Analytic Tools

I’ve been writing about how I learned to analyze a waking dream and thought it time to share some analytic tools. I’ve developed a dream interpretation worksheet that has served me well over the past several years, compiled through my readings in depth psychology.  This analytic worksheet and an example of a dream interpretation can be found at the end of this article under “Resources” in a Microsoft Word document format.

When we analyze our dreams–even our so-called ‘waking dreams’–what we’re analyzing is images that have particular meaning to us as individuals. No one else will perceive the meanings we perceive. Robert A. Johnson explains that

Each person has a distinct psychological structure. It is only by living that inherent structure that one discovers what it means to be an individual. If we work at individuation, we begin to see the difference between the ideas and values that come out of our own selves and the social opinions that we absorb from the world around us (Inner Work, p. 12).

It thus behooves us to discover just what the images that appear in our sleeping and waking lives have to say to us.

I often write in first person singular about my adventures in individuation because this is, after all, my blog. Sometimes, though, I fret that when writing about myself I may throw the reader off the track of his or her own essential process. The reader may misinterpret, assuming that because I’m writing about my own experience that there’s nothing applicable to him or her.

“Am I giving the reader the tools he needs?” I wonder. The tools I use are as essential for you as they are for me. We need these tools; individuation is hard work. It’s specific work, work that “builds consciousness,” according to Johnson. Following are some basic steps we can take as we do the works of consciousness.

ANALYTIC STEPS

Identify the images. When we interpret dreams, waking or sleeping, we first identify the images or symbols in the dream. Let’s use the Dream Interpretation Example dream (below)  for our purposes. In this dream, we see images of (1) a wasted city, (2) a trapped person, (3) a girl, (4) lifts, and (5) mangy cats. Look into your dream or your waking experience and list the images you see. Imagine that you’re watching the dream or situation unfold at the cinema with the sound turned off. What do you see? What you see is the image. Make a list of those images.

Make direct associations. Now that you have a list of images, you can begin your analysis. Make direct associations to every image instead of a chain of associations. For example, using Peter’s dream from the Dream Interpretation Example, make associations to “a wasted city.” Your associations would differ from Peter’s associations–hence the idea of individuality. Peter associated feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and dismay to the wasted city, along with hard and hostile environments. Peter should go no farther than that. For instance, if Peter thinks, “wasted city… nuclear bomb… article I read in The Atlantic…. Atlantic City… gambling… I want to go to Las Vegas…,” he has gone too far. Peter should stay with the feelings of despair and the idea of a wasteland, rather than ending up in Las Vegas.

Connect each image to an inner dynamic. Now that you have an idea of what your associations are to each image, it’s time to identify parts of your inner life that have found expression through the dream images. Robert A. Johnson suggests that we go back to each image and ask ourselves, “What part of me is that? Where have I seen it functioning in my life lately? Where do I see that same trait in my personality? Who is it, inside me, who feels like that or behaves like that?” (Inner Work, p. 65). Keep in mind that even images you consider negative have valid, respectable places in your life. If it’s part of you, it’s respectable. As Johnson writes, “if you give it its place, and hear what it has to say, it will be revealed as a valuable part of your inner self” (Inner Work, p. 71).

Pay attention to the location of your dream. Where are you? If you’re in your own home, or a place you sense belongs to you, it’s probably the possession of your ego. But if you’re in your grandmother’s house, you may be in the home of the archetypal Great Mother. The physical situation in which we find ourselves in a dream usually provides an important clue to what the unconscious is trying to tell us.

Interpretation. Once you’ve identified the images in your dream (or situation), made direct associations, and theorized about how each image relates to an inner dynamic, it’s time to interpret the dream. It’s sometimes so difficult to bring unconscious meanings into consciousness that the worksheets I include here can be very practical. Using Peter’s dream as an example, Peter can go through each image and interpret the dream image by image and thus ‘prime the pump’ for further revelation. Since in Peter’s dream, a girl is trapped in an apartment in a building with broken lifts, in a wasteland, Peter could begin with this narrative:

I’ve built up an ego [building] for myself that’s hard, hostile, and doesn’t show hope. I radiate dismay and sadness wherever I go, just like my girlfriends and Susan said. My ego is as strong as concrete; nothing happens to change me, I never change; I’m full of despair.

Inside me is this girl—vulnerable, beautiful, loving, and full of hope. But she’s trapped inside me in the wasteland of my hard ego, the doorkeeper, the one who could fix the lift (he’s a guy after all). He isn’t providing the technology for her to escape, enter, exit, etc. It’s as if I’d rather keep her hostage inside myself than give her a way of escape. Maybe I’m afraid she’ll leave me like Susan and all the other women.

I know this is about my inner feminine because of the cats. Cats archetypally often mean the feminine. Since I have a particular aversion to mangy cats, I know that this means I have a similar aversion to my own inner feminine.

By the time Peter reaches the last line–”I have a similar aversion to my own inner feminine”–it would be no surprise if he was near tears. A correct interpretation is almost always accompanied by emotion, whether the feeling that the interpretation is right, or deeper feelings that move one to tears. Go with the energy. Follow where the energy and the emotion (affect) want to go.

VALIDATE THE INTERPRETATION

Once you’ve interpreted the images, there are some general principles offered by Robert A. Johnson that can validate or confirm the interpretation. These are:

1. Choose an interpretation that shows you something you didn’t know.
2. Avoid the interpretation that inflates your ego or is self-congratulatory.
3. Avoid interpretations that shift responsibility away from yourself.
4. Learn to live with dreams over time.

HONOR THE INTERPRETATION

Johnson suggests that we honor the message the unconscious gives us through dreams and waking images by performing some small ritual. When friends invite us for dinner at their home, for example, it’s customary to take a bottle of wine, flowers, or some other small token of our appreciation. Similarly, it’s appropriate to express gratitude and respect for those parts of ourselves that are persistent enough to keep communicating with us even when we consciously resist them. One way of honoring the dream is to “dream the dream on” through an active imagination. Another way is by doing an act that shows that we want to grow in the direction of the light given us by the dream.

We can use Peter’s dream as an example. Peter’s mother left his father (and Peter) when Peter was four years old. Peter’s dream causes him to return to his feelings of grief and loss as a four year old boy. What can Peter do to honor the truths the dream gave him? If Peter were a Christian or Buddhist, he might visit a church or temple and light a candle or some incense in honor of his four-year-old self. He might pray to the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of all mothers, and ask her to mother him. Or Peter may buy a glass cat figurine and put it on his desk, where he’ll see it every day and be reminded of his own inner feminine. He may choose to buy himself a toy similar to one he loved as a four-year-old boy. No matter what he does, if he does it consciously and with reverence, it will become a ritual to him and thus an act of honor. As many times as he needs to, Peter will be able to return to the time when he first performed the ritual and appropriate the energy and power this respect gave to a slumbering part of himself. 

Resources

Dream Interpretation Example

Dream Interpretation Worksheet

 

In Knots

Through the loss of three of our members and the theft of my billfold from our classroom, our Jungian Studies seminar was learning how to interpret a series of surprising, significant, or traumatic events as waking dreams. The images that had appeared during our eventful day were analyzed for their symbolic meanings on a collective level, leaving me to ponder what personal meaning I would gather from these shared events.

Although all the women had left their billfolds in the classroom during our break, only mine had been stolen, perhaps because I’d put it in an open-necked tote bag that was placed not far from the door. Still, I had to ask if there was a part of me who volunteered to be The One Whose Billfold Was Stolen. Because an otherwise scruffy-looking man wearing a nice-looking (but probably stolen) coat entered and left the building quickly after making a circle through it, we theorized that this Transient Black Man had taken my billfold and another classmate’s laptop charger. As a class, we pondered the presence of Transient Black Man in our midst and in ourselves.

As I sat on the airplane taking me home, I asked myself what civilized, socially acceptable, nice person inside me was allowing thieves to walk unchallenged through my life, just as Transient Black Man had walked unchallenged through our building? He had even waved goodbye to the Jung Center receptionist. What mannerly behaviors have concealed my inner thief, what crimes my niceness covered?

Because of my introverted thinking preference, I know that I’m prone to getting so caught up in my ideas and ideals that I naively leave myself wide open to exploitation. I had left my billfold in an open bag in a public building, so confident was I in this safe environment, so full of hubris that I considered myself immune to exploitation. Had I unconsciously invited this victimization because I had remained blind to my own inflated sense of self and safety? Was there some lesson I hadn’t learned well enough, something that might threaten what I hold of value if left untended?

HELP ME TO SEE

As the airplane taxied down the runway, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, looking inward and back in time. “Self who raises the gate for plunder, and self who does the plundering, help me. God of my soul, help me to see what I need to see.” I considered the Transient Black Man, the one who smiles but steals, and then the gatekeepers whose duty it is to protect the property. They’d had intuitions that something was wrong, intutions so weak that they’d been overcome by the thief’s ingratiating smile. What was my personal experience with gatekeepers?

I thought back to my earliest memories, to around kindergarten and a time when I first remember being an “I.” I recalled all the times when I had relied upon Mother and Father as gatekeepers, times when I’d felt fear and intimidation, how my parents had handled these. After having Little Red Riding Hood read to me, for example, I developed a fear that the wolf would come through the window and gobble me up at night. In the moonlight, a small tree outside my bedroom window cast a shadow that looked like the profile of a wolf. Night after night I woke my parents, crying about the wolf outside my window. Finally my father took me outside and let me help him cut down the tree. The wolf never returned after that. I recalled how I had always been able to count on my father to protect and help me when I needed it. Numerous instances of his care and protection flooded in, and I felt grateful to have a father like him.

Next I turned to Mother. What was her protection like? I searched my memories and thought for a long time about Mother’s protection. Images of childhood monsters, bogeys, enemies, and persecutors rushed in, jostling and shoving for dominance. In no case was there ever a time when Mother could be relied upon to help me. “Stand up for yourself,” she used to say, “Learn to handle it yourself.” All before I had much of a self, before I’d had any training in how to use a self protectively. Though I wanted to blame her for her lack, I knew enough to see that both parents had built a family system that we all belonged to and participated in. It was a system in which I learned a good many things, among them that my brothers and I were disappointments to our parents, not good-looking, athletic, or strong enough to be what they had been, to do what they had done back when they were children, when the world was a more dangerous place and economic depressions and world wars had to be survived. It was this particular lesson that seemed to need examination. But why?

IN KNOTS

Was it pride that made me think it was safe to leave my handbag in our classroom, unprotected? We had all left our bags and laptops in the classrooms for months and no harm had come to anything. Had the history of safety lulled me into a false sense of assurance? Or did I habitually live with an inflated sense of self, an imagined power that protected me from harm like an invisible force field? My stomach knotted as I considered these possibilities; I noticed this and paid attention to where I felt these thoughts in my body. My stomach and abdomen felt suddenly nervous, tense, unsettled, as if a fist inside were clenched, ready to fight or hanging on for dear life.

“What’s wrong?” I asked myself. “What’s this about?” I thought about all I’ve learned about chakras and from studying the ideas of intuitive healers such as Caroline Myss. The third chakra is the chakra of the abdomen, stomach, upper intestines, liver, kidneys, spleen, and middle spine, all of which relate to the mental and emotional issues of trust, fear and intimidation, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, care of oneself and others, decision-making abilities, sensitivity to criticism, and personal honor. The knots in my gut told me that these were very much the issues surrounding the theft of my billfold, if I wanted to make something of the theft. If I wanted to personalize it and interpret it as my own waking dream.

Did I respect this part of myself that was in knots? Did I care for myself enough to listen, to call to mind the painful memories from my childhood and to untangle the knot and release the authority they might still have over me? I did. I knew I did; that was why I was sitting in the airplane at 30,000 feet, feeling the churning in my stomach and paying attention to it. I must be ready to make it conscious, or else I wouldn’t have been given the opportunity of being a victim. “You wouldn’t need to be a victim if you’d only dealt with this when you should have,” Sister Perpetually Judgmental commented.

“You’re right, Sister,” I replied. “but I’m ready to deal with it now. Are you going to help me or simply stand there and threaten me with that ruler?” We laughed; of course she would help me. I certainly needed it.

LIERS IN WAIT

This was about my own issues of trust and fear, self-esteem and self-respect, taking care of myself. Over the weekend I had been plundered and wronged, the thief walking among us unrecognized. What part of my personality lived this way habitually? I recalled what I had read in Jung last month about the weaknesses of introverted thinkers:

In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, headstrong, and quite unamenable to influence. His suggestibility to personal influences is in strange contrast to this. He has only to be convinced of a person’s seeming innocuousness to lay himself open to the most undesirable elements. They seize hold of him from the unconscious. He lets himself be brutalized and exploited in the most ignominious way if only he can be left in peace to pursue his ideas. He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practice, for to him the relation to people and things is secondary and the objective evaluation of his product is something he remains unconscious of. Because he thinks out his problems to the limit, he complicates them and constantly gets entangled in his own scruples and misgivings. [. . .] (CW 6).

“He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practice…”. Wasn’t this exactly what had happened to Esau in the Bible story of Esau and Jacob? Hadn’t Jacob coveted what belonged to Esau and tricked him out of it? Hadn’t Esau failed to see his own vulnerability and the value of what was his according to birthright? And hadn’t Esau been further cheated out of the blessing of the firstborn even after his twin brother, Jacob, had already tricked him out of his birthright?   In fact, the very name “Jacob”  [ יַעֲקוֹב ‎ ya‛ăqôb yah-ak-obe‘ ] means “supplanter.” In the Hebrew, it is a primitive root word meaning to catch by the heel, to circumvent as if tripping up the heels, to restrain as if holding by the heel. A Jacob is a “lier in wait.”

Months ago I had seen how my husband and I had opened ourselves to plundering and been duly plundered. At that time, Spirit had suggested that our plunderers were like Esaus, willing to sell their relationships with us—something of great value—for something as commonplace as a bowl of soup. I had seen my part in the conflict as that of Jacob, someone who knew what was of value and was willing to fight for it all night, work for it for seven years and then seven years more. But what of the Esau part of me? Certainly I could see now that I had always had a Jacob in my life, lying in wait, catching me by the heel so as to get what I had of value. Time and time again I had opened myself and my family to plundering by those who had not earned and did not deserve the treasures and inheritances that were truly ours from birth. Yet time and time again I had blindly succumbed to liers in wait. I was the Transient Black Man, and I was the Jung Center employee who saw the smiling man’s face and ignored the gut reaction that cried, “danger!” I was both Jacob and Esau; I could clearly see it now.

Tears trickled down my face as I saw how Transient Black Man and Supplanted Gatekeeper lived inside me and worked at cross-purposes in the most destructive ways. As I realized what this had meant in my life and the lives of my children, I felt my heart would break. Jacob-of-the-Ivory-Neck and Esau-of-the-Bared-Fang had not yet met in my life. When opposites co-exist but don’t cooperate within the psyche, dangerous imbalances occur. A person swings from one extreme to another. The only hope is to hold the opposites in balance until what Jung called the Transcendent function kicks in and a person is able to unite the opposites.

“God help me,” I prayed as the pilot told us to buckle our seatbelts and warned of a bumpy descent.

Let Your Light So Shine

Through the loss of three of our members and the theft of my billfold from our classroom, our Jungian Studies seminar was learning how to interpret a series of surprising, significant, or traumatic events as waking dreams. The fact that four losses had occurred during our fourth cadre meeting had caused us to look at four symbolically. We had concluded that the energy of our losses just might be suggesting that we pull together as a group, gather our fragmented members, and work to develop a more cohesive and conscious group identity.

On a personal level, these events could be calling us to recollect our own fragments, or to do more sharing of our real selves inside these seminars. One of our members, a therapist, had pointed out that though we were discussing the losses in great detail, it was all intellectual, “coming out of our heads, not our hearts.” She was right, for we weren’t yet speaking in terms of our own experiences or emotions. Another member spoke of his wish for more connectedness among cadre members, more transparency and opportunity for relationship. I saw themes of loss of heart, of relating over ideas and shared experience without the deep showing of one’s soul.

I thought about my part in the drama that had unfolded, the part of The One Whose Billfold Was Stolen. All the practical emblems of my identity had been taken from me. I had already dealt with the practical effects of the theft, but what about the symbolic meanings? What is my identity? How do I show you who I am?

Becoming, being, and acting out of our true selves provides meaning to individual human existence. I was reminded of the Beatitudes, which Jesus concluded by urging people to show themselves, to do their identities, to season the world like salt, to shine in it like lights, to do beautiful actions out of true selves so that everyone around would see the individual’s beauty and glorify God (Matthew 5:13-16).

My classmates who had expressed their longing to connect had spoken truly as far as I was concerned: our class did need to develop more cohesion, more of a group identity, by sharing our individual selves. I too was guilty of withholding myself. I’d made personal connections to the symbols in our waking dream but had said nothing about them to the class. The connections I’d perceived were so personal and close to my heart that I feared I would break down and cry if I shared them openly. Sharing them in a class that still had four more hours of Freud to cover didn’t seem the best use of our time. Even so, I was challenged. In the right context, was I willing to share who I really am out of my own experience? Isn’t this, in fact, all I really have to share other than my ideas?

FOURS

Four had appeared as a symbol to our class, but I had personal connections to four on the day my billfold was stolen as well. I had taken extra money to Houston with me because I’d intended to buy a birthday present for my daughter Marigold. The amount of money stolen was around $400, another multiple of four. The day of the theft was the Marigold’s birthday. Marigold became my foster daughter when she was eight years old, and I thus became her fourth mother in eight years.

On the day of Marigold’s eighth birthday, I was working as the executive director of a licensed child-placing agency. That day, her third set of parents met with me to discuss how they planned to oust her from their family. “We’re not going to tell her what’s happening today because it’s her birthday,” they’d explained, “We’re having a big party, and she’s having all her friends over. It will be the last time she’ll see them, but she doesn’t know that. We don’t want to tell her because it’s her birthday. That just wouldn’t seem right.” We planned how I would pick her and all her things up three weeks later, after having the opportunity to begin working with Marigold on the dissolution of her adoption.

I will never forget sitting across from these wealthy, well-groomed people, outwardly the understanding, supportive professional but inwardly aghast. I’d been astounded at their perceptions of what is right and good, their abandonment of a little girl whose placement in their family could have been saved had they been willing to adapt and grow, a little girl whose ouster I was supposed to handle therapeutically, an eight-year-old child I was supposed to put back together again and replace in another family, who would all live happily ever after. When they came to mind, I realized that these people were like the Transient Black Man with his nice (probably stolen) coat, dirty underneath but with a winning smile and socially acceptable behavior to mask sinister behavior.

I was brewing a mental brew here, concocting some sort of Holmesian infusion that would expose what had been written invisibly. The chemistry continued as I went through the motions of being interviewed by the TSA, met my classmate Frank for dinner, and finally boarded the flight home.

What was the significance of my daughter’s birthday? There were so many fours and multiples of four involved. Suddenly I realized that, though I’d become Marigold’s fourth mother, I was not her fourth mother figure. Her grandmother had spent as much as a year raising her; this would make me, in effect, her fifth mother in four years. This called to mind the alchemical fifth essence, “the spirit of truth” according to medieval physician and alchemist Paracelsus, whom wrote of the fifth essence that

“He is the soul of the world, moving all and preserving all. In his initial earthly form (that is, in his original Satrunine darkness) he is unclean, but he purifies himself progressively during the ascent through his watery, aerial, and fiery forms. Finally, in the fifth essence, he appears as the ‘clarified body.’ This spirit is the secret that has been hidden since the beginning of things” (Jung, CW 13, par. 166).

Some sort of clarity wanted to break forth in me, a spirit of truth where cloudy, unclean elements formerly prevailed. It was about four, mothers, daughters, abandonment, appearing one way but being another, adaptability and growth, responsiveness to the situation at hand rather than reactions to unconscious inner motivators.

What part of me was a Transient Black Man wearing a nice-looking (probably stolen) coat? What part inside me waves goodbye to the receptionist in a friendly way shortly after stealing a billfold? What part within me has a child-ousting appointment with an adoption agency at 2:00 p.m. and a birthday party for the soon-to-be-ousted child at 6:00 p.m.? What civilized, socially acceptable, nice person inside was allowing thieves and abandoners to walk unchallenged through my life? What civilized, socially acceptable, nice behaviors were concealing my inner thief and abandoner?

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

In an article about the introverted thinking Myers-Briggs temperament type, I quoted the following from Jung (CW 6, para. 634):

In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, headstrong, and quite unamenable to influence. His suggestibility to personal influences is in strange contrast to this. He has only to be convinced of a person’s seeming innocuousness to lay himself open to the most undesirable elements. They seize hold of him from the unconscious. He lets himself be brutalized and exploited in the most ignominious way if only he can be left in peace to pursue his ideas. He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practice, [. . .]

As a group, my Jungian Studies cadre had a predominantly introverted thinking temperament. The seeming innocuousness of a smiling stranger had laid us open to thievery. Enthralled with the mystery surrounding our classmate’s disappearance, we’d allowed a stranger to walk among us unchallenged. Like my classmates, I am an introverted thinking type, living so much in my ideas about possibility, healing, personal growth and enlargement, and pursuit of ideals that I’d left myself wide open to exploitation in the most naïve ways.

My stomach began to churn as I made my way down the aisle of the airplane and settled into my seat. As soon as we were in the air, I would close my eyes and begin the disciplines I’ve learned that would allow my soul to speak to me, my self to step up with the symbols of the unconscious and the poetry of the spirit to show me what I needed to see. I knew I didn’t want to see it all, because if I’d wanted to see it I would already have seen it. My dreams wouldn’t have had to be full of it, and my billfold might not have needed to be stolen. My stomach wouldn’t be churning, and I would not already feel close to tears over what I was sure I would soon see about myself.

TO BE CONTINUED…