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Dreams (Routledge Classics) by C.G. Jung
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C.G. Jung
1,875 books11.5k followersCarl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
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September 27, 2025
A COLLECTION OF MANY OF JUNG’S WRITINGS ON DREAMS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION
The Editorial Note to this 1974 book explains, “ ‘For many years I have carefully analyzed about 2,000 dreams per annum, thus I have acquired a certain experience in this matter,’ C.G. Jung wrote in 1954, when he was 79. Dreams are the very fabric of the analytical process, whether it is called psychoanalysis in Freud’s system or analytical psychology in Jung’s… These papers by no means exhaust Jung’s contributions on dreams…”
Jung wrote in the first essay (1909), “According to Freud the dream, like every complex psychic product, is a creation, a piece of work which has its motives, its trains of antecedent association; and like any considered action it is the outcome of a logical process, of the competition between various tendencies and the victory of one tendency over another, Dreaming has a meaning, like everything else we do.” (Pg. 3)
He asserts, “The illumination that the psychoanalytic method brings to us is very great, not only for the understanding of dreams but for that of hysteria and the most important mental illnesses.” (Pg. 11) But he admits, “I am aware that these observations are floating in a sea of uncertainties, but I think it would be wrong to suppress them, for luckier investigators may come after us who will be able to put them in the right perspective, as we cannot do for lack of adequate knowledge.” (Pg. 20)
He explains, “But by far the best argument for the existence of a hidden meaning in dreams is obtained by conscientiously applying the technical procedure for breaking down the manifest dream-content. This brings us to our second main point, the question of analytic procedure… If we start from the fact that a dream is a psychic product, we have not the least reason to suppose that its constitution and function obey laws and purposes other than those applicable to any other psychic product… we have to treat the dream, analytically, just like any other psychic product until experience teaches us a better way.” (Pg. 25)
He notes, “Here the question might certainly be asked: of what use is this to the dreamer if he does not understand the dream? To this I must remark that understanding is not an exclusively intellectual process for, as experience shows, a man my be influenced, and indeed convinced in the most effective way, by innumerable things of which he has no intellectual understanding. I need only remind my readers of the effectiveness of religious symbols.” (Pg. 30-31)
He asserts, “Much may be said for Freud’s view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view---which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner---owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome---can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.” (Pg. 33)
He admits, “Although I am a doctor myself, and… would have every reason not to criticize the medical profession, I must nevertheless confess that doctors are not always the best guardians of the psychiatric art. I have often found that the medical psychologists try to practice their art in the routine manner inculcated into them by the peculiar nature of their studies.” (Pg. 62-63)
He states, “The interpretation of dreams as infantile wish-fulfillments or as finalistic ‘arrangements’ subserving an infantile striving for power is much too narrow and fails to do justice to the essential nature of dreams. A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity… no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream.” (Pg. 63-64)
He states, “It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. Above all, he recognized that no interpretation can be undertaken without the dreamer… Clearly, dream-interpretation is in the first place an experience which has immediate validity for only two persons.” (Pg. 70-71) Later, he adds, “Every interpretation is an hypothesis, an attempt to read an unknown text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted with any certainty.” (Pg. 98)
He points out, “We all know how the Freudian school operates with hard-and-fast sexual ‘symbols’… and endows them with an apparently definitive content, namely sexuality. Unfortunately, Freud’s idea of sexuality is incredibly elastic and so vague that it can be made to include almost anything.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “I would not deny the possibility of PARALLEL dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but, in my experience at least, these are rather rare.” (Pg. 118)
He asserts, “The unconscious is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to drill it are only apparently successful, and moreover are harmful to consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, in a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle.” (Pg 120)
He states, “the dreamer… is in fact an unconscious exponent of an autonomous psychic development, just like the medieval alchemist or the classical Neoplatonist. Hence one could say… that history could be constructed just as easily from one’s own unconscious as from the actual texts.” (Pg. 160)
He observes, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the whole world---all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has been gradually turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come.” (Pg. 173-175)
He suggests, “Since we cannot possibly know the boundaries of something unknown to us, it follows that we are not in a position to set any bounds to the self. It would be wildly arbitrary and therefore unscientific to restrict the self to the limits of the individual psyche, quite apart from the fundamental fact we have not the least knowledge of these limits, seeing that they also lie in the unconscious. We may be able to indicate the limits of consciousness, but the unconscious is simply the unknown psyche and for that very reason illimitable because indeterminable. Such being the case, we should not be in the least surprised if the empirical manifestations of unconscious contents bear all the marks of something illimitable, something not determined by space and time.” (Pg. 256)
He concludes, “the doctor who fails to take account of man’s feelings for values commits a serious blunder, and if he tries to correct the mysterious and well-nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude, he is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of nature’s healing processes. Let us take the wisdom of the old alchemists to heart: ‘The most natural and perfect work is to generate its like.’” (Pg. 297)
This book will be of great interest to those studying Jung’s psychology.
The Editorial Note to this 1974 book explains, “ ‘For many years I have carefully analyzed about 2,000 dreams per annum, thus I have acquired a certain experience in this matter,’ C.G. Jung wrote in 1954, when he was 79. Dreams are the very fabric of the analytical process, whether it is called psychoanalysis in Freud’s system or analytical psychology in Jung’s… These papers by no means exhaust Jung’s contributions on dreams…”
Jung wrote in the first essay (1909), “According to Freud the dream, like every complex psychic product, is a creation, a piece of work which has its motives, its trains of antecedent association; and like any considered action it is the outcome of a logical process, of the competition between various tendencies and the victory of one tendency over another, Dreaming has a meaning, like everything else we do.” (Pg. 3)
He asserts, “The illumination that the psychoanalytic method brings to us is very great, not only for the understanding of dreams but for that of hysteria and the most important mental illnesses.” (Pg. 11) But he admits, “I am aware that these observations are floating in a sea of uncertainties, but I think it would be wrong to suppress them, for luckier investigators may come after us who will be able to put them in the right perspective, as we cannot do for lack of adequate knowledge.” (Pg. 20)
He explains, “But by far the best argument for the existence of a hidden meaning in dreams is obtained by conscientiously applying the technical procedure for breaking down the manifest dream-content. This brings us to our second main point, the question of analytic procedure… If we start from the fact that a dream is a psychic product, we have not the least reason to suppose that its constitution and function obey laws and purposes other than those applicable to any other psychic product… we have to treat the dream, analytically, just like any other psychic product until experience teaches us a better way.” (Pg. 25)
He notes, “Here the question might certainly be asked: of what use is this to the dreamer if he does not understand the dream? To this I must remark that understanding is not an exclusively intellectual process for, as experience shows, a man my be influenced, and indeed convinced in the most effective way, by innumerable things of which he has no intellectual understanding. I need only remind my readers of the effectiveness of religious symbols.” (Pg. 30-31)
He asserts, “Much may be said for Freud’s view as a scientific explanation of dream psychology. But I must dispute its completeness, for the psyche cannot be conceived merely in causal terms but requires also a final view. Only a combination of points of view---which has not yet been achieved in a scientifically satisfactory manner---owing to the enormous difficulties, both practical and theoretical, that still remain to be overcome---can give us a more complete conception of the nature of dreams.” (Pg. 33)
He admits, “Although I am a doctor myself, and… would have every reason not to criticize the medical profession, I must nevertheless confess that doctors are not always the best guardians of the psychiatric art. I have often found that the medical psychologists try to practice their art in the routine manner inculcated into them by the peculiar nature of their studies.” (Pg. 62-63)
He states, “The interpretation of dreams as infantile wish-fulfillments or as finalistic ‘arrangements’ subserving an infantile striving for power is much too narrow and fails to do justice to the essential nature of dreams. A dream, like every element in the psychic structure, is a product of the total psyche. Hence we may expect to find in dreams everything that has ever been of significance in the life of humanity… no simple theory of instinct will ever be capable of grasping the human psyche, that mighty and mysterious thing, nor, consequently, its exponent, the dream.” (Pg. 63-64)
He states, “It is Freud’s great achievement to have put dream-interpretation on the right track. Above all, he recognized that no interpretation can be undertaken without the dreamer… Clearly, dream-interpretation is in the first place an experience which has immediate validity for only two persons.” (Pg. 70-71) Later, he adds, “Every interpretation is an hypothesis, an attempt to read an unknown text. An obscure dream, taken in isolation, can hardly ever be interpreted with any certainty.” (Pg. 98)
He points out, “We all know how the Freudian school operates with hard-and-fast sexual ‘symbols’… and endows them with an apparently definitive content, namely sexuality. Unfortunately, Freud’s idea of sexuality is incredibly elastic and so vague that it can be made to include almost anything.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “I would not deny the possibility of PARALLEL dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but, in my experience at least, these are rather rare.” (Pg. 118)
He asserts, “The unconscious is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to drill it are only apparently successful, and moreover are harmful to consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, in a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle.” (Pg 120)
He states, “the dreamer… is in fact an unconscious exponent of an autonomous psychic development, just like the medieval alchemist or the classical Neoplatonist. Hence one could say… that history could be constructed just as easily from one’s own unconscious as from the actual texts.” (Pg. 160)
He observes, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the whole world---all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has been gradually turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come.” (Pg. 173-175)
He suggests, “Since we cannot possibly know the boundaries of something unknown to us, it follows that we are not in a position to set any bounds to the self. It would be wildly arbitrary and therefore unscientific to restrict the self to the limits of the individual psyche, quite apart from the fundamental fact we have not the least knowledge of these limits, seeing that they also lie in the unconscious. We may be able to indicate the limits of consciousness, but the unconscious is simply the unknown psyche and for that very reason illimitable because indeterminable. Such being the case, we should not be in the least surprised if the empirical manifestations of unconscious contents bear all the marks of something illimitable, something not determined by space and time.” (Pg. 256)
He concludes, “the doctor who fails to take account of man’s feelings for values commits a serious blunder, and if he tries to correct the mysterious and well-nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude, he is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of nature’s healing processes. Let us take the wisdom of the old alchemists to heart: ‘The most natural and perfect work is to generate its like.’” (Pg. 297)
This book will be of great interest to those studying Jung’s psychology.
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