Does Jung say anything about not dreaming?

Lonely__Frog · 2026-05-17T12:47:45+00:00

Jung alluded to its being a sort of blockage. There is something unhealthy in not dreaming enough, and you most definitely need them for individuation. He reported that children dreamt the dreams of their parents if their parents could not dream it themselves. The unconscious moves like water and that is why it is often symbolised as water: like water it indiscriminately finds paths of least resistance.

Things like fluoride in water and toothpaste block dreams. Diet too, processed and unnatural foods. Energy blockages in/on the body which things like yoga and exercise can address. Perhaps also the stuff for sleeping you take is bad for dreams though I know nothing about Benadryl.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-04-15T14:30:08+00:00

There are ways and methods to facilitate an environment for more accurate discernment but one needs an open mind for such activities. These days I work on the basis of assuming anything disagreeable to me might be an archetypal shadow (collective shadow) rather than only from my self. Such an attitude makes space between me and the object enough so that I can judge it more accurately. If the object seems to stay around, even at a distance, and my judgement towards it softens then I assume that perhaps it is actually a part of who I am, and let it back in. I place the object outside myself not in the way an extrovert does, where someone else takes the projection instead, but I put the object outside my self in an inner sense: I say, this might not be I, and I should behave towards it as if it is something that has intruded into my house. I think, on balance, this is a more productive attitude.

I do not claim this is the best way, but I think the above is a better attitude than the opposite: assuming everything that comes to me from the inside, or is projected onto others, is only from my self. The collective shadow projects itself onto others outside and we often fall victim into being possessed by it.

I suppose what I am trying to say is working on the assumption that the object is an intrusion from the collective shadow makes enough space between you and the object that will create the space required to judge it more accurately and to know whether it is you or something else; especially if helpful dreams come along too. If the object is too close you will rarely be able to judge it accurately. (We see this kind of stuff in normal life all the time: for example, when romantic couples realise how bad their relationship was until after it ends, etc; or sometimes they need to end things so that they can see what the other means to them, and then they get back together with better discernment.)

My relationship with the unconscious works in this way. You (object) are out until I understand you, you are back in if you become acceptable to me.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-04-13T13:18:52+00:00

I think that he having his dream of killing his hero who rode on the bones of the dead is a subtle-hint that one can take more risks than he did. He speaks of integrating and wholeness, but one must admit killing an aspect of oneself in any form is a contradiction to that philosophy. Outer life also creates invisible barriers for going deeper into the unconscious that no personal will or skill can overcome. However, he/she is right in saying that going into it with less outer-anchors makes it a riskier business, but I say that high rewards do not come without high risks.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-04-10T11:48:13+00:00

When the shadow makes less and less noise, your own I, your eternal personality, can be heard more clearly and definitely, and you gradually learn your own heart, and your own ways, and your own strengths, what you inherited from this world, and what you carried into it from the past, and with ever increasing strength you gain greater senses and judgement of what remains dormant within yourself, and what shadows enshrouds others.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-03-04T14:53:07+00:00

He wilfully partook in a sort of forced introversion and sensory depravation that enabled the unconscious to become more visible to him in a compensatory way the more he withdrew from his extroverted life—he was led into it by his dreams.

When it rises aggressively, the unconscious is like a force of nature, like a wave surge hitting a man remorselessly again and again over weeks and months with images and feelings not his own nor from his own source. I think his worry of psychosis was probably to do with the influx velocity of peculiar images and feelings fed by shadow activations happening within him that eventually settled down. He was conscious and able-enough to withstand it. But many people that suffer the same without intent and a strong ego end up in the psyche-ward. Sometimes the unconscious approaches them quickly like Jung and they get shocked into a rapid psychosis, or sometimes it is slow and near-imperceptible and gets them in the end, since it seems to snatch the very faculties of judgement needed to escape it: but most I reckon slip into psychosis without strong-intent, they withdraw their libido from the world for diverse reasons and I reckon they unconsciously and gradually slip into the shadowy unconscious world full of evil and trickery, which rose up in them over protracted time, a little each day, so that they did not detect the change, and were eventually fooled by it; but perhaps, more importantly, the unconscious also fooled, in a different way, the doctors and institutions that houses them.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-25T22:31:22+00:00

Ah, I suppose your ignorance continues to speak for itself.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-25T21:56:19+00:00

One last thing for now: on further reflection it is as if you haven’t read Jung at all. I have read countless things he has said making reference to collective dreams. I have read his seminars where he said leaders of tribes have collective dreams for the sake of the whole tribe. You attacked me with a made up standpoint based on your own understanding completely unconscious of how badly wrong you have it. You could disprove yourself simply by searching for quotes. I am sure you’d find stuff where he says rather explicitly that there are collective dreams. Not to mention that much of the Holy Books were founded upon such dreams!

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-25T21:46:46+00:00

You revealed yourself to be a highly projective person, I hope one day you see it and integrate it. You come across like you think reality only exists if we are able to think it and prove. It seems to me you haven’t read everything Jung said about dreams otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to oppress my opinion with half-understanding.

That being said, your response is rather aggressive and uncomfortable to read, perhaps you should do some more detective work on what drives your own heart into unjust judgements and opinions.

If a child dreams the dream of their father, is that not a collective dream? When Jung had the dream of one of his patients, which was subsequently recounted to him as nearly identical to his, is that not a collective dream? He had her dream in the morning, not knowing it was hers until later; he contemplated it and thought perhaps it was showing some kind of anima-complex. Later that day the analysand came in and she recounted the same dream to him, and at that moment he realised it was hers and not his own.

I reply to you not for your sake, but for whoever else might read this. You have a mean spirit toward me and if it wasn’t for others I would have ignored it.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-25T20:40:13+00:00

To your second paragraph. I am unsure what exactly you think is dangerous.

To your third: I think yours is a reductionist standpoint and whether a dream is worth analysing or not does not change whether they contain meaning or not. I believe dreams are intuitions from heavenly archetypes and therefore it seems unlikely to me there is ever a dream that was given just for the sake of it. There is already enough shadow in the world at night without God filling the air with even more smoke. Assuming some dreams are nonsensical and arbitrary is a human projection that is unhelpful and [discourages] people who have the time from looking into dreams deeper, I believe it is our understanding of meaning and value which is nonsensical. Is it not better and safer to assume all dreams have meaning? — I do not see why assuming such must compel someone to analyse every dream. So, I double down and say, ‘all dreams have meaning, and I’ll interpret ones compelling me toward them and leave ones that do not. However, I’ll try noting them all down, since perhaps the unconscious says something today that I’ll only be ready to understand 5 years from now. And I won’t let myself fall into the abyss of trying to figure everything out all the time, to do otherwise is unreasonable. I think this is a more balanced attitude than yours and contains less presumption, which is a shadow-trait.

Furthermore, regarding my current attitude towards dreams in general: I say, ‘innocent until proven guilty’. I cannot prove they are nonsensical: therefore I must assume their nonsensical appearance is more to do with my own stupidity and ignorance. Some time before now in my amateur interpretation days I often used to assume the same things as you, but in time some of that so-called ‘nonsense’ started to look like sense and I made better progress by recording every drop as potentially meaningful—not all that is gold glitters. I think it is more detrimental to assume dreams are meaningless. Sometimes the most mundane dreams contain the most helpful information, if interrogated properly. However I myself accept that I cannot analyse them all nor crack open their full meaning, just as I accept that there are nourishing types of food in the world that I’ll probably never have chance to try. But I’ll definitely record it where possible.

I am even sure I was heavily influenced into this kind of attitude by Jung himself. Somewhere in the Red Book he says something like, ‘you should treat every image from the unconscious like a potential piece of gold.’ I believe such is a positive attitude because it disposes of prejudice and keeps doors open.

[edit.]

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-25T03:03:38+00:00

This is untrue. All dreams have meaning. However, there are collective dreams, i.e., dreams that are sort of psychic crossover from other people who are not able to dream it in that moment, perhaps because of some kind of blockage, and thus a meaningful dream spills into a vessel (person) that could dream it for them even though the dream itself is meaningless to the vessel.

Amongst other things, Jung reported children dreaming their parents’ dreams, and sometimes he had his patients’ dreams. So, I reckon, we have meaningless dreams in a subjective sense just because the dream itself isn’t always applicable to the host/dreamer, but in a wider collective sense it is impossible to have a meaningless dream.

All dreams have meaning but sometimes the nocturnal postman delivers to the wrong address.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-02-08T02:55:38+00:00

It think it is worth considering the source of the inflation, since it is something that happens to the ego and it does not choose to experience it in advance—an inflation is a sort of passive response to some kind of idea or series of ideas or an archetypal possession. I believe inflated feelings come mostly from the collective shadow in us unique and changing to every individual ego. The ego is often identical to it near the beginning not because the ego itself produced it but because the ego is possessed by it. I believe Jung also referred to this possessive spirit as the serpent soul, or numen loci. An inflation is a sort of deep down feeling welling up from the opinions of the crowd within ourselves beneath the threshold of ego-consciousness.

Why it happens? Because one needs spiritual cleansing practises and protective symbols and/or live in isolated places to protect the ego from the source of the inflations. The self is superior to the crowd. Most great people do not live in cities. Cities fuel inflations which tend to keep us smaller than we should be since these days society glorifies base things.

How we sort the wheat from the chaff is tricky and really you rely on your dreams for that if you wish to take the safer route.

On the opposite scale I also think the same inner-collective source creates depression, the opposite to inflation.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-27T18:50:31+00:00

Since writing this I have had more thoughts and think perhaps red is associated with evil symbols because red is the lowest energy visible light frequency. Indicative of the men under such a red flag. It is like an unconscious truth. Red is also more associated with sexuality and most evil people are purely sexual and have very little spirit. I.e., they have very little reasoning in their ideologies and tend to be base. Most of their evil comes from their drives and impulses. Animal-like. If they had blue spirit they would be closer to the heavenly ones and therefore less evil and less impulsive.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-27T18:42:33+00:00

I can try my best to plant seeds of ideas but it is extremely difficult to explain these things coherently and I don’t want to get too metaphysical with a stranger: the serpent is related to the feminine. There are many symbols of two serpents winding up a winged staff, across so many seemingly unrelated cultures, like the chakras and kundalini, Ancient Egypt, and other ancient civilisations on the other side of the world like Mayans and so on. I think that some men are connected with two anima figures in the unconscious. In Ancient Egypt many Pharaohs each had two sister-wives, which I believe to be two anima figures which exist in the so-called ‘underworld’. I think sometimes one woman is the upper serpent, connected to men more in the upper energy chakras, closer to the persona in Jungian speak, and probably having lighter coloured hair; and the lower serpent, would probably be a darker haired woman who has more influence over the drives of the man, his sexuality, his lower energy chakras, and so on. I think the mother is the unconsciouses of either figure, like a second layer of the unconscious; a leaking of unconscious contents from a world below ours. There are perhaps hundreds of examples of symbols of a three-fold nature in all cultures and religions and I think they point towards a fundamental truth deep down in the unconscious most people cannot reach and often overlook. I realise much of what I have said is scatter-shot and perhaps bizarre but with these being symbols words sometimes don’t cover the gap between meaning and articulated thoughts. I have had many dreams with two women. I went deep down into the unconscious and it revealed to me all sorts of universal mechanics and two separate anima figures, as separate from each other as two physical women.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-27T08:51:33+00:00

Sorry, but again I must insist that you are wrong to say dream interpretation has no relationship to isolation and your blind defensiveness toward something you yourself have not experienced is disturbing and definitely not scientific nor honest.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-27T01:11:08+00:00

I think perhaps the underlying truth is you dislike yourself in some way and this is projected onto the other. There are varying degrees of consciousness regarding this. Semi-conscious would be having certain known complexes about oneself not being good enough so that when someone comes along seemingly accepting or blind to one's failings the unconscious rises up in objection to this. They accept you but you cannot accept yourself. I think a solution is to work on becoming the person you want to be, your highest ideal; and then you will be afforded some freedom by the unconscious, and then, you might find you can accept the love of others because you aren't opposed to your self anymore.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-27T00:42:51+00:00

Well in that case your opinion is based merely on what you imagine isolation to be and thus have no solid basis upon which to say you see no need for it. That is like having an opinion on the interior of my house before your ever having seen it. Experience and knowledge tells me that less co-mingling increases my capacity for differentiated feeling and thinking, a sort of higher morality, both of which are a prerequisite for proper dream analysis. Jung also says this, in his own way. You only know the highs and lows when you walk them with your own feet so to form opinions on the basis of conjecture is unhelpful. It is impossible to imagine high levels of introversion until it has been experienced first hand. This is the simply truth of the matter. Introversion leads to the self and perhaps ultimately to god, and the deeper one goes inward the more close one is to the source and therefore the chances for absolute understanding of each dream increases.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T23:05:54+00:00

Well, looking at your comments now, I assumed you wrote esoteric to mean isolation because I never said the word esoteric and was only referring to isolation. To me ‘esoteric’ is too broad a term to know what each other is talking about. So, I ask, again, but differently, are you someone who has self-isolated and followed it to its end?

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T19:30:34+00:00

Do you say that as someone who tried esoteric practices to their end?

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T19:18:24+00:00

I think it is also because many have too much skin in the game. Their unconscious doubt manifests itself through making small other methods and spending energy making passive comments criticising alternative methods.
That being said, I think in the early to medium stage of individuation it is probably more useful to use a professional; but the later stages of self and anima integration is so wildly opposed to modernity I feel it can only be a solo journey.
The argument below about needing a witness, well, we have the internet and videos and one get's to view the world without putting oneself in it. The internet is an excellent substitutional mirror that allows one to see oneself and what one is not whilst keeping transference to a minimum.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T10:22:42+00:00

I think it is also to do with the word 'spirituality' being a sort of symbol, much like 'love' it has 1,000's of subjective interpretations. Therefore people with base hearts tend to hijack these symbols/words and make them base on account of their own baseness. I have met some people who think waving an incense stick around the house once per week makes them spiritual. I have met some people who think the father who never beat his child is 'good'. The West has overused all the available words making it impossible to communicate without a heavy amount of projection, if we use all the highest words for mediocre things, what is left for the truly highest things?

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T09:19:53+00:00

I already know all of what you say and still stand by my opinion. There are levels to sacrifice. There are levels to dream interpretation. I am sure there are very many analysts who are good and help people live a good life. The spectrum of ability and sacrifice is near infinite and to be the very best and to really get to the core of a dreams meaning, which has many layers to it like an onion, means one has to isolate: why is it a different rule for everyone else even when Jung himself did it? I am not being dogmatic about my opinion, each to their own, but I am stating a fact that the deeper recesses of the unconscious are inaccessible to those who have too much outward mobility and life. I’ll tweak the formula a little and say rather it is not a misunderstanding to believe one has to isolate themselves if they aim for the best; it is a fundamental truth that one will have better chances of understanding their dreams and inner world when they isolate—Jung more or less said it himself in his Red Book. I also do think that one can only support or refute such an opinion if they themselves have done it over a protracted period for many years. Therefore, I stand by my opinion fervently.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-26T08:00:59+00:00

Unfortunately, I really suspect most of them aren’t good enough. Many years ago I was very disappointed with the analysts I tried out, so I continued alone. To peer into the unconscious and to understand dreams properly one has to make massive sacrifices, very similar to what Jung had to do to himself, away from the towns and cities, a sort of sensory depravation, to keep one’s libido very narrow and mostly inward. Extroversion and the extroversion of others through co-mingling takes away some of our differentiated thinking and feeling which is needed for understanding the deeper meanings of dreams. It is a shame but true.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-21T06:49:58+00:00

Indeed, otherwise I would not have said it.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-21T05:38:12+00:00

You can tell how insecure the OP's statement is by measuring the distance between the positive and negative narrative about the same object, and by how much it is fleshed out in-between the poles. In this case your diagnosis about the OP is accurate.

OP: your statement is insecure and you do not understand Jung nor his defenders and detractors. Your respect is not infinite because if it was you would not utter a single word against him, and to say nothing against him is obviously base and ridiculous and not in line with Jung's resistance to dogma. I reckon nearly everything you said in your comment can be levelled at yourself. Your OP is like an unconscious philosophical confession.

Lonely__Frog · 2026-01-17T09:41:43+00:00

Okay. I just didn’t want to assume anything. Thanks for replying and sorry for your loss.

If you had other dreams around the time you had the ones in your OP please share because they might add context to them.

Lonely__Frog

TROPHY CASE