The Revelation of Unchanging Depths
Dreams via Jung & Hillman
A Jungian View of Dreams
Dreams are a window into the unconscious, and as such, they shift through the psyche in elusive ways — cloaked in imagery, reflected in symbols, disappearing as we awaken from a long night’s rest. The harder we attempt to grasp them, the more they seem to elude capture. How does one approach this work? How can we understand dreams and their purpose?
As Jung says:
“The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.”
Through Jung’s philosophy we acknowledge that the psyche moves in a purposeful and self-regulating manner. The dream does not reflect or reaffirm a conscious belief held by the ego, it shows a new point of view. It compensates an imbalanced attitude. It anticipates and reflects where the flow of psychological energy is moving.
Images can be interpreted objectively (referring to persons or events in waking life), or subjectively (as an aspect of the dreamer’s own psyche). We further assign associations to these images by considering the personal, cultural and archetypal layers of possibility and influence.
Thus, dreams reflect an individual’s psychic reality. The more you work with your dreams the more your fluency and understanding grows. The language of the symbols become clearer, themes repeat, your ability to recall strengthens. In Jungian Analysis, dreams are the source being mined for therapeutic insights. Being able to decipher their meaning is key to maintaining the dialectic between the conscious and unconscious.
For some basic theory overview check out our episodes on:
A Hillmanian View of Dreams
Dream analysis has been a main therapeutic and inner work modality of mine for many years. The Jungian approach has been central and I follow a classical approach. Recently, however, I have been integrating more of James Hillman’s views.
“Jung’s method of interpretation on the subjective level takes the dream persons into the subject of the dreamer. They become expressions of my psychic traits. They are introjected into my personality. In neither method do we ever truly leave the personal aspect of the dream persons, and thus they remain in the upperworld.
Dare I say it loud and clear? The persons I engage with in dreams are neither representations of their living selves nor parts of myself. They are shadow images that fill archetypal roles; they are personae, masks, in the hollow of which is numen.”
- James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
It is easy to fall into a routine, to forsake creative interpretation in favor of the well-worn path we have walked many times. In practice this may look like jumping to a conclusion that the dream image of my boss is always an inner aspect of myself that represents authority, management and conscientiousness. Or dreaming of cooking in a kitchen is a constellation of the alchemical operation known as calcinatio. We are lured into concretizing the images of our psyche for convenience and simplicity. Hillman pushes back against this tendency so we can come back into relationship with the richness of soul.
By settling on a definitive and literal interpretation, we close ourself off from the generative nature of symbols, we kill it. The transformative power of metaphor works upon us by bringing emotional dynamics forward that were previously untethered and lacking differentiation, a process that is constantly at work and needs space to breathe and take new form. “Stick with the image” — a common saying from Hillman, that, if followed, becomes our imaginal lodestar.
Hillman says:
“The first thing, then, in this non-interpretive approach to the dream is that we give time and patience to it, jumping to no conclusions, fixing it in no solutions. Befriending the dream begins with a plain attempt to listen to the dream, to set down on paper or in a dream diary in its own words just what it says. One takes especial note of the feeling tone of the dream, the mood upon waking, the emotional reactions of the dreamer in the dream, the delight or fear or surprise.”
Bringing the Views Together
Hillman has creatively re-visioned how to approach psychology and therapy (see Re-Visioning Psychology) but in my eyes, his greatest work has been in advancing the schools of Jungian thought further. His lineage is referred to as Archetypal Psychology.
He says:
“I offer you a way into Jung, and also a way out of him."
In this way, he is Luciferian, bringing forth the new light of consciousness while heretically challenging the known order (and Hillman is quite controversial in many Jungian circles). But I find there is space for Hillman and Jung in my practice. Together, they offer a rich and dynamic range of tools to draw upon.
Through Jung’s approach I am rooted in the telos of the psyche, the path of individuation, the purposeful movement of all psychological energy. I have uncovered recurring themes of the Mother complex in my dreams, in her personal and archetypal forms, that relates back to developmental wounding long before I acknowledged it consciously or explored it in therapy. I have had strange dreams I couldn’t make sense of and later saw them come to fruition, reflecting back to me that indeed the psyche has a powerful prospective function. I have struggled with personal matters and then dreamed of new perspectives that shifted and moved my conscious attitude.
Through Hillman’s approach I first sit quietly with my dreams before I dive into the question: what do you mean and what do you have to offer? I think twice before I choose an association and leave room for something new to emerge. I meditate on the image itself and follow the spontaneous insights it provides. I invoke the Underworld Gods, Hades and Persephone, and remind myself that interacting with dreams requires the “killing of attachments and the revelation of unchanging depths.”