Like Freud, Jung believed in the existence of the unconscious. However, he didn’t see the unconscious as animalistic, instinctual, and sexual; he saw it as more spiritual. Dreams were a way of communicating and acquainting ourselves with the unconscious.

To Jung, dreams were not attempts to conceal our true feelings from the waking mind; they were a window to our unconscious.
They served to guide the waking self to achieve wholeness. 

To Jung, dreams offered a solution to a problem we are facing in our waking life. Jung viewed the ego as one’s sense of self and how we portray ourselves to the world. 

Part of Jung’s theory was that all things can be viewed as paired opposites (i.e. good/evil, male/female, or love/hate). And thus working in opposition to the ego, is the “counter-ego” or what he referred to as the shadow.

The shadow represents rejected aspects of yourself that you do not wish to acknowledge. It is considered an aspect of yourself which is somewhat more primitive, uncultured, and awkward.

Jung said, “Dreams are the main source of all of our knowledge about symbolism.” He meant that the messages you receive from your dreams are expressed symbolically and must be interpreted to find their true meanings.

In his writings, Jung says that rarely do the symbols in dreams have just one meaning. And when interpreting the messages in your dreams, he suggests going with your first hunch, relying on your intuitive abilities, before applying more rational methods of dream interpretation.

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Edgar Cayce, a world-famous prophetic dreamer in the early 20th century, was able to obtain virtually an unlimited amount of knowledge on an unlimited number of subjects. One of these subjects was dreams and dream interpretation.

Cayce astounded people by interpreting their dreams and giving them insight into their psyche, lives and even past lives. From his own experience, and from the feedback he received from others, Cayce believed that dreams are actually journeys into the spirit world.

Edgar Cayce once said,“Dreams, visions, impressions, to the entity in the normal sleeping state are the presentations of the experiences necessary for the development, if the entity would apply them in the physical life. These may be taken as warnings, as advice, as conditions to be met, conditions to be viewed in a way and manner as lessons, as truths, as they are presented in the various ways and manners.”

Cayce believed that our dreams serve several functions. Somatic dreams—dreams referring to the body—are extremely important to pay attention to. Very often dreams will offer solutions to health problems.

For example, one man was plagued with food allergies for many years, but was unable to find the source of his discomfort. Then one night he went to bed and he dreamed of a can of coffee. He quit drinking coffee and his symptoms disappeared.

Like many of us, Cayce also believed that deceased friends and family members sometimes visit us in dreams. Such dreams may be communications from our loved ones. Or they may allow us to resolve our feelings about their deaths. Any person who appears in a dream may also represent some aspect of themselves or some part of us that is like them in some way.

While dreaming, we pass through different levels of consciousness and, according to many, different realms of the spirit world. While dreaming, we have special access to our own inner spirit. According to the Edgar Cayce readings, there is no a question that cannot be answered from the depths of our own consciousness.

According to Cayce, a dream may deal with physical, mental, or spiritual issues. It may include any kind of psychic manifestation, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, prophesies, astral travel, past life recall, communication with other realms, including friends and relatives who have passed away, spirit guides, angels, Christ, or even the voice of God.

Dreams can also give invaluable information on our health. Cayce felt that every aspect of life—emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, financial, or social—could be dealth with in dreams.

Dreams are ambiguous messages. They can warn or encourage, confuse or clarify, tease or explain clearly. Dreams can potentially offer a vast range of information and experiences.

What we get out of dreams depends on how we work with them. Dreams reflect our own attitudes, motivations, and degree of enlightement. What we receive in dreams also depends on how much we have heeded and applied information we received in earlier dreams and in messages we receive while awake.

Do you pay attention to your dreams? Edgar Cayce did, and he was able to help thousands of people while he was alive.

Millions more have gained insight into their lives, health, and psyches through reading the records of Cayce’s dreams and the many books about them.

As in many of his theories, Freud associated dreams with sex. Fundamental to his view of dreams was the belief that the purpose of dreams is to allow us to satisfy in our fantasies the instinctual urges that society considers unacceptable, such as certain sexual practices. That was partly why he experienced such the enormous opposition and criticism from scientists and the public alike.

When Freud was young, only men were thought to have powerful sexual urges. When Freud showed that repressed but obvious sexual desires were equally at work in women this created a social uproar. Perhaps his second finding in regard to sexuality surprised even him.

During Freud’s analysis of women patients, sexual advance or assault by the woman’s father was often revealed. Freud struggled with this, wondering whether the assault was memory of an actual event, or a psychic reproduction of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that hysterical and neurotic behavior was often due to the trauma caused by an early sexual assault by the parent.

Where there was not evidence of physical assault, Freud felt that the neurosis was due to sexual conflict or a trauma caused by some other event. That conflict was often manifested through dreams. That led to his theories being rejected by university colleagues, fellow doctors, and even by patients.

The more Freud allowed his patients to go in their own direction, the more they talked about their dreams. Also, talking about the dream often enabled the patient to discover a new and productive chain of associations and memories.

Freud began to take note of his own dreams and explore the associations they aroused. In doing so he was the first person to consciously and consistently explore a dream into its depths through uncovering and following obvious and hidden associations and emotions connected with the dream imagery and drama.

Although earlier dream researchers had noticed how dream images correlated with personal concerns, Freud broke new ground, seeing the connection with sexual feelings, with early childhood trauma, and with the subtleties of the human psyche.

Freud explored his dreams to deal with his own neurosis. He wrote of that period, ‘I have been through some kind of neurotic experience, with odd states of mind not intelligible to consciousness, cloudy thoughts and veiled doubts, with barely here and there a ray of light.’

Using dreams for his self analysis, Freud found that he could remember forgotten details from his childhood along with feelings and states of mind that he had never before experienced.

Freud wrote of his period of personal dream analysis,

“Some sad secrets of life are being traced back to their first roots; the humble origins of much pride and precedence are being laid bare. I am now experiencing myself all the things that, as a third party, I have witnessed going on in my patients, days when I slink about depressed because I have understood nothing of the day’s dreams, fantasies, or mood.”

The Interpretation of Dreams, Cover via Amazon

Sigmund Freud actually called dreams the “royal road to the unconscious.” That statement will probably remain true in psychology forever.

Freud’s classic book, The Interpretation of Dreams, includes some of his finest work. Freud wrote that every dream is a wish fulfillment. He continued to believe that theory to the end, even though he gave up his initial idea that all dreams have a sexual content.

For Freud, the concept of wish fulfillment did not necessarily mean that the dream indicated that the dreamer was seeking pleasure. He said that the dreamer could just as well have a wish to be punished. Nevertheless, this idea of a “secret” wish being masked by a dream remains central to classical Freudian psychoanalysis.

Freud said,

“Dreams are not comparable to the spontaneous sounds made by a musical instrument struck rather by some external force than by the hand of a performer; they are not meaningless, not absurd, they do not imply that one portion of our stockpile of ideas sleeps while another begins to awaken. Dreams are a completely valid psychological phenomenon, specifically the fulfillment of wishes. They can be classified in the continuity of comprehensible waking mental states; they are constructed through highly complicated intellectual activity.”

After Freud noticed how allowing his patients to freely associate ideas with whatever came to mind, he began to seriously explore what he called spontaneous abreaction. Freud himself suffered bouts of deep anxiety, and it was partly this that led him to explore the connection between association of ideas and dreams.

In 1897 Freud wrote this to his friend, Wilhelm Fliess:

“No matter what I start with, I always find myself back again with the neuroses and the psychical apparatus. Inside me there is a seething ferment, and I am only waiting for the next surge forward. I have felt impelled to start writing about dreams, with which I feel on firm ground.”

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Dreaming can be seen as your spirit and soul leaving your body every night and going to visit an actual place. The ancient Chinese people traditionally believed that the soul leaves the body to go into that dream world.

In traditional Chinese belief, if a dreamer was suddenly awakened, their soul might fail to return to their body. Because of that traditional belief, some Chinese people, even today, are wary of alarm clocks.

Some native North American nations and ancient Mexican civilizations shared the belief that there was a distinct dream dimension. They believe that their ancestors lived in their dreams and could take on nonhuman forms like plants.

People in many cultures of the Americas traditionally saw dreaming as a way of visiting and communicating with their ancestors. Dreams also helped to them to find their mission or role in life.

In contrast, in Europe during the Middle Ages dreams were seen as evil. Dream images were believed to be temptations from the devil. In the vulnerable sleep state, the devil was believed to fill the minds of humans with evil thoughts. He did his dirty work though dreams attempting to mislead humans down the wrong path.

In the early 19th century, dreams were dismissed as mere physical effects. Dreams were thought to be caused by anxiety, a household noise or even indigestion. So they believed that there was really no meaning to it.

Late in the 19th century, Sigmund Freud revived belief in the importance of dreams and in their significance and the need for interpretation. Freud revolutionized the study of dreams.

Returning the study of dreams to an important place in European and American thought and the science of the mind: What a blessing!

Egyptian woman of the Roman era. Image by Maia C via Flickr

Back in the Greek and Roman era, dreams were often seen in a religious context and messages from the gods.

Temples called Asclepieions were built around the power of dreams. It was believed that sick people who slept in these temples would be sent cures through their dreams.

In Egypt, priests also acted as dream interpreters. The Egyptians recorded their dreams in hieroglyphics.

People with particular vivid and significant dreams were believed to be blessed and were considered special. People who had the power to interpret dreams were looked up to and seenas divinely gifted.

In the Bible, there are over seven hundred mentions of dreams. Tracing back to these ancient cultures, people had always had an inclination to interpret dreams

Dreams were also seen as prophetic and an omen from outside spirits. People often looked to their dreams for signs of warning and advice from a deity, from the dead or even the works of a demon.

Sometimes they looked to their dreams for what to do or what course of action to take.

Dreams often dictated the actions of political and military leaders. In fact, in the Green and Roman era, dream interpreters even accompanied military leaders into battle to help.

Some interpreters aided the healers in diagnosing illnesses. Dreams offered a vital clue for the healers in finding what was wrong with the dreamer.

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