A persecutory dream always means: this wants to come to me.
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!”
Working with such a dream in analysis means to familiarize people with the thought that they should by no means resist when this element faces them.
The Other within us becomes a bear, a lion, because we made it into that.
Once we accept this, it becomes something else.
That’s why Faust says: “So this, then, was the kernel of the brute!”
It is his devil, Mephistopheles.
Until that moment, Faust was split off from it, unconscious of it.
When the situation becomes unbearable, he is driven toward suicide.
He has to descend in order to find his shadow.
He has to turn around once to look at himself from the other side. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 19
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog