A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche.
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche CW 8
The interpretation of dreams as infantile wish-fulfilments or as finalistic “arrangements” subserving an infantile striving for power is much too narrow and fails to do justice to the essential nature of dreams.
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 an interpretive equipment that must be laboriously fitted together from all branches of the humane sciences. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 527
