Freud and Jung on Dreams
In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud's basic philosophy regarding the relationship between dreams and the inner workings of the human mind can be summed up in the following oft-quoted phrase: "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind" (Freud, 647). Often, this is taken simply to mean that dreams reveal the unconscious, but this is not an accurate reading of Freud's words. He explains at length in this text that dreams are simply a way -- the best way, it is true, but providing "only a small step," Freud stresses -- towards beginning to understand how the mind works without our conscious direction (Freud, 647). That is, as dreams are products of the unconscious mind, they reveal (by their very nature) how that part of the mind works. Interpreting dreams, then, is not simply a matter of determining our hidden and repressed desires, memories, etc., but it is a more profound way to understand the mechanisms by which the mind operates.
As in other areas of psychology, Carl Jung agreed with Feud on many of the basics of dream interpretation. He began to see Freud's views as overly simplistic, however, and believed that there were deeper collective archetypes that made themselves known through dreams, and which represented basic elements of the human character as ways of dealing with unconscious issues. Also of great importance to Jung, according to Hall, was the context of the dream, especially when it came to dangerous elements: "It is important to look beyond the mere presence of physical danger to the dream-ego and make some assessment of its meaning within the dream" (Hall, 49). This is similar to Freudian interpretation in its seeking of a mechanism of meaning, rather than interpreting dreams as being purely symbolic in content, but Jung developed this much further.
Works Cited
Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Avon, 1980.
James Albert Hall. Jungian Dream Interpretation. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1983.
