The dreams bring out everything that is
necessary
Foreword
E. A. Bennet
In 1935 the late Professor C. G. Jung, then in his sixtieth year, gave a course of five lectures in London to about two hundred doctors, at the Tavistock Clinic.
A report of the lectures and the succeeding discussions was recorded in a typescript volume edited by Mary Barker and Margaret Game, and this is now published in book form.
Jung’s work was well known to his audience but few had heard him speak.
His lectures attracted a representative group ofpsychiatrists and psychotherapists of every ‘school’ as well as many from the mental hospitals and a sprinkling of general practitioners.
His custom was to lecture for an hour and follow on with a discussion for a second hour.
Right from the start his unusual material, his informal manner, and a surprising fluency in colloquial English, established an easy and stimulating atmosphere,
and the discussions ran far beyond the appointed time.
In addition to his fascination as a speaker Jung selected his words with care and he had the knack of saying precisely what he meant in comprehensible form, free from doctrinaire jargon.
Jung confined himself to the principles upon which his own contributions rested, presenting them under two main headings: the structure and content of the mind, and the methods used in its investigation.
He defined consciousness as the relation of psychical facts to *a fact called the ego’, its character being dependent on the general attitude type of the individual, whether extrovert or introvert.
Its relation to the outer world was through the four functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition.
As the ego, the focal point in consciousness, is derived from the unconscious,
consciousness and its functions could only be understood in conjunction with the hypothesis of the personal and collective unconscious.
This and the meaning of the functions raised numerous questions, and Jung gave a clear explanation of the sense in which he used these terms, many of which he himselfhad introduced to Analytical Psychology.
In explaining the methods he used in the investigation of unconscious mental activity Jung gave an account of the wordassociation test, dream-analysis, and active imagination.
Some were surprised by his emphasis on the word-association test, as it had long since ceased to be used.
He referred to it because this test held a key place in his early research.
There was no established body of psychological knowledge when Jung, then a young assistant at the Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich, set out to investigate the mystery of mental illness.
His experiments in word-association produced unexpected and highly significant
results.
Amongst the most valuable was the discovery of the autonomous nature of the unconscious.
Mental activity outside consciousness had been assumed for decades before Freud or Jung saw its clinical applications.
In his refinements ofthe wordassociation test Jung confirmed the validity of the hypothesis, and by demonstrating the existence of the feeling-toned complex provided proof of Freud’s theory of repression.
Originally, the stimulus word in the test was followed by a response confined to a single word; Jung thought this limited its value, and he introduced some changes in technique.
While the test was proceeding in its old form ofreaction-time measurement, a simultaneous and separate mechanical record was made showing graphically the effect of emotion on the pulse rate, the breathing, and the quantitative variations in the electrical conductivity ofthe skin.
Noting that the body and mind functioned as a unit, Jung was the first clinician to recognize the significance of the physiological accompaniments of emotion, familiar
nowadays under the name ofpsychosomatic phenomena.
Stepping over the border into dreams, as he put it, Jung spoke of the personal and collective elements in dreams, and in particular of dream-analysis, the principal therapeutic instrument in his work – ‘.the dreams bring out everything that is
necessary At one point Jung, answering a rather involved question, replied in German – to the consternation of his questioner!
When pulled up by the Chairman he remarked with a smile, ‘You see, the unconscious really works autonomously*.
I recall the remark well, diough it was not taken down in the transcript.
An interpretation of a dream containing archetypal imagery, using the method of dream-interpretation by amplification, was given in the fourth lecture.
Jung showed that amplification through parallel instances in dreams was comparable to the method of collation in philology.
The mind was described as a self-regulating system in consequence of the compensatory bond between the conscious and the unconscious, similar in fact
to the homeostatic mechanisms ofthe body.
Unfortunately there was not time to finish the analysis ofthis unusually interesting dream, and Jung said he would complete the study in his concluding lecture.
Dr Hugh Crichton-Miller, however, proposed as an alternative that Jung might speak on the difficult problem of transference, and this was accepted.
He explained transference as an example ofthe more general process of projection, and pointed out that often it may prove to be the main problem in analysis.
Of special importance was the experience and skill of the analyst when confronted with the phenomena of counter-transference.
The aetiology of transference and its entirely spontaneous and unprovoked nature led on to what Jung described as the difficult and complicated therapy of
transference. ~E.A. Bennet, Analytical Psychology The Tavistock Lectures, Page xiii-xvi
