01 - part 1 - Approaching the ...

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The
importance
of
dreams
Man uses the spoken or written word to express the mean-
ing of what he wants to convey. His language is full of
symbols, but he also often employs signs or images that
are not strictly descriptive. Some are mere abbreviations
or strings of initials, such as UN, UNICEF, or UNESCO;
others are familiar trade marks, the names of patent med-
icines, badges, or insignia. Although
these are meaningless
in themselves, they have acquired
a recognizable
meaning
through
common
usage
or
deliberate
intent.
Such
things
are
not
symbols.
They
are
signs,- and
they
do
no
more
than denote the objects to which they are attached.
What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or even a
picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that pos-
sesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional
and obvious meaning. It implies something vague, un-
known, or hidden from us. Many Cretan monuments, for
instance, are marked with the design of the double adze.
This is an object that we know, but we do not know its
symbolic implications. For another example, take the case
of the Indian who, after a visit to England, told his
friends at home that the English worship animals, because
he had found eagles, lions, and oxen in old churches. He
was not aware (nor are many Christians) that these ani-
mals are symbols of the Evangelists and are derived from
the vision of Ezekiel, and that this in turn has an analogy
to the Egyptian sun god Horns and his four sons. There
are, moreover, such objects as the wheel and the cross
that are known all over the world, yet that have a sym-
bolic significance under certain conditions. Precisely what
they symbolize is still a matter for controversial speculation.
Three
of the four
Evangelists
(in a relief on Chartres
Cathedral)
appear as animals:
The
lion is Mark,
the ox
Luke,
the eagle John.
2
3
perience contains an indefinite number of unknown fac-
tors, not to speak of the fact that every concrete object
is always unknown in certain respects, because we cannot
know the ultimate nature of matter itself.
Then there are certain events of which we have not
consciously taken note; they have remained, so to speak,
below the threshold of consciousness. They have happened,
but they have been absorbed subliminally, without our
conscious knowledge. We can become aware of such hap-
penings only in a moment
Thus
a word
or an image is symbolic
when
it implies
something
more than its obvious and immediate
meaning.
It has a wider "unconscious"
aspect that is never precisely
defined or fully explained.
Nor can one hope to define or
explain
it. As the mind
explores
the symbol,
it is led to
ideas that lie beyond
the grasp of reason.
The wheel may
lead our
thoughts
toward
the concept
of
a "divine"
sun,
but at this point reason must admit its incompetence;
man
is unable
to define a "divine"
being. When,
with all our
intellectual
limitations,
we
call
something
"divine,"
we
of intuition
or by a process of
have merely
given it a name,
which may be based
on
a
profound
thought
that
leads
to
a
later
realization
that
creed, but never on factual evidence.
Because there are innumerable things beyond the range
of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms
to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully com-
prehend. This is one reason why all religions employ sym-
bolic language or images. But this conscious use of
symbols is only one aspect of a psychological fact of
great importance: Man also produces symbols uncon-
sciously and spontaneously, in the form of dreams.
It is not easy to grasp this point. But the point must
be grasped if we are to know more about the ways ·in
which the human mind works. Man, as we realize if we
reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or
comprehends anything completely. He can see, hear, touch,
and taste; but how far he sees, how well he hears, what
his touch tells him, and what he tastes depend upon the
number and quality of his senses. These limit his percep-
tion of the world around him. By using scientific instru-
ments he can partly compensate for the deficiencies of his
senses. For example, he can extend the range of his vision
by binoculars or of his hearing by electrical amplification.
But the most elaborate apparatus cannot do more than
bring distant or small objects within range of his eyes,
or make faint sounds more audible. No matter what in-
struments he uses, at some point he reaches the edge of
certainty beyond which conscious knowledge cannot pass.
There are, moreover, unconscious aspects of our per-
ception of reality. The first is the fact that even when our
senses react to real phenomena, sights, and sounds, they
are somehow translated from the realm of reality into that
of the mind. Within the mind they become psychic events,
whose ultimate nature
they must have happened;
and though we may have origi··
nally
ignored
their
emotional
and
vital
importance,
it
later
wells up
from
the
unconscious
as
a sort
of
after-
thought.
It may appear, for instance, in the form of a dream. As
a general rule, the unconscious aspect of any event is
revealed to us in dreams, where it appears not as a
rational thought but as a symbolic image. As a matter of
history, it was the study of dreams that first enabled psy-
chologists to investigate the unconscious aspect of conscious
psychic events.
It is on such evidence that psychologists assume the
existence of an unconscious psyche-though many scien-
tists and philosophers deny its existence. They argue
naively that such an assumption implies the existence of
two "subjects," or (to put it in a common phr.ase) two
personalities within the same individual. But this is ex-
actly what it does imply-quite correctly. And it is one
of the curses of modern man that many people suffer from
Three of the sons of the Egyptia"
god Hams
are animals
(c. 1250
a.c.).
Animals,
and groups of four,
are universal
relifdous svmbols.
is unknowable
(for
the psyche can-
not
know
its own
psychical
substance).
Thus
every
ex-
4
this divided personality.
It is by no means
a pathological
symptom;
it
is
a
normal
fact
that
can
be
observed
at
any
time
and
everywhere.
It
is not
merely
the
neurotic
whose right
hand
does
not
know
what
the
left
hand
is
doing.
This predicament
is a symptom
of
a general
un-
consciousness
that
is the undeniable
common
inheritance
of all mankind.
Man
has
developed
consciousness
slowly
and
labori-
ously,
in
a
process
that
took
untold
ages
to
reach
the
civilized state
(which
is arbitrarily
dated
from
the inven-
tion of script
in about
4000
And
this evolution
is
B.C.).
far from complete, for large areas of the human
mind are
still shrouded
in .darkness.
What
we call the
"psyche"
is
by
no
means
identical
with
our
consciousness
and
its
contents.
Whoever denies the existence of the unconscious is in
fact assuming that our present knowledge of the psyche
is total. And this belief is clearly just as false as the as-
sumption that we know all there is to be known about the
natural universe. Our psyche is part of nature, and its
enigma is as limitless. Thus we cannot define either the
psyche or nature. We can merely state what we believe
them to be and describe, as best we can, how they func-
tion. Quite apart, therefore, from the evidence that med-
ical research has accumulated, there are strong grounds
of logic for rejecting statements like "There is no un-
conscious." Those who say such things merely express an
age-old "misoneism"-a fear of the new and the unknown.
There are historical reasons for this resistance to the
idea of an unknown part of the human psyche. Con-
sciousness is a very recent acquisition of nature, and it is
still in an "experimental" state. It is frail, menaced by
specific dangers, and easily injured. As anthropologists
have noted, one of the most common mental derange-
ments that occur among primitive people is what they call
"the loss of a soul"-which
"Dissociation"
means a splitting
in the psyclle,
causing
a neurosis.
A famous
fictional
example
of
this
state is
Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde
(1886)
by the Scots author
R. L. Stevenson.
In the story Jekyll's
"split" took
the form
of a physical
change,
rather than
(as in reality)
an inner, psychic
state. Above,
Mr. Hyde
(from
the
1932 film
of
the story)-Jekyll's
"other
harf·"
identity. This is what the distinguished French ethnologist
Lucien Levy-Briihl called a "mystical participation." He
later retracted this term under pressure of adverse criti-
cism, but I believe that his critics were wrong. It is a well-
known
psychological
fact
that
an
individual
may
have
such
an unconscious
identity
with
some
other
person
or
object.
This identity takes a variety of forms among primitives.
If the bush soul is that of an animal, the animal itself is
considered as some sort of brother to the man. A man
whose brother is a crocodile, for instance, is supposed to
be safe when swimming a crocodile-infested river. If the
bush soul is a tree, the tree is presumed to have something
like
means, as the name indicates,
a noticeable
disruption
(or,
more
technically,
a dissocia-
tion) of consciousness.
Among such people, whose consciousness is at a dif-
ferent level of development from ours, the "soul" (or
psyche) is not felt to be a unit. Many primitives assume
that a man has a "bush soul" as well as his own, and that
this bush soul is incarnate in a wild animal or a tree,
with which the human individual has some kind of psychic
parental
authority
over the
individual
concerned.
In
both cases an injury to the bush soul is interpreted
as an
injury to the man.
In some tribes, it is assumed that a man has a number
of souls; this belief expresses the feeling of some primitive
individuals
that
they
each
consist
of
several
linked
but
7
6
sciousness.
He
worked
on
the
general
assumption
that
distinct
units.
This
means
that
the
individual's
psyche
is
dreams
are
not
a matter
of
chance
but
are
associated
with
far
from
being
safely
synthesized;
on
the
contrary,
it
conscious
thoughts
and
problems.
This
assumption
was
threatens
to
fragment
only
too
easily
under
the
onslaught
of
unchecked
emotions.
not
in the
least
arbitrary.
It was
based
upon
the
conclusion
of
eminent
neurologists
(for
instance,
Pierre
Janet)
that
While
this
situation
is familiar
to
us from
the
studies
of
neurotic
symptoms
are
related
to
some
conscious
ex-
anthropologists,
it
is
not
so
irrelevant
to
our
own
ad-
perience.
They
even
appear
to be split· off areas
of the
con-
vanced
civilization
as
it might
seem.
We
too
can
become
scious
mind,
which,
at
another
time
and
under
different
dissociated
and
lose
our
identity.
We
can
be possessed
and
cOl"ditions,
can
be
conscious.
altered
by
moods,
or
become
unreasonable
and
unable
to
Before
the
beginning
of
this
century,
Freud
and
Josef
recall
important
facts
about
ourselves
or
others,
so
that
Breuer
had
recognized
that
neurotic
symptoms-hysteria,
people
ask:
"What
the
devil
has
got
into
you?"
We
talk
certain
types
of
pain,
and
abnormal
behavior-are
in
fact
about
being
able
"to
control
ourselves,"
but
self-control
is
symbolically
meaningful.
They
are
one
way
in
which
the
a rare
and
remarkable
virtue.
We
may
think
we
have
Our-
unconscious
mind
expresses
itself,
just
as it may
in dreams;
selves
under
control;
yet
a friend
can
easily
tell
us
things
and
they
are
equally
symbolic.
A
patient,
for
instance,
about
ourselves
of
which
we
have
no
knowledge.
who
is
confronted
with
an
intolerable
situation
may
de-
Beyond
doubt,
even
in
what
we
call
a
high
level
of
velop
a
spasm
whenever
he
tries
to
swallow:
He
"can't
civilization,
human
consciousness
has
not
yet
achieved
a
swallow
it."
Under
similar
conditions
of
psychological
reasonable
degree
of
continuity.
It
is
still
vulnerable
and
stress,
another
patient
has
an
attack
of
asthma:
He
"can't
liable
to
fragmentation.
This
capacity
to
isolate
part
of
breathe
the
atmosphere
at
home."
A
third
suffers
from
a
one's
mind,
indeed,
is a valuable
characteristic.
It
enables
peculiar
paralysis
of
the
legs:
He
can't
walk,
Le.,
"he
us
to
concentrate
upon
one
thing
at
a
time,
excluding
can't
go
on
any
more."
A
fourth,
who
vomits
when
he
everything
else that
may
claim
our
attention.
But
there
is .a
eats,
"cannot
digest"
some
unpleasant
fact.
I
could
cite
world
of
difference
between
a
conscious
decision
to
split
many
examples
of
this
kind,
but
such
physical
reactions
off
and
temporarily
suppress
a
part
of
one's
psyche,
and
are
only
one
form
in
which
the
problems
that
trouble
us
a condition
in
which
this
happens
spontaneously,
without
unconsciously
may
express
themselves.
They
more
often
one's
knowledge
or
consent
and
even
against
one's
inten.
find
expression
in
our
dreams.
tion.
The
former
is
a
civilized
achievement,
the
latter
a
Any
psychologist
who
has
listened
to
numbers
of
peo-
primitive
"loss
of
a soul,"
or
even
the
pathological
cause
of
a neurosis.
Thus,
ple
describing
their
dreams
knows
that
dream
symbols
have
much
greater
variety
than
the
physical
symptoms
of
even
in our
day
the
unity
of
consciousness
is still
neurosis.
They
often
consist
of
elaborate
and
picturesque
a doubtful
affair;
it can
too
easily
be disrupted.
An
ability
fantasies.
But
if
the
analyst
who
is
confronted
by
this
to
control
one's
emotions
that
may
be very
desirable
from
dream
material
uses
Freud's
original
technique
of
"free
one
point
of view
would
be a questionable
accomplishment
association,"
he finds
that
dreams
can eventually
be reduced
from
another,
for
it
would
deprive
social
intercourse
of
variety,
color,
and
warmth.
to
certain
basic
patterns.
This
technique
played
an
impor-
tant
part
in
the
development
of
psychoanalysis,
for
it
It
is
against
this
background
that
we
must
review
the
enabled
Freud
to
use
dreams
as
the
starting
point
from
importance
of
dreams-those
flimsy,
evasive,
unreliable,
which
the
unconscious
problem
of
the
patient
might
be
vague,
and
uncertain
fantasies.
To
explain
my
point
of
explored.
Freud
view,
I
would
like
to
describe
how
it
developed
over
a
made
the
simple
but
penetrating
observation
that
period
of years,
and
how
I was led to conclude
that
dreams
if
a
dreamer
is
encouraged
to
go
on
talking
about.
his
are
the
most
frequent
and
universally
accessible
source
for
dream
images
and
the
thoughts
that
these
prompt
in
his
the
investigation
of
man's
symbolizing
faculty.
mind,
he will
give himself
away
and
reveal
the
unconscious
Sigmund
Freud
was
the
pioneer
who
first
tried
to
ex-
background
of his
ailments,
in both
what
he says
and
what
plore
empirically
the
unconscious
background
of
con-
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