Wisdom of the Dream

It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant-looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt.

Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods.

Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this
it does with astounding completeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 21.

As Freud says, dream-analysis is the via regia to the unconscious.

It leads straight to the deepest personal secrets, and is, therefore, an invaluable instrument in the hand of the physician and
educator of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 25

The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the
surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.

Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web
through patient work.

But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that
an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.

This discovery compels rather more respect of the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age
has hitherto given short shrift. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 24.

I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects an interpretation on the objective level.

In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself.

This I call interpretation on the subjective level. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 130

On paper the interpretation of a dream may look arbitrary, muddled, and spurious; but the same thing in reality can be a little drama of unsurpassed
realism.

To experience a dream and its interpretation is very different from having a tepid rehash set before you on paper.

Everything about this psychology is, in the deepest sense, experience; the entire theory, even where it puts on the most
abstract airs, is the direct outcome of something experienced. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 199.