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In Memories, Jung narrated the dream as follows , dating it to September 1922:
“I had not dreamed of my father since his death in 1896.
Now he once more appeared in a dream, as if he had returned from a distant journey.
He looked rejuvenated, and had shed his appearance of paternal authoritarianism.
I went into my library with him, and was greatly pleased at the prospect of finding out what he had been up to.
I was also looking forward with particular joy to introducing my wife and children to him, to showing him my house, and to telling him all
that had happened to me and what I had become in the meanwhile.
I wanted also to tell him about my book on psychological types, which had recently been published.
But I quickly saw that all this would be inopportune, for my father looked preoccupied. Apparently he wanted something from me.
I felt that plainly, and so I refrained
from talking about my own concerns. / He then said to me that since I was after all a psychologist, he would like to consult me about marital psychology. I made ready to give him a lengthy lecture on the complexities of marriage, but at this point I awoke.
I could not properly understand the dream, for it never occurred to me that it might refer to my mother’s death.
I realized that only when she died suddenly in January 1923.
/ My parent’s marriage was not a happy one, but full of trials and difficulties and tests of patience. Both made the mistakes typical of many
couples.
My dream was a forecast of my mother’s death, for here was my father who, after an absence of twenty-six years, wished to ask a psychologist about the newest insights and information on marital problems, since he would soon have to resume this relationship again.
Evidently he had acquired no better understanding in his timeless state and therefore had to appeal to someone among the living who, enjoying the benefits of changed times, might have a fresh approach to the whole thing.
/ Such was the dream’s message. Undoubtedly, I could have found out a good deal more by looking into its subjective meaning but why did I dream it just before the death of my mother, which I did not foresee?
It plainly referred to my father, with whom I felt a sympathy that deepened as I grew older” (pp. 346- 47) .
The dating here has the dream occurring the night before his mother died.
In 1925, Jung contributed an essay on “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” to Count Hermann Keyserling’s The Book of
Marriage (CW 17).
On January 13 he wrote to Josef Lang, whose mother had also died: “My mother’s death surprised me while I was traveling in the South.
When I came home, I found the note telling me about your mother’s death.
That explains why I’m getting back to you only now. The death of one’s mother is an unusually difficult experience.
It’s probably the secret organic connection which makes this loss so wrenching, against all reason.
You are being taken toward death for a bit yourself, as there is a part of you that wants to die, too.
I did not know anything beforehand of the impending end, but I did have very ominous premonitory experiences and dreams: for
example, my father, who has been dead for 27 years, appeared in a dream, and also once when I was awake, and he was laughing and in a good mood.
Strangely enough, I was stricken with blindness, and it simply did not occur to me that my mother might die.
Today is her funeral. Given the circumstances, there is no need for more words: we share the same grief” (private possession, Stephen Martin). ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 232-233, fn 225
