Below is a list of dreams with Jungian archetypes, dreams commenting on Jung's ideas, dreams featuring Carl Jung personally... plus several of Jung's own dreams (if you want only those, go to authors.)
You won't find many of one common type of Jungian dream. Some archetypal dreams are just one step in a long developmental dance. The dream itself may not be intense or have an interesting plot; only in context does it reveal its meaning. Such dreams are rare in the Dreambank, because I sought dreams readers could easily grasp; not chapters in some immense murky saga. I had an agenda; I was out to show dreams are life, living experiences as real as any other; some of your best times. Not mere symbols, and certainly not universal symbols. How dull, if we all had the same inner life!
I wanted to counter a Jungian bad habit--archetype-hunting, treating all dreams as universal--a retreat to impersonality. So when starting the World Dreambank I looked for focused, coherent dreams full of personality. And found them! But they're a biased sample too--just 3-5% of my own dreams! I could have built a MUCH bigger site full of carefully average, incoherent dream accounts; I didn't want to, it's been done--see Bill Domhoff's Dreambank.net at UC Santa Cruz. Raw dream notes without explanation, by random dreamers--that's like snooping in random people's diaries and then saying "so this, then, is literature." Not!
But my selection bias makes it seem like I always dream coherently, in neat little stories--or that I claim all dreamers do. My more cynical readers suspect I'm lying, writing fiction. Neither is true. I dream all sorts; I just typed up what I thought would interest you most--and which I rarely saw out there. But based on my email, that's given others a false impression of my dream PROCESS. My dream-journal has
Would Jung approve? Oh, probably not. "A dream is a private letter to the self, not posted all over the Internet" as he didn't quite say. But than was then, this is now. And dreaming itself can change. I think it has. I see far more lucid dreams, dreams about others, FOR others--because the knowledge-base about dreaming has grown, to include lucidity experiments and shamanic lore (and shamanism's ideas of responsibility). Dreaming has grown. Or regrown--healing from the witch-hunts and the Enlightenment, I suspect. What with all that light, all those torches, you couldn't get a good night's sleep.
I like the new Dark Age. And no need to fear it coming; it's already here, our Age of Endarkenment. Thanks, in part, to Jung.
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ANSWERING JUNG: by Wayan; 2005/7/5, a dream mocking one of Jung's key dreams
After reading Jung's dreams, I have a counter-Jungian dream. So different from his! And mine has some pointed advice...
CAUTION: NUDE STATUES |
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THE ASILOMAR OF DREAMS: by Wayan; 1986/3/5, a dream about dreams.
Jungian angels at a conference of dreams test my progress. But I'm all backwards: did the hard stuff first... |
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A BEAM OF FLIGHT: by Wayan; 135K, 1992/4/19, a dream of love and shellshock.
I'm a dance teacher, I'm King Kong, I'm a shell-shocked elf, I'm a wild bird flying...
CAUTION: GAY-POSITIVE ROLE MODELS, OH NO! |
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BIRTH, INITIATION, INDIVIDUATION: by Anonymous #6; summer 2007?, a dream of ascent to a new level
I swim the flooded tunnels and pass the crocodiles to enter the house of mystics... but now what? |
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A BODICE RIPPER: by Carla Young, 2010/2/22; epic (and episodic) dream with 5 paintings
Awkward newlyweds. Not a love match! Can they learn to work together to save a woman from the Nazis?... |
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BOX OF DREAMS: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2007 to 2009, a boxed set of 19 small dream-paintings
A sequence of short dreams full of creatures. They warn I'll face leukemia... |
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Tarot: THE BUILDER: by Wayan; 1974/5/19, a Tarot card illustrating a dream.
I met a god. Unmistakably a god. The Builder, hard at work--making Utopia, by hand. |
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CHARACTER ISOLATED BY A DEED: by Wayan; 1992/3/13, a dream's eye view of waking minds.
People SAY they like realistic characters they can identify with, but they don't ACT like it... |
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DRIVER'S TEST: by Wayan; 1984/1/8, an illustrated Kafkan dreamtale.
It's not easy to get a California driver's license, ever since the Dept. of Motor Vehicles went Jungian... |
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THE EDUCATION OF A DREAM: by Wayan; 1998/7/7, a dream on dreams.
A young, naive, ethereal dream gets an Animus to guide her through the crazy material plane...
CAUTION: GRATUITOUS WILLIAM SHATNER |
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FALL FROM A STAR: by Edwin Muir; 1920, a hypnogogic shamanic initiation
Escaping the tiny red plush room inside a star, I dive back to earth. Oops. A beast eats my broken body. My soul waits... |
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FISHEL AND FRISH AND FIREBIRD: by Wayan, 2003/12/4, a seven-year dream.
Why do the guests arriving for our seven-year reunion include part-time giants and dog-headed gods? They tell me... |
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GERMAN AT THE DOOR: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2009/7/19; a dreampainting from the Box of Dreams
A hulking, intimidating young man is at my door, with two scary dogs. Wait, is that Carl Jung?... |
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GREENBIRD SAVIOR: by Wayan; 1983/6/2, a divine comedy.
Time-travel the Navaho way! But our bread-pipe gets hijacked, so we call the Bird. Who shows up, all right...
CAUTION: NON-STANDARD SAVIOR, EVIL DREAM PUNS |
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HERM: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2009/9/8; a dreampainting from the Box of Dreams
In a domed tower, we all look up bewildered by a statue like an ancient herm, floating in mid-air... |
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HILLMAN ON DAIMONS: by Wayan; 1998/9/7, on Greco-Roman and Jungian ideas of a life-goal
James Hillman and my own experience suggest we enter life with an agenda. But what if our goals are sick? |
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THE ILL-FORMED TALE: by Wayan; 160K, 1981/4/7, a wild dream anti-epic.
To reach the Peak of Happiness on the Isle of Dreams, I must pass four Perils--but they're all backwards...
CAUTION: RELIGIOUS NUTS, KNIVES, NUDE ALIENS, BACKWARD PLOT... |
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THE IRRATIONALITY OF DREAMS: by Wayan; 1989/12/31, a New Year's dream.
On TV, the first Jungian anima to leave the unconscious is granting an interview. But the questions are... |
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JUNG'S DENIAL: by Wayan; 1994/12/16, a journal extract on Jung.
Jung's dreams and interpretations show he's a thing-guy not a people-guy. All that architecture!... |
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JUNG'S PREMONITIONS OF WORLD WAR I: by Carl Jung, 1913-1914; five ignored warnings.
Jung was told in dreams and visions that Europe would soon drown in blood. But he just couldn't believe it... |
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LATER IN THE DAY, WE'LL CROSS OVER: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2009/7/16; a painting from the Box of Dreams
I know we will cross the water surrounding the heart of Jerusalem, but not yet... |
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THE LIMIT OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: by Wayan; 1974/3/13, a dream of madness.
Deep in the caves, a Voice announces I've gone as far as the human mind can stand. But ahead, I see... |
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LITTLE NEMO: by Wayan; 2005/2/6; a little rant on the first dream-comic.
Windsor McCay's dream-comic "Little Nemo" is spectacular, but plotless and passive. Or is it? Dreamwork is gradual... |
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MANDALA DURING A TIME OF WAR AND DISINTEGRATION:
by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares... |
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THE MAN-EATER: by Carl Jung, 1879; a precocious formative nightmare.
Jung (at age three and a half) sees a terrifying god deep underground, and is told "That is the man-eater!"... |
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THE NIGHT OF CHANGE: by Wayan; 1994/2/8, a dream on the order of deep changes.
Festival night in a strange town, where, one night a year, dancing in the street transforms you into...
CAUTION: SEX TALK |
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A PILGRIM DREAMING: by Denise Levertov; 1977? a dream poem
A man I loved goes into the Jungian depths, but when his anima appears in the mirror-pool, his nerve fails... |
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PURE LOVE: by Wayan; 1986/10/9, a dreamtale on the truth.
A tangle of time travel, as two shapeshifters meet and fight and love over the centuries... |
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RAVENNA: by Wayan; 83K total, 4 images, 1994/12/25, a psychic Jungian dream.
In a church-tent, I find glowing pictures of mine I've never seen awake. One's half-done; I work on it.
I wake, and read how Jung, in a Ravenna church, saw luminous images he later learned burned centuries ago!
CAUTION: NUDE STAINED GLASS |
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RING OF WHITE WATER: by Wayan; 350K total, 14 illustrations, 1983/1/30, a major dreamtale.
I'm a raft guide on a circular river that may just be reincarnation. One of my tour group jumps ship: she's scared of the white water of rocky relationships ahead...
CAUTION: METAPHYSICS, SEX, WEAK SOULS... |
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THE SHADOW OF FREUD: by Wayan; 1982/3/28, a psychological dream.
I find a lost book of Freud's with a radical idea: Jung's Shadow is real, but there's a second Shadow: |
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SIEGFRIED MUST DIE: by Carl Jung; 1913/12/18, an archetypal (and predictive?) dream.
Jung and a little brown man shoot down Siegfried the German Hero, riding his chariot of bones. Wait... his what? |
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THE SKULLS AND CORN: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 1989/1/10, painting of an initiatory dream.
I'm shown corn plants growing from skulls, and it seems like I must plant some skull-corn myself... |
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STEP THIRTEEN: by Wayan; 1997/7/8, a rebellious dreamtale.
Two realities pester me like big spoiled babies to care for their mythic figures, till I go on shamanic strike... |
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TONY DIGS THE RED EARTH: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2008/2/23; a dreampainting from the Box of Dreams
It's Thanksgiving but my brother won't come in; he's digging up red earth. In our family he always digs up... |
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THE WELL: by Denise Levertov; 1960?; a dream-poem
I meet my own muse--the muse of all of us, perhaps--scooping water from a sacred well... |