The caveman in you

Another master figure in the study of dreams is the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Jung, who had interpreted tens of thousands of dreams, had a very deep understanding of dreams, but his view was different from Freud's, he did not think that dreams were merely to fulfill wishes, nor did he think that dreams were disguised. Jung believed that 'dreams are the spontaneous and undistorted product of the unconscious for the spirit... Dreams show us the unadorned truth of nature. 'In Freud's eyes, dreams are like a cunning rascals who speak obscenities. For Jung, the dream seems to be a poet who speaks the truth about the soul in vivid poetic language. The poetical language used in such dreams is symbolic.

Symbols are not for camouflage, but for clearer expression. This is just as when we describe a novel thing to others, in order to make it clear, we need to use metaphors to illustrate it. The basic purpose of dreams is not to satisfy desires in disguise, but to restore mental balance. Jung called it the compensation of dreams. He believed that if a person's personality development was unbalanced, when he excessively developed one aspect of himself and repressed others, the dream would remind him of this repressed side. For example, when a person attaches too much importance to his strong, brave temperament, and does not admit that he also has warmth, and even a weak side, he may dream that he is a timid little girl.

He also believes that dreams show a neglected and repressed side of the dreamer's own heart, and therefore can often serve as a warning. Jung mentions such an example: a woman who is headstrong, stubborn and argumentative. She had a dream: 'I go to social gatherings. The hostess welcomed her, saying, 'I'm so glad you've come, all your friends are here waiting for you.' Then the hostess led me to the door and opened it for me. I went in and there was the cattle pen.'

As can be seen from this dream, the other side of the dreamer's heart is modest, which reminds the lady that you are usually behaving like a stubborn bull. Jung also held that the events and emotions that humans experience over generations eventually leave traces on the psyche that can be passed on through heredity. For example, when one thinks of the sun, one thinks of greatness, kindness, and radiance, like a handsome man. Think of the moon, will think of tenderness. Beautiful, like a maiden. This is because generations of people have seen the sun and the moon, and generations of people's feelings for the sun and the moon have been passed on to each person through heredity. When a modern man thinks of a wise man, it is easy to conjures up the image of an old man with white hair and a long beard, and it is unlikely to conjures up the image of a lively maiden, because in past generations the wisest men have been those who have experienced the vicissitudes of life.

Jung called this original trace of heredity an archetype. He said that the archetype itself is not a concrete image, but only a tendency, but the archetype can emerge through an image. In dreams there are sometimes strange scenes and images which cannot be explained by the experience of the dreamer's own life. These, then, are images of the original form.

A 10-year-old girl had a series of dreams with bizarre images and themes. She drew these dreams into a picture book, in which she drew these pictures:

1. An evil snake-like monster appears, it has horns, kills and eats other animals. But God came from all around (there are four gods in the picture) and made all the animals regenerate.

2. Ascending to heaven, where pagans are dancing in celebration. To hell, the angels are doing good.

3. A group of small animals terrorized her, the small animals grew large, and one of them ate her.

4. A little mouse is penetrated by worms, snakes, fish and men. A mouse turns into a man. This depicts the beginning of the four stages of humanity.

5. Looking at a drop of water through a microscope, she saw many trees in the water. This depicts the birth of the world (or life).

6. A bad boy takes a piece of dirt, he throws it at passers-by, and they all become bad people.

Seven. A drunk woman falls into the water, gets up again as a new man.

8. In the United States, many people roll on ant mounds and are attacked by ants. A scared little girl falls into the river.

9. There is a desert on the moon. She sank into hell.

10. There's a shiny ball. When she touched it, it steamed, and a man came out and killed her.

11. She herself is critically ill. Suddenly the bird grew in her belly and covered her.

12. Swarms of insects inhabited the sun, moon, and stars, and the only star that was not covered fell upon her.

According to Jung, these dream ideas carry philosophical concepts. For example, each of these dreams has themes of death and resurrection, and this theme is also present in many religious thoughts, and it is global. The fourth and fifth dreams contain the idea of evolution, and the second dream reflects the idea of moral relativity. Taken together, the series of dreams pondered a set of philosophical questions: death, resurrection, atonement, human birth, and the relativity of value. It reflects the thought of 'life is like a dream' and the transformation of life and death. So how could a 10-year-old girl know this? Why would you think of that?

Jung believed that she understood because the thinking of her ancestors had been passed on to her through archetypes for generations. She had to think about it because she was faced with the problem that she might die. The dreaming girl, although not ill at the time, died soon after due to infection. For Jung, archetypes are not fixed forms, but rather primitive souls that lurk in the deepest recesses of our minds in what Jung called the collective unconscious. These primitive people appear in many different images in dreams, helping us think when we are in trouble, and warning us when we are in danger. Because of his hundreds of thousands of generations of life experience, his wisdom and intuition far exceed the thoughts in our consciousness. Jung believed that 'the primitive man in us' used dreams to show himself and express himself.

If we can understand dreams, it is like knowing many 'primitive' friends, whose wisdom can give us great help. Jung believed that not all dreams are of equal value, that some dreams are trivial and unimportant, and that other dreams whose archetypes are human are shocking, so mysterious and sacred, so strange and strange, as if from another world, and these dreams are more important. Dreams are not the satisfaction of wishes, but a revelation, a prediction or prediction of the future, so we should pay attention to the wisdom of dreams.