Friday 2 September 2016

Carl Jung & Sigmund Freud

1000 Dreams - David Fontana.  Jung on Dreams PG 20, 21 & 22.

-Worked closely to Freud from 1909 to 1913.
Jung departed from Freud in his realization that the common themes running through the delusions & hallucinations of his patients could not all emerge from their personal unconscious conflicts, but must stem from some common source. He found among various dreams of different patients that they echoed the themes of myths from all over the world.
"His extensive knowledge of comparative religion, mythology & symbol systems such as alchemy convinced him that similar common themes run across cultures & across the centuries, & thus was born his belief in the collective unconscious, a genetic myth-producing level of the mind common to all men & woman, & serving as the well-spring of psychological life". For Jung, he believed that 'grand/ great' dreams were gateways to a mythic world "the vast historical storehouse of the human race".
Jung criticized Freuds method as it allowed the mind to freewheel which leads away from the original image. Jungians concentrate on the dream & constantly return to the original image - preventing the mind from wandering. For Jung psychotherapy is a process of discovery & self-realization. "Jungians believe that by being in touch with the mythic themes of our collective unconsciousness, we gradually integrate the disparate & sometimes conflicting aspects of our selves, developing our full potential as we pass in turn through life's successive stages. 

1000 Dreams - David Fontana. Freud on Dreams PG 26, 27 & 28
Freud's famous technique is known as Free Association. You wake up & unpack the dream by writing down the meanings of the dream. You take each object, person & situation within that dream. The idea is to write down things about these objects & so on - With your mind running freely (What Jung was against). You write everything down, anything that comes to mind. You then chain it together to make better sense of the dream.
"The basic idea behind free association is to trick yourself into unconscious revelations. You have deliberately lowered your guard, & it is in these circumstances that you are most likely to hit upon unexpected truths".
Results of free association are associated with emotional damage caused in early childhood. He recognized that this revealed the crucial importance of the unconscious.
Freud described dreams as "the royal road to the unconscious". Freud believed that the primary process takes unconscious impulses, desires & fears, & turns them into symbols; these are linked by associations that have no regard for categories such as time & space, or right 7 wrong, as the unconscious is unaware of the logic, values & social adaptations of conscious life.



My Thoughts.
I can understand both Jung & Freuds methods for unraveling dreams. To stick with the original dream as much as possible to get a better understanding without warping the dream & turning it into something completely different. As well as brain storming & even going off on a slight tangent to understand a dream. I know that I unconsciously do both of these methods when I wake up. If it was a vivid dream, I try my hardest to replay it in my head, but by the end of the day it is completely different. The same goes for when people tell others about what they got up to last week or even what they dreamt about: They sugar coat it. They twist what happened to make it more interesting & sometimes the original content is lost. Over exaggerating, twisting, distorting, improvising. When humans tell stories, there is a beginning, middle & end. But not all dreams have this. So it is natural for us to want to find an ending to our dreams, to make sense of it, so we can't help but change the original content just a bit.
On another note, an artist would say that their work is finished, but others would say it looks incomplete or not final. Dreams can be the same, if they are not complete, it can reflect something that is happening in the users life that is incomplete. But as humans, we want a completed story, for some it is more difficult to comprehend.

Something unrelated to my findings on Jung & Freud.
I came across something very interesting which is that humans don't dream until they are around the age of 3. Before my sister turned 3 this year, she had a 'nightmare' about frogs. She is not afraid of frogs, in fact she loves them. It's the fact that she had seen images in her unconscious sleeping state for the first time that frightened her. With his, I understand why children are more affected by 'nightmares'.
One, they are still new to many things & don't experience stress the way adults do (as stress is what can trigger nightmares). Saying this, I feel like adults turn a blind eye to nightmares as they don't see them as nightmares. They accept them & simply see them as signs of stress.
My theory is that when children have nightmares, they unrealistic. e.g. the classic monster hiding under the bed or in the closet. If an adult had this same dream, they would wake up and brush it off, seeing the logic in it - like their dog being under the bed. Adults nightmares probably include things like not paying the bills on time, getting fired or being unsuccessful. I can't fully say for adults as I am just entering adulthood now. For teenagers, nightmares can be things such as not knowing what to do when they leave school, failing exams, missing the bus, messing things up etc. These are things that can trigger nightmares, or at least unpleasant dreams. I can definitely relate to the stresses of a teenager, as I am closer to that age range.

In other words, everyone has nightmares, but interpret them & accept them differently.

Whoa, my brain was on a roll.  

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