So he [Jung] used to tell his dreams to his pupils, and even if they said something stupid, it might give him another slant on his dream and make him more objective.
That’s why, in general, one should not interpret one’s own dreams.
Dreams generally point to our blind spot.
They never tell us what we already know.
They tell us what we don’t know.
But when people interpret their own dreams they tend to say, “Yes, I know what that means.”
And then they project what they already know into the dream.
“Oh, that’s my problem such-and-such,” and so on and so on.
I have often seen patients who do that.
They come in and say, “I had a dream, but I know what it means,” and then they give a completely banal explanation of something they’ve known for years about themselves.
And then I say, “Wait, wait, wait, let’s take the dream as it is, slowly, from beginning to end.”
And it comes out quite differently and surprisingly.
So to interpret one’s own dreams is very, very difficult.
That’s why Jung advised Jungian analysts to go to colleagues from time to time and exchange their views of dreams.
He himself often complained bitterly, “I have no Jung to interpret my dreams.”
So he [Jung] used to tell his dreams to his pupils, and even if they said something stupid, it might give him another slant on his dream and make him more objective.
The trouble with interpreting your own dreams is that you can’t see your own back.
If you show it to another person, he can see it, but you can’t.
And dreams point to your back, to what you don’t see, and you have to stand on your head, so to speak, to understand your own dreams.
That’s the great difficulty.
And that causes so many errors.
I remember a schizophrenic patient who used to come with readymade interpretations which she took out of kitchen dream looks.
“Oh, it means that I’ll get some money,” or “It means I’ll get that job,” or “I won’t get that job,” and so on.
Naturally, they were utter nonsense. ― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream, Page 16
These are the demands I put to a pupil.
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To Otto Korner
Dear Colleague, 22 March 1935
Thank you for your letter.
I am in some doubt as to whether the faithful account you have given of the meaning of my psychology will be properly understood by anyone who, coming to it from outside, has not the necessary knowledge to understand what it is really all about.
To such people I usually say nothing about its deeper intentions and its background, but apprise them of the fact that for many years there has been an English Seminar in Zurich.
Moreover I hold public lectures and from the next semester on I have a seminar for students.
In addition, I have undertaken numerous training analyses myself or have had them undertaken by my pupils.
If nothing of this sort has been organized in Germany, it is chiefly because the Germans have noticed much later than the Anglo-Saxons that there are other psychic things besides the intellect.
Also, as you know, there are still very few people in Germany nowadays who are capable of looking beyond this.
To me, it is just this academic restriction to the intellect that makes anti-Semitism explicable.
To my mind it would be an advantage if you told Prof. X. what my views are about the training course.
In this connection I have sent a memorandum to Prof. Goring.
Above all, I demand knowledge of clinical psychiatry and of organic nervous diseases.
Secondly a training analysis, a certain amount of philosophical education, + study of primitive psychology, 5. of comparative religion, 6. of mythology, 6. of analytical psychology, beginning with knowledge of the diagnostic association technique, the technique of interpreting dreams and fantasies, 8. training of one’s own personality, i.e., development and differentiation of functions which are in need of education.
These are the demands I put to a pupil.
Naturally there are only a few people who can fulfil them, but I have long ago given up producing manufactured articles.
Above all, I don’t want to evoke the impression that I think psychotherapy is intellectual child’s play, and I always take pains to make it clear to people that real knowledge of the human
psyche requires not only a vast amount of learning but a differentiated personality.
In the last resort the psyche cannot be handled with any one technique, and in psychotherapy it is just the psyche we are dealing with and not with any old mechanism that can be got at with
equally mechanistic methods.
One should therefore avoid giving the impression that psychotherapy is an easy technique.
Such a view undermines the dignity and prestige of our science, which I regard as the highest of them all.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 187-189
