Our Night Allies

“This is really strange … Today I had a dream about my father – he died fifteen years ago. He was young, without wrinkles and very cheerful. We talked for a long time, and in the morning I woke up with the feeling that I was born again. “I entered some house with an endless series of rooms in which no one lives …”

Each of us is familiar with such stories of perplexed dreamers. They are shared by relatives, colleagues, children … The one who tells his dream every time gives us a gift – he opens the innermost part of his soul.

The “second life” that we experience in dreams is generous to us, poetic, not distorted by social attitudes or the expectations of others. This is the purest product of our deepest being and at the same time a wonderful tool for self-knowledge and development.

Prophecies or the path to yourself?

The messengers of the gods among the ancient Greeks, the inspirers of the prophets or great leaders among the Indians … Night visions have always been considered messengers of fate, a miracle, a prophetic phenomenon. The great Freud and Jung, and after them modern researchers confirm: dreams are necessary for our life¹.

“Guardians of sleep”, as the founder of psychoanalysis called them, first of all help to stay immersed in it. So, if the sleeper is thirsty, a dream about how he drinks water from a source does not allow him to wake up.

Dreams also allow us to process, sort or erase the information that we received during the day. Thanks to dreams, we discard all the non-essential and identify priorities. And, according to Freud, in dreams we satisfy our most secret desires and “recreate” ourselves anew in order to start every day “with a fresh mind”.

Moreover, dreams have the ability to connect us to the treasury of knowledge that belongs to our ancestors. Australian Aborigines, for example, are convinced that dreams exist long before anyone sees them, and represent the basis of life on earth. For them, the ancestors truly dreamed, that is, they created the world with its rules and values ​​by the power of consciousness.

According to the French psychoanalyst Guy Cornot, “in sleep, in this altered state of consciousness, we gain access to more extensive knowledge than what is available during wakefulness.” How to prove it? In a dream, we meet symbols or words that we do not know or never use consciously.

Images of the ages

Elements of dreams that do not belong to the personal history of the dreamer, Freud considered “archaic remnants”. Later, Jung called them “archetypes” – forms of the psyche that cannot be explained by any life events and which can be considered original. They constitute the legacy of the human spirit². The discoverer of the collective unconscious has repeatedly observed its manifestations, including in children.

Thus, a ten-year-old girl told her dreams to her father, Jung’s patient. In them appeared “an evil beast, a monster in the form of a snake with many horns.” Jung discovered that the same “horned serpent” was mentioned only once, in the XNUMXth century, in a work on alchemy written in Latin. How could a child have this image?

Born from our, as Jung said, “dizzyingly ancient psyche,” these images are instinctual representations that have come from the depths of time and have been passed down from generation to generation.

A labyrinth, a tree, a snake, warring brothers, the sun, water… These universal symbols, which have grown on the basis of myths and religions, come into our dreams along with the professional and personal events of the day. It is they who allow us to take a fresh look at everyday subjects, shedding new, unexpected light on them.

As a rule, dream books of all sorts reduce the content of dreams to a single meaning, some kind of ready-made interpretation – like a “ready-made dress” that will suit anyone. In reality (and this is confirmed every time in the course of psychoanalysis), only in the dialogue of the universal and the personal, consciousness and the unconscious, independent searches and the wisdom of mankind, these images are able to lead us to inspired discoveries.

The power of creativity

It is impossible to divide dreams into “good” and “bad” – even nightmares help by showing repressed anxieties that prevent you from moving forward. The images of night visions always have several meanings, and only the search for associations and the interpretation of these images allows you to understand yourself better.

Therefore, experts urge to benefit from dreams, maintaining a constant dialogue with them, writing them down. According to Jung’s observations, just as the retinue plays the king, so a dream can reveal its message only in a series of previous and subsequent dreams.

The greatest help to us is provided by morning dreams, which fall on the phase of paradoxical sleep. “They are both the most symbolic and the closest to our “conscious” life: at this time we are already beginning to prepare ourselves for the coming day,” says Guy Cornot. “The unconscious offers its creative perspective and expands the conscious perspective on current issues.”

Telling your dream is just one way to better understand it. And the most reliable is deep, constant contact with dreams. “Be attentive to these unique night scenes,” urges Jungian psychotherapist Madina Slutskaya. – We should reflect on dreams, follow the ups and downs of their plots, write them down in reality. By trying to understand these messages, we can learn from them and help our personality unfold.”

And then, perhaps, our days will become brighter … thanks to the nights.

¹ M. Jouvet “Sleep and Dreams” (Odile Jacob, 2000).

² “An Essay on Analytical Psychology” in C. G. Jung’s “Essays in the Psychology of the Unconscious” (Cogito Center, 2013).