Carl Jung

Carl Jung (1875-1961) studied medicine then went on to specialise in psychiatry. Carl Jung focused on the manifest content of the dream and looked to what it may reveal, rather than what it may be concealing and believed that dreams represented current situations in the dreamers waking life. Jung believed that many dreams had a compensatory function, representing the "subliminal elements" of the conscious mind.

In other words expressing elements of personality that are not fully developed in our waking life. Jung took a more spiritual approach to the unconscious for Jung dreams were not about hiding our true feelings. Rather dreams can be used as a guide in waking life to attain a sense of completeness or wholeness and help us to self actualise. The dreams role is to help find wholeness and the different aspects of personality will appear in the dream to help achieve that wholeness. Dreams may also hold the key to various problems that one may be experiencing in their waking life. Jung believed in a collective unconscious, "a genetic myth-producing level of the mind, common to all men and women", an instinctual knowledge, thus we may dream common themes. These shared images are considered Archetypes of the collective unconscious, by analysing the commonalities of dreams from myths and legends from around the world one could see what was inherited from the past. If you experience an archetype in a dream Jung believed that it came about from the collective experiences of humankind and that it should be taken seriously as it is trying to say something of great importance. Jung believed that humans have a "preconscious psychic disposition that enables a (man/woman) to react in a human manner." Jung claimed that archetypes "shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche)". Thus archetypes are forces which have a role in both the creation of the world and all human minds, the ancients referred to this as "elemental spirits". If Jung were to interpret a dream the question on his mind would be What is the purpose of this dream?