PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
undesirable qualities onto minorities. This may involve the creation of scapegoats, and since the arrival of mass media, murderers and paedophiles are frequently paraded as objects of contempt.
• The female complement in the unconscious to the male conscious psyche is the anima. At a positive level, this figure represents gentleness, patience, and sensitivity. More negative qualities include moodiness and vanity. The hall-mark of the anima is self-pity. In the male-female relationship, a man sometimes idealises his partner by projecting anima qualities onto her, obscuring the reality of her true character.
• Similarly, Jung considered a man appearing in a woman’s dreams to be the animus. Its positive qualities include courage, intellect and spirituality, while the negative animus qualities are generally aggression and brutality.
• The central archetype is the Self. It contains the ‘master plan’ for our psychological development throughout our lives, and provides the energy for the psyche to move towards healing and wholeness. The Self is often symbolised by a circle (particularly one divided into four quadrants), the square, or the mandala, an ancient symbol of balance and harmony.
When dealing with archetypes,
particularly the anima/animus and the shadow, a major life challenge is to become a more rounded person by coming to understand them, and forming a healthy inner dialogue. Through such an integration, we enable dreams to provide a compensating and self-regulating mechanism, bringing to the fore elements that are repressed or downplayed in ordinary waking life.
Analysis and interpretation Dreams tend to point to our blind spots,
and consequently it can be difficult to perceive their true message without sanitising or censoring them. For this reason, there may be advantages in having dreams interpreted professionally, or soliciting feedback from friends or family
20 MAY 2015
members who may be able to provide fresh insights. If you decide to work on a dream
privately, start by jettisoning dream dictionaries that contain potted meanings. As each individual has a different history, and a unique set of circumstances in their life, one-size-fits-all interpretations discourage genuine personal
insights.
Adopting a creative, lateral thinking, holistic frame of mind will help a great deal too.
In his book Inner Work, Jungian analyst Robert Johnson outlines a four-stage analysis process that can be valuable to thorough dream investigators: • For each dream element, make associations, looking at the possible personal, cultural and mythical meanings. (Jung himself used the term ‘amplification’ to refer to the activity of viewing a dream image from the perspectives of mythology, folklore and comparative religion.) After compiling a list of all potential associations, run through them in sequence. If one of them ‘clicks’, or arouses stronger feelings than the rest, you have probably tapped into the energy of the unconscious and the association is probably correct. The colour green, for example, offers a wide range of meanings, including nature, growth, environmentalism, Ireland, the Green Man in mediaeval iconography, the heart chakra, envy, inexperience, and a signal to cross the road.
• Connect dream associations to your inner dynamics, by grounding them at a personal level. According to Jungian psychology, dream elements are usually indicative of the inner world rather than external situations, although this is not always the case. This step involves taking the association that feels right, and conducting a self- examination to see how it is likely to tie in to one’s life, identifying specific examples. Frequently these associations are pointing to hidden aspects of ourselves that we fail to consciously acknowledge. An example might involve associating the colour blue with depression. When
carrying out a self-examination, the dreamer acknowledges that she has been slightly depressed, something that she has been too busy in her work to acknowledge.
• Interpret the dream by attempting to fit together the disparate jigsaw pieces into a coherent whole. Search for interpretations that carry a greater energy intensity. Johnson urges dreamers to avoid analyses that boost their ego, or shift responsibility onto another person. Try to focus on the single most important insight that the dream is trying to convey; where a solution is indicated, it is often found in the last line of a written dream account.
• Lastly, try to ground the dream through a personal ritual. This might involve applying certain changes that the dream is urging, or carrying out a symbolic act. As a culture, we spend a lot of time in our heads, and a ritual is a way to ground the process in our bodies and emotions. In one example, a woman had a dream in which flowers bloomed by her side while meditating in a monastic cloister. In real life, she purchased flowers that resembled those in the dream, and carried out a ceremony in which she travelled to the ocean and cast them onto the waves. This was her way of giving back this image to the feminine sea of the unconscious. Rituals speak directly to the unconscious and can be instrumental in effecting deep changes. The best results seem to be experienced following private, small-scale ritual acts.
Working with one’s dreams is one of
the most valuable activities that anyone can undertake. By making contact with deeper portions of personal, and perhaps collective experience, we can venture beyond the modern sea of mass banality in search of treasures. The results can be deeply healing. n
Martin Oliver is a writer and researcher based in Lismore.
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