Have you ever woke up from a dream and then, after a few minutes, really woke up from a dream? …It is certainly a shock to realize that you can be going about your day when in fact you are only dreaming.

 

- Patrick McNamara Ph.D., “Dream and Reality”, Psychology Today 

​

​

 

Dreaming is ultimately about awakening. The unconscious, from which dreams bubble up, seems to contain an image of the way you’re supposed to be, and continually works toward the expression of this potential, day and night.

 

- Gregg Levoy, “Dreams Don’t Come True, They ARE True”, Psychology Today

 

 

 

Jung saw dreams as the psyche’s attempt to communicate important things to the individual, and he valued them highly, perhaps above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on.

 

Whilst the dream images can correspond to different parts of the dreamer’s own psyche, they can also correspond to people in the objective world… 

 

- Marcus West

​

 

 

The primary function of dreaming, according to Jung, is psychological compensation. Dreams help maintain a healthy, dynamic balance between consciousness and the unconscious. When the waking ego becomes too one-sided, or if it tries to repress a part of the unconscious, dreams will emerge to highlight the imbalance and guide the individual back on a path towards becoming a more integrated self.

 

According to Jung, dreams give us honest portrayals of who we really are. If we think too highly of ourselves, the compensatory nature of the psyche will bring forth dreams that bring us back down into our depths. If we are too impressed with our own goodness and moral righteousness, we will be prone to dreams reminding us of our sins, our failings, our evil impulses, our hypocritical rationalizations, and ego-protecting deceptions.

 

- Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D., “Jung’s Theory of Dreams: A Reappraisal”, Psychology Today