Why do we receive dreams?

I believe we wouldn’t receive a certain dream if we weren’t ready for it. The dream pushes out of the dreamscape ground like a new flower from a spring bulb because it senses the warmth and light of our willing awareness. Dreams are some of the richest and more accessible ways our unconscious establishes communication with us. As Greg Bogart (2018) judiciously pointed out, “Dreams spring from an underground stream that guides and heals.”

Can I better remember my dreams?

Many people either don’t pay attention to their dreams or think dreams are nonsensical and meaningless because their language is symbolical, metaphorical, and mythopoetic. Other people say that “they don’t dream” or that “they don’t remember their dreams.” Indeed, if I never pay attention to someone when they communicate to me, they will stop talking to me. Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink (2017) wrote, “In the age of smart phones, archetypal layers have been rewired and have mutated into a semi-collective techno-subconscious. We never dream alone” (p. 49). A practice of putting down our cell phone or iPad one hour before sleep and listening inward has the potential to change the paradigm.

Why pay attention to dreams?

If we pay attention, dreams communicate in their own language, even if this language is deprived of the sequential logic we are accustomed to favor as intelligible. They arise holistically, expressing themselves through somatic, emotional, mythical, and archetypal experiences, and beckon the compensation and integration of unprocessed feelings. Word associations reveal invisible connecting threads that create mysterious networks within our being. American psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann (1996) wrote that “Dreaming makes connections more broadly than waking in the nets of the mind.” He adds that dreams “are guided by the emotion of the dreamer. Dreaming contextualizes a dominant emotion or emotional concern.” He adds that the change in networks resulting from dreaming has an adaptive function for the future and allows a “broadening of memory through cross-connections—an increase in connections, a weaving in of new experience.” Although dreams can be intimidating, puzzling, and in some cases frightening, dreams invite us to open to a fuller mode of conversation with ourselves, our experiences, and the world that we have constructed as being “outside” or “around” us.

How do prominent authors in the field consider dreams?

While some myths and metaphors are representations of universal archetypal motifs, characters, symbols, and messages that belong to your dreams beckon to be in intimate conversation with the unique being that you are. Dream dictionaries or glossaries have compiled thousands of interpretations of symbols, animals, emblems, shapes and more. Yet, “they do not attend to the subtle personal associations and feelings which are key to understanding your dream” (Williams, 2018, p. 120). Joseph Campbell saw dreams as “our own personal myths” (2007, p. 350). People who are versed in mythology and universal themes, such as analysts, can guide you toward understanding their message, but they are midwives to the birthing of your own symbiotic experience.

Dr. James Bamber said that “Dreams are a kind of biopsy of the psyche” (as cited by Williams, 2018). They reveal our psychological wounds, aspirations, desires, and the ostracized dimensions of our beings.

They invite the integration of our own personal history and are also part of the whole body of human experience. As the first wave of feminists reminded us that the personal is political, we can approach our personal mythology as revelatory of universal patterns. This is the subject of exploration of Archetypes. See, for example, the recent publication by Dr. Matthew Bennett (2024), Towards an Integrated Analytical Psychology, Chapter 2. By understanding the message and meaning that one of your dreams has for you, you can be viewed as contributing to the growth of universal intelligence. No dictionary or glossary—or AI, for that matter—can translate the language of the psyche. Dictionaries and glossaries are useful to convey linear data; they can’t give meaning to layers of interconnected associations emanating from your experience. A phenomenological approach is needed (Bosnak, Embodiment, 2007). Regarding dream analysis, Jung saw it “less as a technique than as a dialectical process between personalities” (1961b, par. 492). Conversations with dreams involve the art of listening, the art of consideration, respect, and sensitive patience.

Ernest Hartmann (2007) wrote:

There is no question in my mind that these abilities found in daydreaming and dreaming can be useful to us, and that a human being is thus better off (better adapted) when the full range of mental functioning is available, from focused waking thought to dreaming.

Some people have asked me why inconvenient or irritating moments of their day return to them just as they are about to fall asleep even though they managed to keep such memories at bay while focused on their daily tasks. I also witness people who can’t be idle without the distracting sound and fury of social media clips (or among the older generations, radio, or TV) playing in the background. I read and hear opinions that introspection and self-inquiry are futile and superfluous. I also note that many who profess such opinions are prone to blame “others,” are quick to anger, and slow to accountability. I am hinting here to the concept of psychological projection first introduced by Sigmund Freud in 1895 and later expanded upon by Carl Jung (1921/2023), who developed the concept of shadow.

Being in conversation with our dreams enables us to make connections through space and through time in a way that is not linear. It is as if, instead of focusing on “what happened?”, dreamworld invites us to become aware of similarities of atmospheres, moods, or ways of being. It enters through the door left ajar between the unconscious and the conscious, and its liminality is where revelation happens. Carl Jung (1946/2023) wrote:

The unconscious depicts an extremely fluid state of affairs: everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted to my conscious mind; everything in which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come out to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious. (para. 382)

How do I hold conversations with dreams?

In my practice, the conversation is evoked in diverse ways. It depends on the dream, on the dreamer, and on the nature and history of the therapeutic relationship. Active Imagination is one method used (Carl Jung, 1997; Robert Johnson, 1986). Every image, every “protagonist,” every scenery, every color, and every word that contributes to the recollection of your dream has some meaning to convey. What we are seeking is to encourage dialogue between unconscious parts of our personality as they manifest in a dream. This method is sometimes used by writers when they draft a novel or novella.

The kind of dream that came to a client, its timing, and who the client is will guide the process of conversation with the dream. DreamTending® (Aizenstat, 2009) processes and Embodied Imagination® (Robert Bosnak, 2003) processes are interweaved with processes that can emerge intuitively and that I have developed over the years in connection to my former work in hypnotherapy and performing arts; improvisation gives rise to dynamically embodied manifestations that emerge at a given moment at the mysterious threshold between dream, dreamer, moment of the narration of the dream, moment of the embodied experience of the dream, and moment of witnessing. The witnessing is paramount, as revealed by the discovery from quantum physics that the moment something is observed, it is changed. The dream itself morphs and changes the dreamer and its witness(es) at the very time of witnessing, which makes group work a valuable tool.

Most interestingly, researcher Brittany Hollingsworth (2025) explored the following in a recent paper in relationship with quantum theory and dreaming; she wrote:

The double-slit experiment has been fundamental in demonstrating wave-particle duality, where unobserved particles exhibit interference patterns but collapse into particle form upon measurement (Feynman, 1965). This paper extends this principle to consciousness, proposing that during wakefulness, human perception functions as an observer that collapses reality into a deterministic, classical framework. In contrast, during sleep, when direct conscious observation is absent, consciousness may shift into a more fluid, wave-like state. (p. 4)

Commenting on lucid dreaming experiments, she added:

Lucid dreamers may notice that their dream environment changes when they consciously attempt to measure or analyze it. If dream states behave like quantum wave functions, they may collapse into more rigid, classical-like experiences under observation, providing potential evidence of a quantum-like observer effect within consciousness. (p. 4)

In this respect, I am more interested to explore dreamworld as it presents itself through nonverbal communication to the dreamer, as in landscapes or elemental, animal, phantasmagorical, transpersonal, and human forms. I am also careful to refrain from a purely analytical stance imbued with an excessive cognitive quality in the conversation because the mytho-poetic of dreamworld is the language of the soul.

In his preface to Maja Reinau’s book, Love Matters for Psychic Transformation, author John Hill says of the BodySoul Rhythms® method created by Jungian analyst Marion Woodman that, “with focus on the psyche-body connection, which includes Jungian theory, dreams, myths, body movement, voice work, mask work, and artwork, [BodySoul Rhythms®] adds a feminine dimension that protects structures and provides communal solidarity in the face of challenges arising from a patriarchal culture that engenders disconnect.” I intend my dream work with clients of all genders to reconnect.

References

Aizenstat, S. (2009). Dream tending. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal.

Bennett, M. (2024). Towards an integrated analytical psychology: Return to freedom and dignity. Routledge.

Bogart, G. (2018). Dreamwork in holistic psychotherapy of depression: An underground stream that guides and heals. Routledge.

Bosnak, R. (2003). Embodied imagination. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 39(4), 683–695.

Bosnak, R. (2007). Embodiment: Creative imagination in medicine, art and travel. Routledge.

Campbell, J. (2007). The mythic dimension: Selected essays 1959–1987 (Vol. 11). New World Library.

Hartmann, E. (1996). Outline for a theory on the nature and functions of dreaming. Dreaming, 6(2), 147.

Hartmann, E. (2007). The nature and functions of dreaming. The new science of dreaming, 3, 171–192.

Hollingsworth, B. R. (2025). A quantum perspective on consciousness and dreams: A theoretical exploration.

Jung, C. G. (1997). Jung on active imagination. Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (2023). The shadow. In Collected works of C. G. Jung (pp. v9ii_8–v9ii_10). Routledge.

Jung, C. G. (2023). On the nature of psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. Vol. 8: Structure and dynamics of the psyche (revised and expanded complete digital ed., pp. 159–234). Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1946.)

Lovink, G. (2017). Social media abyss: Critical Internet cultures and the force of negation. John Wiley & Sons.

Reinau, M. (2016). Love matters for psychic transformation: A study of embodied psychic transformation in the context of BodySoul Rhythms®. Fisher King Press.

Williams, R. (2018). C. G. Jung: The basics. Routledge.