A journey to Mind's Wonderland

symbolism archetypes and dreams

Some time has elapsed since I first touched upon this topic. As this was always a topic that stirred many passionate discussions I am returning to it now that I have found new connections and applications. I was working with this partly for my final thesis at university however, I feel I haven’t even scratched the surface. So I have decided to dive a little bit deeper this time as this topic is constantly bugging at the back of my mind.

If we want to access archetypal psychology we need to start with a journey into a wonderland. The human consciousness is a topic per se, the unconsciousness is even more demanding to grasp. It hides in the most elusive part of our minds and so it is hard to get a good grip on it. However fickle it may seem, it is still a very important part of who we are. So make yourself a strong cup of tea, sit back, and open your mind.

The concept of mind was an enthralling topic since the early ages of human awareness. It prompted various discussions throughout history ending up in a lot of amazing works by great thinkers. However, only recently the discussions on the nature of the human mind passed into the empirical realm, until just a few decades ago the notion of mind and dreams were discussed largely on a philosophical basis almost touching the realm of mysteries and occult. As it is still true that research into the human psyche is still at its beginning, we now have more empirical ways to approach it. At the dawn of modern research of mind stand of course two big names: Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, who courageously embarked on the difficult voyage into the human unconscious. Although there are still many who may frown upon the notion of a dream, deeming it unnecessary the fact remains that everyone dreams. A dream is a product of psychic activity as any other, and these products carry a meaning just as any other psychic product does. Only because we don’t understand them doesn’t mean they are useless. As you can imagine almost every part of our body has a function so does every part of our psyche.

Both Jung and Freud regarded dreams as important in their work however, they both use them slightly differently. In short, Freud used them to find out the roots of the neuroses of his patients whereas Jung thought they might have some larger implications within humanity. He came up with the term collective unconscious first in 1916, where he postulated that except the personal unconscious, every human shares also a collective unconscious that encompasses the soul of humanity at large, to determine the fact that throughout the history of humankind, we can see typical patterns. He thought, that the collective unconscious is a so-called storage room for all of humanity’s values, and impulses such as morality, instincts, and the like. Innate. Genetically inherited. According to him, the collective unconscious holds all knowledge from our ancestors to help us to make meaning of the waking world [2].

In both cases, however, we need to consider the ambiguous nature of dreams. They do not make sense in terms of normal waking experiences. The unconscious mind orders material so significantly different that upon waking it is evident that one has been dreaming. The fact that dreams really are not what they seem to be at a glance, is a mechanism employed by our mind that Freud calls Censor. According to him, dreams consist of two parts the manifest content which is so to say a facade of a dream the material we experience firsthand while dreaming, and the latent content which is the dream-thought and as such entirely disguised from us by the workings of censor. This mechanism won’t allow the strongly charged thought or impression (which is usually repressed) to reach the dreams as they are without thoroughly disguising them in something entirely bizarre [3]. And so, according to these two scientists, even the bizarreness of our dream-world carries some meaning which we can analyze and interpret, and for that, we need to dig even deeper into the science of signs, which are the primary carriers of meaning.

Enter symbols

Symbols are with us since the dawn of humanity. And are the most intriguing science to study as it pertains to almost every aspect of life from arts to mathematics to dreams, and so no wonder Jung himself was so drawn to them throughout his career. He says that dreams are the soil for the symbols. They grow out of the soul.[4] To understand why symbols were important to Jung we must first understand what they are. Naturally, everyone has an innate sense of them but come to think of them closely and things start to get blurry.

Semiotics is a science that studies signs. I think the simplest and most beautiful definition of what a sign is is the one provided by St. Augustine in the 4 century CE, that the sign is something that in itself prompts us to think about something else.[5] Further disputes on the topic have obviously added more explanation and even split open the sign to discover additional segments of it. Nonetheless, for dream work, we need only one type of sign and that is a symbol. A symbol is the last of 3 types of signs the two being icons and indices.

To shortly introduce them, Icons are based on resemblance. For example, a picture or photograph is a thing that imitates something else. An index is a second type of sign that carries a direct relationship to the thing that it signifies. E.g: Smoke indicates fire, prints in the snow, etc.

Symbols are a whole lot more complex as they have absolutely no connection to the concept they signify. The relationship is based on arbitrariness and as such must be learned. The perfect examples are signs of language - words. There is nothing inherent in the majority of words that explains the use of one particular word over another. Hence, language is a system of signs too, and can be studied from a point of semiotics. In fact, this is the one and only system of signs that is so intricate and complicated that people will never stop breaking their necks over its complexity, trying to gather all rules to explain it. Therefore, in dream-work, language presents an interesting problem. Logicians looked at natural languages with concern. They didn’t like them as they were (according to them) not logical and imperfect systems and as such couldn’t serve the purpose of a scientific description of the world. They especially despised typical faults of languages such as homonymy, synonymy, polysemy, metaphor, etc. As you can imagine these are exactly the devices that fuel dreams. Logic has tried to simplify the language and strip it of its inconveniences which resulted, for example, in predicate calculus and propositional logic. However, this somehow robs a language of its liveliness. As Ernest Cassirer said: “all forms of human activities have common symbolic significance”. [5] This means that each and every creation of the human psyche is expressed through symbolic means. And therefore we are able to dream and talk to people, paint pictures, and make music of exquisite and unique beauty, each time.

Symbols in Dreams

When we want to talk about dream interpretation we need to take into account that what will be manifested in a dream has rooted in many sources such as the language, feelings, impressions, and imagery we’ve seen during our waking life. And even the material that we generally think is coming entirely from the conscious mind can be tinged by subliminal forces. [4] So the signifying part of the sign can get very uncanny already on its way into the unconscious.

In my opinion, Freud’s censoring mechanism and the inherent human ability to use sign systems is the culprit why we do dream of such fantastical creations during our slumber. This censor is working at the place of signification, where it muddles up things just like the Grinch did in the post office.

Take for example metaphors. Life is sometimes like a rollercoaster. In reality, life is an abstract concept, a rollercoaster is not. Therefore, someone might use a rollercoaster to explain his life is somewhat difficult at the moment. Now imagine how that translates into a dream manifest-content, a person experiencing ups and downs on his life journey may just dream about taking a ride in an amusement park.

All in all, there is much more to the science of signs and dreams, the deeper we go the less accurate things get. And that is the basis for interpretation. Different interpretations don’t necessarily mean that one is correct and the other is not but they provide a huge space for discussions. However going back to dream symbolism, Freud and Jung found out that certain symbols are repeating themselves and that they might mean roughly the same thing throughout centuries.

Archetypes or Stereotypes

One last thing I want to address is the link between stereotypes and archetypes. Lately, there are extensive disputes about stereotypes in our society. Apparently, society doesn’t favour stereotypes. Why is that? Stereotypes are externally existing archetypes “[they] are culturally determined versions of the original archetype — often truncated images that emphasise only a part of the archetype behind them.”[1] Yes, it is superficially approached as a generalized belief about a person or a group of people. And on Wikipedia you can find a huge discrimination sign next to the article.

However, I beg to differ. Stereotypes are nothing wrong. They are the cognitive components that usually occur unconsciously, on the other hand, prejudice is the affective component, and that might be a concern. And that I wish not to go that way, in my opinion, it is good that stereotypes exist and I approach them as closely linked to archetypes. As I mentioned earlier they are often culturally determined which is an important fact, and a valid one as well, as there is nothing wrong to have cultural distinction, on the other hand, it adds to the marvelous variety of life that we are able to experience. Just as nature has produced many differently shaped and coloured animals and flowers it has produced different cultures. And it is amazing to observe how the archetypes are slightly varied in each one of them.

So now we have everything out of the way let’s touch on archetypes themselves. Jung says: “Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no matter whether its mythological character is recognised or not.” [6] Simply said, they are so to say blueprints from the past that help us function in the world. It makes sense if we think of it as patterns that we are internally bound to understand and we don’t think about it twice. Archetypes are difficult to categorise and summarise there are blurred lines between them. There is also no firm set of archetypes that we can address. However, there are the most famous ones that should make sense to everyone, for example the archetype of mother and father or light and darkness. We don’t need much studying to understand what they mean. As it is clearly visible these archetypes, according to Jung, fall in binary fashion into two concepts one into Ego and one into Shadow.

Ego represents our outward part of persona whereas the Shadow, as the name suggests, we keep to ourselves and harbours usually our so-called “dark” parts. As much as, we, as social beings, like to gravitate towards the lighter parts, it is important to acknowledge and understand our Shadow which is as essential as anything else. Without darkness, there wouldn’t be light and vice versa. In the majority of societies, we’ve been conditioned since early childhood to prefer light and shun the dark as something dire and bad. However, if we do that, our psyche lets us know that we are repressing an important part of ourselves, which may result in some maladies. This is what, as Freud realised, we as humans do due to various societal restrictions and what is causing us troubles on a personal level. When the Shadow is repressed we are cut from our wholeness and from our ground. When the Shadow remains unacknowledged, it is projected onto others. [1] The Shadow also acts out in our dreams and we can purely see it in mythologies and in art.

Archetypes are not only a means to self-discovery but have been present overtly throughout history in art and literature and in the practice of any culture we are meeting them over and over again at each corner. It is impossible to ignore them whatever we are doing. Although empirically, archetypes are very liquid, they are certainly interesting to look into from various vantage points.

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Resources:

1. JUDITH, Anodea. 2006. Revised Eastern, Body Western Mind. New York: Celstial Arts. ISBN 978-1-58761-255-1.

2. GIMBEL, Steven.Carl Jung and the Concept of Collective Consciousness. In: Wondrium Daily. [online]. The Teaching COmpany LLC., 14 October 2020. [Accessed 1 March 2023] at: https://www.wondriumdaily.com/carl-jung-and-the-concept-of-collective-consciousness/

3. JUNG, Carl Gustav. 2006. Dreams. Translated by R.F.C. HULL. Abington: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-26741-0.

4. JUNG, Carl Gustav, et al. 1964. Man and His Symbols. New York: Anchor Press Doubleday. ISBN 0-358-05221-9.

5. ČERNÝ, Jiří a Ján HOLEŠ, 2004. Sémiotika. Praha:Portál. ISBN 80-7178-832.

6. JUNG, Carl Gustav, Collected Works vol. 8 (1960), "Instinct and the Unconscious" (1919/1948).

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