The Utility Of Dreams

Just as dreamers in earlier historical times took dream instruction seriously, we also expect wise and useful counsel from them. Jung (1970a) aptly described the special ability of dreams to provide helpful advice:

"Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundation and run into an impasse."

Jung's notion that dreams reveal the "unvarnished truth" may seem somewhat curious when we think about how difficult it is to understand dreams. For in order to arrive at a dream's meaning, we must deal with the form in which fantasy or dream thinking occurs, a form that is very different from the way we communicate while we are awake. Because of their form, the meaning of dreams is not readily apparent.