unquestionably refers to the archetypal problem of the extrusion of the soul from the body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 306-307

Dream symbols are the essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so that it learns to understand again the forgotten language of the instincts. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 52

Dreams may sometimes announce certain situations long before they actually happen. This is not necessarily a miracle or a form of precognition. Many crises in our lives have a long unconscious history. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 29

Dreams have influenced all the important changes in my life and theories. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 85.

I concluded that only the material that is clearly and visibly part of a dream should be used in interpreting it. The dream has its own limitation. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 29

The dream is a living thing, by no means a dead thing that rustles like dry paper. It is a living situation, it is like an animal with feelers, or with many umbilical cords. We don’t realize that while we are talking of it, it is producing. ~Carl Jung,Dream Analysis, Page 44.

For the collective unconscious which sends you these dreams already possesses the solution: nothing has been lost from the whole immemorial experience of humanity, every imaginable situation and every solution seem to have been foreseen by the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 231.

My intuition consisted in a sudden and most unexpected insight into the fact that my dream meant myself, my life and my world, my whole reality as against a theoretical structure erected by another, alien mind for reasons and purposes of its own. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 490

I leave theory aside as much as possible when analysing dreams —not entirely, of course, for we always need some theory to make things intelligible. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 318.

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood, it becomes a living experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 252

[The dream] shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 304

When I find sugar in the urine, it is sugar and not just a façade for albumen. What Freud calls the “dream-façade” is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.

We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 319.

Freud has made a courageous attempt to elucidate the intricacies of dream psychology with the help of views which he gathered in the field of psychopathology. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 41

My method, like Freud’s, is built up on the practice of confession. Like him, I pay close attention to dreams, but when it comes to the unconscious our views part company. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 875

I have frequently been able to trace back for over a year, in a dream-series, the indications of approaching death, even in cases where such thoughts were not prompted by the outward situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 809

Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears as a direct mimetic expression of the psychic situation. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502

Dreams throw very interesting sidelights on the inter-functioning of body and psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 502

Experience has shown, however, that even professional analysts, who might be expected to have mastered the art of dream interpretation, often capitulate before their own dreams and have to call in the help of a colleague. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 141

It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 539

If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 477

Apart from the efforts that have been made for centuries to extract a prophetic meaning from dreams, Freud’s discoveries are the first successful attempt in practice to find their real significance. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

His [Freud’s] work merits the term “scientific” because he has evolved a technique which not only he but many other investigators assert achieves its object, namely the understanding of the meaning of the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 447.

It [Dreams] leads straight to the deepest personal secrets, and is, therefore, an invaluable instrument in the hand of the physician and educator of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 25

It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 21

The dream, we would say, originates in an unknown part of the psyche and prepares the dreamer for the events of the following day. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 5

If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

If a fatal destiny is awaiting us, we are already seized by what will lead us to this destiny in the dream, in the same way it will
overcome us in reality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 159.

Whatever you experience outside of the body, in a dream for instance, is not experienced unless you take it into the body, because the body means the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316

If you just have a dream and let it pass by you, nothing has happened at all, even if it is the most amazing dream; but if you look at it with the purpose of trying to understand it, and succeed in understanding it, then you have taken it into the here and now, the body being a visible expression of the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316

For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 604

One often has dreams which seem destructive and evil, the thing one cannot accept, but it is merely due to the fact that one’s conscious attitude is wrong. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 405-406.

They [Children’s Dreams] must come from the psychology of the collective unconscious; one could say they were remnants of things they had seen before they were born, and that is really vision. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.

The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977

When I dream of a patient, it is usually a sign that one of my complexes has been touched. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364

Go to bed. Think of your problem. See what you dream. Perhaps the Great Man, the 2,000,000-year-old man, will speak. In a cul-de-sac, then only do you hear his voice. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364

And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 144-145

When a man is in the wilderness, it is the darkness that brings the dreams ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 674

In explaining dreams from a causal point of view, Freud got to their primary causes. But what interests me is why a person dreams of one thing rather than another. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 141-145

As you have found out for yourself, the I Ching consists of readable archetypes, and it very often presents not only a picture of the actual situation but also of the future, exactly like dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 584-585

One could even define the I Ching oracle as an experimental dream, just as one can define a dream as an experiment of a four-dimensional nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 584-585

I have not been there [Oxford] again although I always dreamt and hoped to delve more deeply into the treasures of alchemistic manuscripts at the Bodleian. Fate has decreed otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 579-580

That is to say, I turned all my libido within in order to observe the dreams that were going on. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35

By assuming a passive attitude at night, while at the same time pouring the same stream of libido into the unconscious that one has put into work in the day, the dreams can be caught and the performances of the unconscious observed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35

As another example, one is always hearing persons who have had some experience of analysis saying, “I won’t make up my mind about that, I’ll see what my dreams say.” But there are hosts of things which call for decisions from the conscious, and about which it is idiotic to “put it up” to the unconscious for a decision. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114

Just as the dream seeks to maintain a psychological balance by filling out the daytime conscious attitude by the unconscious elements, so art balances the general public tendency of a given time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 57

As to what absolute consciousness might be, this is something we cannot imagine even in our wildest dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506

The dream of X. means chiefly that it would be advisable to you to give yourself that kind of loving attention as well as whatever X. means for you in yourself. In other words: worry about yourself more than about others; see and understand what you do more than what you assume other people do. Otherwise you will be accused of a meddling power drive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 515-516

The lack of dreams has different reasons: the ordinary reason is that one is not interested in the mental life within and one does not pay attention to anything of this kind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514

Another reason [for lack of dreams] is that one has not dealt enough with one’s conscious problem and waits for dreams so that the unconscious would do something about it; and the third reason is that the dreams have-as it were-emigrated into a person in our surroundings, who then is dreaming in an inordinate way. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514

A light sleep is certainly a favourable condition for the remembrance of dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514

I think it is even better to make ready for the great catastrophe than to hope that it will not take place and that we are allowed to continue the dream-state of our immaturity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 512-513

The other dream points to the coming shock, a complete shattering of your view of the world, as a result of which you and your anima fall into the depths-the catacombs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 507-508

I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 476-477

How do you explain f.i. the fact of a little child dreaming that God is partitioned into four? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 450-451

Concerning archetypes, migration and verbal transmission are self-evident, except in those cases where individuals reproduce archetypal forms outside of all possible external influences (good examples in childhood dreams!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 450-451

I therefore stop speculating when I have no more possibilities of ideas and wait on events, no matter of what kind, for instance dreams in which possibilities of ideas are presented to me but do not come this time from my biased peculation but rather from the unfathomable law of nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

But in reality we seem rather to be the dream of somebody or something independent of our conscious ego, at least in all fateful moments. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 426-427

Your patient is obviously someone who would need either to pay his tribute to Nature or to make some correspondingly meaningful sacrifice. What this might be is provisionally indicated by the dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 409-410.

Thus on New Year’s Eve I had a great dream about my wife, which I will tell you sometime. It seems that individuation is a ruthlessly important task to which everything else should take second place. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.

This, too,[UFO’s] is an expression of something that has always claimed my deepest interest and my greatest attention: the manifestation of archetypes, or archetypal forms, in all the phenomena of life: in biology, physics, history, folklore, and art, in theology and mythology, in parapsychology, as well as in the symptoms of insane patients and neurotics, and finally in the dreams and life of every individual man and woman. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 397-398.

The younger an individual is, the nearer he is to the primordial unconscious with its collective contents. This becomes particularly impressive when one studies those dreams of earliest childhood that are still remembered in adult age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396

Noise protects us from painful reflection, it scatters our anxious dreams, it assures us that we are all in the same boat and creating such a racket that nobody will dare to attack us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-392.

As far as my knowledge goes we are aware in dreams of our other life that consists in the first place of all the things we have not yet lived or experienced in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 341

The essential dream-image: the Man, the Tree, the Stone, looks quite inaccessible, but only to our modern consciousness which is, as a rule, unconscious of its historical roots. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 325-327.

Your dream seems to me a genuine revelation: God and Number as the principle of order belong together. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 301-302

In a situation where an approximation of the unconscious to consciousness is desirable, or vice versa, the unconscious acquires a special tone, which can express itself in the colourfulness of its images (dreams, visions, etc.) or in other impressive qualities (beauty, depth, intensity). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 299-300.

The question of colours or rather absence of colours in dreams, depends on the relations between consciousness and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 299-300.

In a situation where an approximation of the unconscious to consciousness is desirable, or vice versa, the unconscious acquires a special tone, which can express itself in the colourfulness of its images (dreams, visions, etc.) or in other impressive qualities (beauty, depth, intensity). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 299-300.

I don’t use free association at all since it is in any case an unreliable method of getting at the real dream material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.

That is to say, by means of “free” association you will always get at your complexes, but this does not mean at all that they are the material dreamt about. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 292-294.

There is no loneliness, but all-ness or infinitely increasing completeness. Such dreams occur at the gateway of death. They interpret the mystery of death. They don’t predict it but they show you the right way to approach the end. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 145-146

The dream of the horse represents the union with the animal soul, which you have missed for a long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 145-146

As for your colleague’s dream, I have since discovered that in the Midrashim the symbol of the eagle is ascribed to the prophet Elijah, who soars like an eagle over the earth and spies out the secrets of the human heart. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 131-132.

A lexicon of dream symbols is a nightmare to me, as I see this task from the standpoint of responsible science and I know its enormous difficulties. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 123.

As I once dreamt, my will to live is a glowing daimon, who makes the consciousness of my mortality hellish difficult for me at times. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.

Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 317

As the result of a dream I completely laid off smoking five days ago. …At present I’m still in a foul mood. What would the gods do without smoke offerings? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 109-110

When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien, but it just becomes all the more dangerous. . .The best stance would be: ‘Please, come and devour me.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 19.

I have observed the case of a man who had no dreams, but his nine-year-old son had all his father’s dreams which I could analyse for the benefit of the father. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 62-64.

Your view is rather confirmed, as it seems to me, by the peculiar fact that on the one hand consciousness has so exceedingly little direct information of the body from within, and that on the other hand the unconscious ( i.e., dreams and other products of the “unconscious”) refers very rarely to the body and, if it does, it is always in the most roundabout way, i.e., through highly “symbolized” images. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.

But, since I appear in your dream, I cannot refrain from making the remark that I like thick walls and I like trees and green things, and I like many books. Perhaps you are in need of these three good things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 26-27.

Before we strive after perfection, we ought to be able to live the ordinary man without self-mutilation. As for instance the ordinary physician neither imagines nor hopes to make of his patient an ideal athlete, so the psychological doctor does not dream of being able to produce saints. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.

I was particularly interested in the dream which, in mid-August 1955, anticipated the death of my wife. It probably expresses the idea of life’s perfection: the epitome of all fruits, rounded into a bullet, struck her like karma. C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 310.

The interpretation of dreams enriches consciousness to such an extent that it relearns the forgotten language of the instincts. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 52.

There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 64.

The question may be formulated simply as follows: ‘What is the purpose of this dream? What effect is it meant to have? These questions are not arbitrary inasmuch as they can be applied to every psychic activity. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, para. 462.

What Freud calls ‘the dream façade’ is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 319.

The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222.

The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222.

The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Page 7.

Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages 21-22.

They [Dreams] do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise… They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 189.

Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or dreaming. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Para 508.

In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, 76.

So you see, in a moment during a patient’s treatment when there is a great disorder and chaos in a man’s mind, the symbol can appear, as in the form of a mandala in a dream, or when he makes imaginary and fantastical drawings, or something of the sort. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 21.

The unconscious has its consciousness, it reveals it f. i. through dreams, for otherwise we could not know anything about it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41

When geometric symbols appear in dreams or drawings they are the original images of the primeval condition. Geometric designs may also appear if a schizophrenic destruction is threatening. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.

If the unconscious does not cooperate, if, that is, there are no dreams or fantasies, then it is very difficult to deal with a neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.

He [Jung] told Laurens van der Post that he worked through 67,000 dreams with patients and helpers before even attempting to theorize about them. ~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 85.

As for instance the ordinary physician neither imagines nor hopes to make of his patient an ideal athlete, so the psychological doctor does not dream of being able to produce saints. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.

He [Jung] indicated that though it was true that I was a young man, my dream was of the second half of life and was to be lived no matter what age I was. ~Robert A. Johnson, J.E.T., Pages 36-39.

Amplification: A method of association based on the comparative study of mythology, religion and fairy tales, used in the interpretation of images in dreams and drawings. ~Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon.

We can have prophetic dreams without possessing second sight, innumerable people have such anticipatory dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 26.

Then there are philosophical dreams which think for us and in which we get the thoughts that we should have had during the day. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 135.

Big dreams are impressive, they go with us through life, and sometimes change us through and through, but small dreams are fragmentary and just deal with the personal moment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 133.

Dreams never really repeat experience, they always have a meaning, they are like association experiments, only they themselves produce the test words, they are a whole system of test words. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 134.

A dream gives us unadorned information about the condition of a patient, it is as if a nature- being were stating his diagnosis or taking a child by the ear and telling him what he is doing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.

A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something which we know nothing of. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.

Dreams often seem nonsense to us, but they spring from nature and are related to our future life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
It was the anticipatory quality in dreams that was first valued by antiquity and they played an important role in the ritual of many religions. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.

So we cannot judge dreams from the conscious point of view, but can only think of them as complementary to consciousness. Dreams answer the questions of our conscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.

We are not far from the truth, in fact we are very near to primeval truth, when we think of our dreams as answers to questions, which we have asked and which we have not asked. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.

We do not realise in the West how important our consciousness is, it is a cosmogonic fact of the first importance. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 85.

Phantasies and dreams do not of themselves enlarge consciousness, they have to be understood and here the great difficulty begins. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.

Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. There are so many curious sources from which we dream, that we cannot say for certain where anything comes from. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.

All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.

Dreams can spring from physical or psychic causes, a dream can be caused by hunger, fever, cold, et cetera, but even then the dreams themselves are made of psychic material. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.

It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says “to do it in such and such a way would be well”, but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.

We find all the ancient forms of the human psyche in dreams and in such texts as the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

We do not suffer from the delusion that a cherry could not hang on its stalk without our help, yet it never occurs to us that we are just as powerless in our own dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.

A certain line of thought, for instance, is developed through a series of dreams; and I discover that I am the duplicate of my unconscious anticipation of myself; at the same moment I am filled with a sense of purpose as if a secret arrangement of my fate existed. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.

The animus lives in the daytime in the eyes; at night it houses in the liver. When living in the eyes, it sees; when housing itself in the liver, it dreams. Dreams are the wanderings of the spirit through all nine Heavens and all the nine Earths. ~Richard Wilhelm, Secret of the Golden Flower

The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of. These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.

I have never lost touch with my initial experiences. All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them…~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams & Reflections, Page 191.

The feminine mind is the earth waiting for the seed. That is the meaning of the transference. Always the more unconscious person gets spiritually fecundated by the more conscious one. Hence the guru in India. This is an age old truth. As soon as certain patients come to me for treatment, the type of dream changes. In the deepest sense we all dream not out of ourselves but out of what lies between us and the other. ~Carl Jung to James Kirsch, Letters Vol. 1, Page 170.

Human beings do not stand in one world only but between two worlds and must distinguish themselves from their functions in both worlds. This is individuation. You are rejecting dreams and seeking action. Then the dreams come and thwart your actions. The dreams are a world, and the real is a world. You have to stand between the gods and men. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein January 21, 1918.

When you are in the darkness you take the next thing, and that is a dream. And you can be sure that the dream is your nearest friend; the dream is the friend of those who are not guided any more by the traditional truth and in consequence are isolated. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Para 674.

When I came to Zurich, the most materialistic city of Switzerland, there was nobody ready-made for my needs. I then shaped some for me. They were meant for this experience. One could see it from their dreams. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 516-517.

I too am in a retrospective phase and am occupying myself, for the first time in 25 years, thoroughly with myself, collecting my old dreams and putting them together. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 515-516.

But the ground-plan of these images [Archetypal] is universal and must be assumed to be pre-existent, since it can be demonstrated in the dreams of small children or uneducated persons who could not possibly have been influenced by tradition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 538-539.

The analysis of older people provides a wealth of dream symbols that psychically prepare the dreams for impending death. It is in fact true, as Jung has emphasized, that the unconscious psyche pays very little attention to the abrupt end of bodily life and behaves as if the psychic life of the individual, that is, the individuation process, will simply continue. … The unconscious “believes” quite obviously in a life after death. ~Marie-Louise von Franz (1987), ix.

Your dream is very remarkable in that it coincides almost literally with my first systematic fantasy which I had between the ages of 15 and 16. It engrossed me for weeks, always on the way to school, which took three-quarters of an hour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 218.

I realize that under the circumstances you have described you feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 33.

Thus, as early as the dream-book of Artemidorus, we come across the case of a man dreaming that his father perished in a fire, and after a few days the dreamer himself died of a high fever. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 546-548.

Precognitive dreams can be recognized and verified as such only when the precognized event has actually happened. Otherwise the greatest uncertainty prevails. Also, such dreams are relatively rare. It is therefore not worth looking at the dreams for their future significance. One usually gets it wrong. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 460-461.

But there’s absolutely no way around it, because we can be sure: the simpler a dream is, the more we are confronted with general and fundamental problems. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 368.

Moreover, the unconscious has a different relation to death than we ourselves have. For example, it is very surprising in which way dreams anticipate death. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 343.

In the Old Testament it says: “Your old men shall dream dreams.” They had a wise anima who could open their inner ears. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 319.

The fact of having dreams is not nearly enough. You also have a digestive system but this is not nearly enough to make you a physiological chemist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 328.

Dreams do not “jumble up the personalities.” On the contrary, everything is in its proper place, only you don’t understand it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, 326-327.

The meaning of the dream is only that when the churches keep silent the psyche gives you food and drink. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 153-154.

The number in a dream always has a meaning. If we cannot find this meaning, we are the idiots, not the dream. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 101.

Nature itself speaks in such dreams. The wisdom of the child is the wisdom of nature, and it needs the utmost cunning to follow nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 136.

Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 323.

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods or a bath in the sea. They shake off the fetters and allow nature to touch them. It can be done within or without. Walking in the woods or laying on the grass, taking a bath in the sea are from the outside entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis; Notes on a Lecture given 1928-1930.

And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 340.

Never apply any theory, but always ask the patient how he feels about his dream images. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Page 123.

…it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation, as if one could simply buy a reference book and look up a particular symbol. ~Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols, Page 53.

Yesterday I had a marvellous dream: One bluish diamond-like star high in heaven, reflected in a round, quiet pool—heaven above, heaven below—. The imago Dei in the darkness of the Earth, this is myself. . . . It seems to me as if I were ready to die, although—as it looks to me—some powerful thoughts are still flickering like lightnings in a summer night. Yet they are not mine,they belong to God, as everything else which bears mentioning. Carl Jung, The Jung–White Letters, Page 60.

Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; and CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 475.

Myths go back to the primitive storyteller and his dreams, to men moved by the stirring of their fantasies. These people were not very different from those whom later generations called poets or philosophers. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 78

The dream content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us. . . . Every dream is a source of information and a means of self-regulation; . . . dreams are our most effective aids in building up the personality. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 18.

Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of [the dreamer’s] personality. . . . There must be a thorough-going, conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. By “assimilation” I mean a mutual interpenetration of conscious and unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 16.

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 51.

A story told by the conscious mind has a beginning, a development, and an end but the same is not true of the dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 12.

The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 5.

At least sixteen hours out of twenty-four we live exclusively in this everyday world, and the remaining eight we spend preferably in an unconscious condition. Where and when does anything take place to remind us even remotely of phenomena like angels, miraculous feedings, beatitudes, the resurrection of the dead, etc.? It was therefore something of a discovery to find that during the unconscious state of sleep intervals occur, called “dreams,” which occasionally contain scenes having a not inconsiderable resemblance to the motifs of mythology.” ~Carl Jung; Aion; Page 66.

The sea is like music, it has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 369.

Dreams…are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand. ~Carl Jung Quotation, CW 17, Paragraph 187

The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. ~Carl Jung; The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man; CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 327

Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one’s own dreams. ~Carl Jung; Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122

If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious. Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 477.

A persecutory dream always means: this wants to come to me. When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien—but it just becomes all the more dangerous. The urge of what had been split off to unite with you becomes all the stronger. The best stance would be: “Please, come and devour me!” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar.

On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed realism. To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper. Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. ~Carl Jung; On the Psychology of the Unconscious; CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 199.

The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work.

But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift. ~Carl Jung; On the Psychology of the Unconscious; In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 24.

We can find clear proof of this fact in the history of science itself. The so-called “mystical” experience of the French philosopher Descartes involved a . . . sudden revelation in which he saw in a flash the “order of all sciences”. The British author Robert Louis Stevenson had spent years looking for a story that would fit his “strong sense of man’s double being,” when the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was suddenly revealed to him in a dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 25.

. . . poets . . . create from the very depths of the collective unconscious, voicing aloud what others only dream. ~Carl Jung; CW 6: 323.

. . . Christianity slumbers and has neglected to develop its myth further in the course of the centuries. . . . Our myth has become mute, and gives no answers. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Chapter 12.

Dreams are the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 2.

The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. . . . It is imperative that we do not pare down the meaning of a dream to fit some narrow doctrine ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 11.

It is the way of dreams to give us more than we ask ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page.

The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols

Lack of conscious understanding does not mean that the dream has no effect at all. Even civilized man can occasionally observe that a dream which he cannot remember can slightly alter his mood for better or worse. Dreams can be “understood” to a certain extent in a subliminal way, and that is mostly how they work. ~Carl Jung; “Approaching the Unconscious” In Man and His Symbols; Revised and included in CW 18 as “Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams” Page 52.

Anyone sufficiently interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that dreams also have a continuity forwards-if such an expression be permitted-since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence on the conscious mental life even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. ~ Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. pg. 444

I have had occasion to observe, in the course of my daily professional work [that… ] a dream, often of visionary clarity, occurs about the time of the onset of the illness or shortly before, which imprints itself indelibly on the mind and, when analyzed, reveals to the patient a hidden meaning that anticipates the subsequent events of his life. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 78

As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para 4.

The application of the comparative method shows without a doubt that the quaternity is a more or less direct representation of the God who is manifest in his creation. We might, therefore, conclude that the symbol spontaneously produced in the dreams of modern people means something similar-the God within. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; para. 101

[The dream voice] “utters an authoritative declaration or command, either of astonishing common sense or of profound philosophic import. It is nearly always a final statement, usually coming toward the end of a dream, and it is, as a rule, so clear and convincing that the dreamer finds no argument against it. It has, indeed, so much the character of indisputable truth that it can hardly be understood as anything except a final and trenchant summing up of a long process of unconscious deliberation and weighing of arguments.” ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion; Page 45.

We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication, and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives. The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and, as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung; Two Kinds of Thinking; para. 20.

The dream may either repudiate the dreamer in a most painful way, or bolster him up morally. The first is likely to happen to people who … have too good an opinion of themselves; the second to those whose self-valuation is too low. ~Carl Jung; “On the Nature of Dreams,”1945.

Within each one of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation, to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude, the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. ~Carl Jung; “Civilization in Transition”, 1958.

In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself. This I call interpretation on the subjective level…. Interpretation on the subjective level is synthetic, because it detaches the underlying memory-complexes from their external causes, regards them as tendencies or components of the subject, and reunites them with that subject. ~Carl Jung; CW 7, para. 131.

Our dreams are continually saying things beyond our conscious comprehension. We have intimations and intuitions from unknown sources. Fears, moods, plans, and hopes come to us with no visible causation. These concrete experiences are at the bottom of our feeling that we know ourselves very little; at the bottom, too, of the painful conjecture that we might have surprises in store for ourselves. ~Carl Jung; Aion; CW 9i para. 299.

I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level… Interpretation on the objective level is analytic, because it breaks down the dream content into memory-complexes that refer to external situations. ~Carl Jung; CW 7, para. 131.

The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. ~Carl Jung; “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 304.

The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. ~Carl Jung; “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 317

Nature is often obscure or impenetrable, but she is not, like man, deceitful. We must therefore take it that the dream is just what it pretends to be, neither more nor less. If it shows something in a negative light, there is no reason for assuming that it is meant positively. ~Carl Jung; “On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1953). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 162.

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~Carl Jung; “Problems of Modern Psychotherapy” (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 125.

[One of my patients] dreamed that she was commanded to descend into “a pit filled with hot stuff.” This she did, till only one shoulder was sticking out of the pit. Then Jung came along, pushed her right down into the hot stuff, exclaiming “Not out but through. ~Carl Jung; from “From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung” by Aniela Jaffe.

This process of becoming human is represented in dreams and inner images as the putting together of many scattered units, and sometimes as the gradual emergence and clarification of something that was always there. The speculations of alchemy, and also of some Gnostics, revolve around this process. It is likewise expressed in Christian Dogma, and more particularly in the transformation mystery of the Mass. ~Carl Jung; “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass”; CW 11, par. 399.

Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance. ~Carl Jung; “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 312.

The dreams of redemption, whereby God descends into the human realm and man mounts up to the realm of divinity. ~Carl Jung; “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity”, 1942.

An exclusively sexual interpretation of dreams and fantasies is a shocking violation of the patient’s psychological material: infantile-sexual fantasy is by no means the whole story, since the material also contains a creative element, the purpose of which is to shape a way out of the neurosis. ~Carl Jung; “The Therapeutic Value of Abreaction,” CW 16, par. 277.

The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that “big” dreams are dreamed only by “big” men – medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix. ~Carl Jung; “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man”; CW 10: Civilization in Transition. Page 324.

[Visions] are like dreams, only they occur in the waking state.” ~Carl Jung; “The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Sprits”, 1920

First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character, which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual anamnesis. Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal character, which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual’s past, and thus cannot be explained as something individually acquired. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i

In the dream, … there are numberless inter-connections to which one can find parallels only in mythological associations of ideas (or perhaps in certain poetic creations which are often characterized by a borrowing, not always conscious, from myths. ~Carl Jung; CW 9I; para. 259.

I do not know for what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me – in dreams or in mythic traditions – I ought to take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis that I know cannot be proved. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 301-302.

There is no difference in intelligence level between those who tend to have dreams and those who have visions. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Psychotherapy, Page 19.

The repressed libido for animal relationship is living in the unconscious. It appears in dreams either as animals; or we appear as having animal reactions, for example, the panic fear of animals; or we have inhibited movements due to being in water, a racial memory; also many flying dreams are really swimming. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 23.

The problem of my destiny goes back a hundred and fifty years. Indeed it appeared as early as the twelfth century, as I have now discovered. Formerly I believed it only went back to Goethe’s Faust. (Jung now told the dream of his ancestors in which the last was only able to move his little finger.) The problem that appeared as a question in the twelfth century became my extremely personal destiny. Already Goethe had found an answer a hundred and fifty years ago. My father was so tormented by it that he died at the age of fifty-four. ~ Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 67.

Fortunately, we have not lost these basic instinctive strata; they remain part of the unconscious, even though they may express themselves only in the form of dream images. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 36.

. . . I simply want to point out that the capacity of the human psyche to produce such new material is particularly significant when one is dealing with the dream symbolism . . . ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 26.

. . . dreams are difficult to understand . . . a dream is quite unlike a story told by the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 27.

Fortunately, we have not lost these basic instinctive strata; they remain part of the unconscious, even though they may express themselves only in the form of dream images. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 36.

The dream was of the general form of three elements being differentiated and a fourth less well developed; he elaborated at great length the problem of adding the fourth element to the existing trinity of faculties and the implications of this development. . ~Robert Johnson, C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff – A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 36-39

The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.

…You can dream other people’s dreams, can get them through the walls. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1259.

It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 44.

It is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 47.

Dreams are very often anticipations of future alterations of consciousness… ~Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Page 51.

All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. ~Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 304.

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Page 262.

The dream represents that tendency of the unconscious that aims at a change of the conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 5.

The dream is never a mere repetition of previous experiences, with only one specific exception: shock or shell shock dreams, which sometimes are completely identical repetitions of reality. That, in fact, is a proof of the traumatic effect. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 21

You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. They burned in my heart and drove me to all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to rise above myself. You let me see truths of which I had no previous inkling. You let me undertake journeys, whose endless length would have scared me, if the knowledge of them had not been secure in you. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard-are you God? Is God a child, a maiden? Forgive me if I babble. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233.

The dream is not only the fulfillment of infantile desires, but also symbolizes the future … The dream provides the answer through the symbol, which one must understand. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 233, Footnote 53.

I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard—are you God?” ~Carl Jung to his Soul, The Red Book, Page 233.

And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft. You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 233.

We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book. Page 242.

When I comprehended my darkness, a truly magnificent night came over me and my dream plunged me into the depths of the millennia, and rom my phoenix ascended. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 274.

I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

He who sleeps in the grave of the millennia dreams a wonderful dream. He dreams a primordially ancient dream. He dreams of the rising sun. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 272