Why we experience a lack of dreams.
To J.O. Pearson
Dear Dr. Pearson, 29 August 1959
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.
Another reason 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.
A fourth reason, finally, can be a mental condition, in which dreams are redundant, inasmuch as compensations for the conscious atttude are not needed.
A light sleep is certainly a favourable condition for the remembrance of dreams.
There is certainly a great difference between dreams.
According to a primitive classification there are big dreams and small ones.
The example you describe is obviously a big dream of very particular importance.
The small dreams are the ordinary stuff of unconscious fantasies which become perceptible particularly in light sleep.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 514
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
