Psychology of the Unconscious

It is a well-known fact that one of the principles of analytic psychology is that the dream images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, that they are not to be taken literally just as they are presented in sleep, but that behind them a hidden meaning has to be surmised. It is this ancient idea of a dream symbolism which has challenged not only criticism, but, in addition to that, the strongest opposition. That dreams may be full of import, and, therefore, something to be interpreted, is certainly neither a strange nor an extraordinary idea. This has been familiar to mankind for thousands of years, and, therefore, seems much like a banal truth. The dream interpretations of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and the story of Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, are known to every one, and the dream book of Artemidorus is also familiar. From countless inscribed monuments of all times and peoples we learn of foreboding dreams, of significant, of prophetic and also of curative dreams which the Deity sent to the sick, sleeping in the temple. We know the dream of the mother of Augustus, who dreamt she was to be with child by the Deity transformed into a snake. We will not heap up references and examples to bear witness to the existence of a belief in the symbolism of dreams.

This problem deserves to be more thoroughly discussed. As a concrete example, let us take the history of the pious Abbé Oegger which Anatole France has communicated to us.^[52] This priest was a hypercritical man, and much given to phantasies, especially in regard to one question, viz., the fate of Judas; whether he was really damned, as the teaching of the church asserts, to everlasting punishment, or whether God had pardoned him after all. Oegger sided with the intelligent point of view that God, in his all-wisdom, had chosen Judas as an instrument, in order to bring about the highest point of the work of redemption by Christ.^[53] This necessary instrument, without the help of which the human race would not have been a sharer in salvation, could not possibly be damned by the all-good God. In order to put an end to his doubts, Oegger went one night to the church, and made supplication for a sign that Judas was saved. Then he felt a heavenly touch upon his shoulder. Following this, Oegger told the Archbishop of his resolution to go out into the world to preach God’s unending mercy.

“From Naples to Livorno, the ship travelled for a night, during which I slept more or less well,—my sleep, however, is seldom deep or dreamless. It seemed to me as if my mother’s voice wakened me, just at the end of the following dream. At first I had a vague conception of the words, ‘When the morning stars sang together,’ which were the praeludium of a certain confused representation of creation and of the mighty chorals resounding through the universe. In spite of the strange, contradictory and confused character which is peculiar to the dream, there was mingled in it the chorus of an oratorio which has been given by one of the foremost musical societies of New York, and with that were also memories of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Then from out of this whirl, there slowly emerged certain words, which arranged themselves into three strophes and, indeed, they seemed to be in my own handwriting on ordinary blue-lined writing paper on a page of my old poetry book which I always carried around with me; in short, they appeared to me exactly as some minutes later they were in reality in my book.”

Miss Miller now wrote down the following poem, which she rearranged somewhat a few months later, to make it more nearly, in her opinion, like the dream original.

“When the Eternal first made Sound

A myriad ears sprang out to hear,

And throughout all the Universe

There rolled an echo deep and clear:

All glory to the God of Sound!

“When the Eternal first made Light

A little later Miss Miller travelled from Geneva to Paris. She says:

“My weariness on the railway was so great that I could hardly sleep an hour. It was terrifically hot in the ladies’ carriage.”

At four o’clock in the morning she noticed a moth that flew against the light in her compartment. She then tried to go to sleep again. Suddenly the following poem took possession of her mind.

The Moth to the Sun

“I longed for thee when first I crawled to consciousness.

My dreams were all of thee when in the chrysalis I lay.

Oft myriads of my kind beat out their lives

Against some feeble spark once caught from thee.

And one hour more—and my poor life is gone;

Yet my last effort, as my first desire, shall be

But to approach thy glory; then, having gained

One raptured glance, I’ll die content.

For I, the source of beauty, warmth and life

Have in his perfect splendor once beheld.”

“And verily, what I saw was like nothing I ever saw before. I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, twitching with a convulsed face, from whose mouth hung a black, heavy serpent.

“Did I ever see so much disgust and pallid fear upon a countenance?^[761] Might he have been sleeping, and the snake crept into his mouth—there it bit him fast?

“My hand tore at the serpent and tore—in vain!—I failed to tear the serpent out of his mouth. Then there cried out of me: ‘Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!’ I exclaimed; all my horror, my hate, my disgust, my compassion, all the good and bad cried out from me in one voice.

“Ye intrepid ones around me! solve for me the riddle which I saw, make clear to me the vision of the lonesomest one.

“For it was a vision and a prophecy; what did then I behold in parable? And who is it who is still to come?

“Who is the shepherd into whose mouth crept the snake? Who is the man into whose throat all the heaviness and the blackest would creep?^[762]

“But the shepherd bit, as my cry had told him; he bit with a huge bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—and sprang up.