Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

20
Dream On
Dreams are neither deliberate nor arbitrary fabrications;
they are natural phenomena which are nothing other than what they
pretend to be. They do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not
distort or disguise. . . . They are invariably seeking to express something
that the ego does not know and does not understand. 64
I never had any dreams before I went into analysis. At least I never
remembered them. Well, that’s not quite true. When I was six I fell
asleep on the toilet and dreamed God came and told me everything
would be fine. And I vaguely recall other childhood dreams of
magical gardens peopled with elves and fairies.
According to research into the physiology of sleep, we all dream
several times a night, shown by so-called REM phenomena—rapid
eye movements. People deprived of the level of sleep at which
dreams occur soon become anxious and irritable. These experiments,
while silent about the content or meaning of dreams, suggest
they have an important biological function. But Jung went further:
he believed that the purpose of dreams was to monitor and regulate
the flow of energy in the psyche.
As an adult, then, I must have had dreams, but for lack of attention
they died in the water. Why would I be interested in dreams
anyway? I was a child of the Enlightenment. Science, reason and
logic were the credos I lived by. Dreams happen at night and have
nothing to do with me. That’s what I thought until I woke up one
morning with a dream that shook me to the core. Here it is:
I am on a street in the center of a deserted city, surrounded by cavernous
buildings. I am chasing a ball that keeps bouncing between
64 “Analytical Psychology and Education,” ibid., par. 189.
75