Memory, Myth, and the Mind: Dreaming With Jung - Part 3
Inside the Dream World: Jungian Symbolism vs. Waking Logic
Having seen how Jung departed from Freud by treating dreams as honest messages, we now turn to take a look at the logic of dreams. Why do dreams feel so strange and illogical at times? What rules do they follow? Jungian psychology, building on some Freudian insights, has much to say about dream symbolism and the special modes of thought that dominate in dreams. In this post, we will explore how the dreaming mind works from a Jungian perspective, often contrasting it with our daytime rational mind, and how Jung made sense of the dream’s symbolic language. In fact Jung’s concept of the mental processes of the mind was to become highly influential for the post kleinian psychoanalyst and theorist Wilfred Bion in his formulation of the dreaming mind during waking and sleeping states. However, there appears to be no direct or explicit acknowledgment by Bion in his published works that he was influenced by Jung. He never refers to Jung by name in his major texts (e.g. Learning from Experience, Transformations, Attention and Interpretation), nor does he cite Jungian concepts like the collective unconscious, archetypes, or individuation. Although, several significant theoretical and conceptual parallels have led many scholars and clinicians to suspect a degree of Jungian influence, even if indirect or unconscious, an entire Substack post in itself for another day.
This post essentially provides a deeper look at what Freud termed primary process thinking, the asymmetrical associative logic of the unconscious, versus secondary process thinking, what is often referred to the structured logic of waking consciousness states.
For Carl Jung there are two main modes of thinking: daytime vs dreamtime. During our waking hours, we usually think in a linear, logical way. If we are planning our day or solving a maths problem, our mind follows the rules of secondary process thinking, to use Freud’s term. This mode is rational, orderly, and concerned with external reality. It respects time and space, we know where and when we are, people are often surprised to discover that our sense of space and time are psychical constructs. Waking consciousness uses language in a precise way, words have fixed meanings we agree on.
Dreams operate very differently. When we are asleep, the mind moves into primary process thinking. This mode is imaginative, nonlinear, and heavily influenced by emotion and imagery more than by logic. For instance, in a dream impossible things happen routinely. You might breathe underwater, or the dead may come alive, or you suddenly find yourself in your childhood home even though you are an adult. The dream doesn’t bother to explain or justify these shifts, they just happen. Time in dreams is fluid, you could start the dream as a grown-up, then suddenly you’re a child, then you’re you again. Contradictions coexist side by side, a character can be both your best friend and an enemy at the same time, you might feel terrified of something and yet oddly fascinated by it too.
Freud described primary process as the mode of the unconscious and of early childhood. It’s the kind of thinking that doesn’t follow linear logic or moral rules. In primary process, what matters is motivation, fear, and association. If one thought or image sparks another by any kind of link, maybe they share a shape or a sound or an emotional tone, that’s enough for the dream to connect them. There is little to no reality testing present. One key feature of dream thought is the presence of symbolic representation. The dreaming mind often represents one thing with another. Your mind might convey an abstract idea through a concrete image. Another key feature is that logic and physics are optional . In a dream, you can walk through a door into a completely different place , the same way a scene changes in a movie without explanation. You can have two locations blend into one e.g., you know it’s your office, but it looks like your childhood kitchen. These fluid transitions are jarring to us only after we wake, however, in the dream, they often feel quite natural and unremarkable.
Jung placed great value in the idea that dreams have their own language, a language of symbols and images. In waking life, we communicate with precise words ‘I feel angry at my boss’ or ‘I’m afraid of failing this exam’, but the unconscious mind isn’t limited to words. It might express ‘anger at boss’ by showing you a raging lion, or express ‘fear of failure’ by showing you a tidal wave approaching. These are symbols, images that carry a meaning, sometimes multiple meanings, on an emotional and intuitive level.
A key point Jung made is that dream symbols are not a one-to-one mapping or representation of an idea or concept. He believed that we shouldn’t think of them like traffic signals, red light means stop, green means go universally for everyone. Instead, symbols in dreams are more like poetry or art, they can resonate differently for different people, and they often have layers. For Jung a symbol ‘means itself’ first and foremost, and then it suggests something more beyond that immediate meaning. For example, imagine two people dream of a journey on a winding road . On the surface, both dreams involve traveling a twisting path. But for the first person, perhaps they are considering a career change, so the journey might symbolise the progress and uncertainties of that career transition. For the second person, perhaps they are struggling in a relationship, so the winding road might symbolise the complicated path of that relationship. The image is similar, but its meaning shifts with the dreamer’s personal context. Additionally, a winding road is a common symbol in myth and literature for the journey of life or the path of initiation, this is what Jung would call an archetypal image. The dream doesn’t come with a label saying ‘this road = your career’, it presents the image and lets the dreamer feel into the significance of it. The task in interpretation is to explore what that image touches off in the dreamer’s mind and emotions.
Jungian analysts often use a method called amplification to enrich understanding of a symbol. This means they will take the central image of the dream and explore related images, ideas, or stories from various sources for example, mythology, art, religion, etc. For instance, if someone dreams of a flood, Jung might discuss biblical floods, like Noah, or mythical floods, not to say the dream is about those stories, but to see what themes floods generally carry, destruction, purification, a new beginning etc. Then he would turn back to the individual and enquire if any of these themes resonate with what’s happening in the dreamer’s life. Perhaps they are overwhelmed by a ‘flood’ of work or emotion, and also hopes for a fresh start of sorts. Amplification then can be thought of as widening the context of the symbol to see its possible meanings, then homing in on which meaning best fits the person’s situation.
Identity too can be fluid in dreams. Jung would note how dreams often personify aspects of the dreamer’s psyche as different characters. For example, your anger might appear as a scary monster chasing you as if to say ‘anger is chasing you’. Alternatively, a wise, mature part of yourself might appear as an old teacher giving advice. This isn’t logical in the normal sense, you are creating parts of yourself and then interacting with them as if they’re separate, but it’s a powerful way for the psyche to carry out an internal dialogue. This jungian concept is an early precursor to the psychoanalytical school of object relations theory, and is the reason why in many countries there is a close affinity between the two fields, with many Jungian and Object Relations training institutes sharing teaching modules.
To navigate this dream logic, Jungian analysts adopt a different mindset than everyday reasoning. In analysis, Jung would sometimes have patients use techniques like active imagination, to help in the amplification of the symbols by continuing the dream in a waking imagination in order to let the story continue to unfold. He would encourage the use of creative expression, drawing the dream scene to engage the primary process on its own turf, as it were, rather than just intellectually analysing it. The idea is to tap into the same imaginative mode consciously, in order to better dialogue with the unconscious. Jung believed that in contemporary societies people often overvalue the logical secondary-process mode and dismiss the primary process as nonsense. Jung believed that both modes of thought are essential. Our waking ego needs to be rational in order to adequately navigate daily life. We are unable to make decisions purely on dreamlike associations. However, if we ignore the imaginative, symbolic side of the psyche, we become imbalanced and one-sided, and we may lose touch with deep sources of creativity and insight within ourselves.
Dreams are a nightly reminder that we have this other side to our mind. They can be wildly creative, the source of many artistic or scientific inspirations. One famous example is the chemist Kekulé dreaming of a snake biting its tail, which led him to discover the ring structure of the molecule benzene. They can also be psychologically insightful in ways our linear thought is not. How many times have you had a dream that, when reflected upon, reveals to you how upset you were about X, something you weren’t aware of until you dreamed about it? The unconscious can process and present things in dreams that our conscious mind isn’t yet ready or willing to face directly. Jung really understood this, he felt that psyche seeks wholeness, which means we need both our daylight logic and our midnight imaginings. The key is to facillitate a conversation between the two. Dreams, with their primary process language, bring up material. Then our conscious mind, using secondary process, can reflect upon it and then act upon it in the real world. If one just dreams and never reflects, the insight is lost. If we never dream, or ignore our dreams, and only use reason, we are at risk of stagnating or miss the bigger picture entirely.
To sum up, dreams run on a different mental track than daytime thoughts. Freud’s concepts of primary and secondary process are useful shorthand for this, and Jung built on those concepts while giving them his own spin. The primary process dream mode is associative, symbolic, and most importantly for Jung, compensatory, while the secondary process waking mode is logical, directed, and practical. Jung believed much of our psychological growth involves reconciling these two processes, allowing the deep wisdom of the primary process to inform our conscious life, and using our conscious will to implement insights from the unconscious.
In the final part of this series on Jungian approaches to dreaming we will look at how Jung believed that engaging with our dreams contributes to an important developmental process he called individuation, the process of becoming our true self, and why he saw dreamwork as a powerful tool for healing and facilitating personal growth.
© 2025 Paul Moore
This series of posts on dreams is derived from postgraduate modules, and seminars, I teach for the M.Sc. in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, and the M.Phil. in Psychoanalytic Studies at the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin. The module, "Dreams, Dreaming, and Symbolic Life" (DDSL), is part of the M.Phil. in Psychoanalytic Studies in the School of Psychology. I have developed and delivered the MBQiPA module in various forms, and for several educational institutions, for over 16 years.