I'm fairly sure that everyone reading this Newsletter already knows that I am convinced that we all project on each other's dreams, all of the time. Whenever anyone shares a dream, the rest of us ca
n only imagine our own version of the dream. For this reason, when we engage in any subsequent conversation about that shared dream, none of us has anything to talk about except our own imagined versions of the dreamer's original experience. Relating to our imagined versions of events is a functional definition of projection. In that crucially important sense, all talk about dreams is "projective" - there simply is no way to explore another person's dream that isn't projective at this core level.
The main reason that projective dream work, (both with individual dreamers, and with groups), regularly produces such profoundly moving and positive experiences for all involved is that enough independent work has been carried out since Jung's death in 1961, to validate the value, reliability, and lasting importance of his work uncovering archetypal patterns.
Jung's life-long exploration of the multiple phenomena that led him to invent the term "collective unconscious" has demonstrated the existence of a coherent "unseen" (because it is primarily unconscious) symbolic psycho-spiritual foundation shared by all human beings. The repeating patterns he called "archetypes of the collective unconscious" demonstrably exist and function quite separately from our conscious acknowledgement or understanding of them, and are regularly visible in our dreams, as well as our sacred narratives and other cultural artifacts.
If this were not true - if there were not profoundly similar, reliably repeating patterns of thought, feeling, physical sensation, and intuition that inform both primary dreaming experience, and our imagined versions of those dreamed experiences when we encounter them later - then our comments about each other's dreams would awaken "aha's!" of insight and recognition only in a very random, occasional, and sporadic way. Extensive experience proves otherwise. Far from being infrequent and random, the ideas and insights generated by projective identification with the dreamer, and projective explorations of his/her dream, regularly produce new conscious understandings of the deeper, previously hidden layers of meaning and implication that lay hidden in the manifest content of the original dream. This is true not only for the original dreamer, but also for many, and sometimes all, of the people gathered in the group to work with the shared dream(s).
One consequence of this is that sharing and working with dreams and dreamers also can lead to engaging in dream education. As professional dream workers who consciously acknowledge the inevitably projective nature of our work, we have also had to take up the task of helping our dreaming friends and clients become more aware of these recurring patterns of archetypal symbolic meaning and implication - not only in our dreams remembered from sleep, but also in our waking thoughts, feelings, activities, and "dreams" (in the sense of our highest practical goals and spiritual aspirations).
This effort to spread understanding of archetypal images and patterns to a wider audience can be disparaged and resisted, particularly by some academics who are committed to schools of psychological, historical, and social scientific thought other than the strictly Jungian. To make matters even more complicated, there is also significant resistance to advancing the study and exploration of archetypal forms among even many committed Jungians themselves. As Noel Cobb says in his fine book, Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art, (1992, Lindisfarne Press):
"...I found that my essential originality would not be contained in being a Jungian. For one thing, I missed the eccentricity and the wildness and startling oddities of thought and speech that I was used to from my artist and poet friends. I began to feel that the Jungian world was a closed world - closed in the sense that nothing new can really happen since the origin of Jungian thought, Jung himself, is dead. All that can happen is the codification of his thoughts, the amplification of his ideas and the endless illustration of his insights through lectures, seminars, and books... I felt I could no longer surrender my independence of thought to a Jungian identity." (p. 12)
Cobb is not alone in feeling and facing this problem. In my experience, the problem of educating ourselves and our fellow dreamers more deeply regarding the nature and functions of archetypal forms and patterns in dreams (as well as in waking life) is particularly poignant among dream workers who have come to Jung and archetypal thought through work with clients rather than through formal study on the path of professional psychological education and training as spiritual guides and therapists.
For people who do not relish this sort of academic wrangling, this effort to learn more ourselves and educate others can be quite frustrating and off-putting.
Fortunately, I have also found that a number of people are advancing our understanding of the collective unconscious and how archetypes work in very significant ways, but for various reasons, do not even mention Jung, or use the word "archetype," in their published works.
One of the most significant of these current researchers, in my view, is the Cal-Berkeley linguist and rhetorician, George Lakoff. In his brisk and fascinating books - particularly Metaphors We Live By, (2003, co-authored with Mark Johnson, University of Chicago), and More Than Cool Reason, (1989, co-authored with Mark Turner, also from U. of Chicago) - he speaks at length about what he chooses to call "these basic metaphors." For example, on page 8 of More Than Cool Reason, in the midst of a brilliant discussion of the poetry of Emily Dickenson, Lakoff points out:
"But though she created the poem ["Because I Could Not Stop for Death"], she did not create the basic metaphors on which the poem is based. They were already there for her widespread throughout Western culture, in the every day thought of the least literate of people, as well as in the greatest poetry in her tradition [emphasis mine]."
This quality of being "given" - of being there "in the every day thought" of people, regardless of their intelligence, formal education, social standing, psycho-spiritual development, or religious affiliation, is the hallmark of the universal patterns of symbolic form Jung refers to as archetypes.
Lakoff goes on to demonstrate that these "basic metaphors" are present in the every day thought of people all over the world, not just in the West, and thus confirms beyond reasonable doubt that he is talking about exactly the same psycho-spiritual facts of human symbolic life that Jung refers to as archetypes, even though Lakoff never uses the word, or makes any reference to Jung himself in any of his work. On the one hand this is useful, and on the other it's annoying.
Lakoff's earlier, longer, more detailed, and more formally written work, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things - What Categories Reveal about the Mind, (1987, U. of Chicago), also deserves special mention here. In my reading (it's heavy going, but it rewards the effort) it includes, among other things, an extensive survey of the "experientialist" school of linguistic/philosophical/ psychological thought. In this intentionally magisterial book, it is more than just irritating that Lakoff does not even acknowledge the existence of Jung's work; this verges on willfully propagandistic and biased scholarship. It seems to me that Jung must, at very least, be acknowledged as a pioneer in the 20th century effort to bring scientific inquiry and modern philosophical perspective to the task of exploring and defining basic categories of human thought and experience, regardless of what one thinks and feels about the success, value, and importance of his efforts.
Nonetheless, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things is compelling and eminently worth reading, packed with new angles and insights regarding the "basic structures of mind and language" (Jung's archetypes) and at the same time it is also a representative example of a larger "academic conspiracy" to ignore and deny the value and importance of Jung's original ground-breaking work.
Another scholar of the archetypes who refuses to make use of the word archetype, (and mentions Jung only in passing as a particular interest of the author, Philip K. Dick), is Jeffrey J. Kripal. In his fascinating book, Mutants and Mystics, (2011, also from U. of Chicago Press), he coins the word "mytheme" and talks at great length and clarity about seven of these mythemes, particularly as they appear in popular culture, in science fiction, superhero comic books, and also the broader and longer history of Western occultism.
On page 5 of Mutants and Mystics, he points to recurrent ideas and patterns of story and image in popular culture that form what he calls a "metamyth," a "Super-Story." He goes on to describe this Super-Story as:
"...a deep, often unconscious narrative that underlies and shapes much of contemporary popular culture. This Super-Story with its seven mythemes... is grounded very much in the particulars of American intellectual, literary, scientific, military, commercial, and political history - all those particulars that have made America a "superpower" - but it also participates in the ancient history and universal structures of the human religious imagination [emphasis mine] and so, in the end, transcends anything solely political or specifically 'American'"[emphasis mine].
This passage makes it very clear that Kripal, like Lakoff, is talking about the same essential phenomena that Jung calls "archetypes of the collective unconscious." These two contemporary scholars, (and several more beside), are exploring, breaking new ground, and extending the boundaries our understanding of how these "basic metaphors", "mythemes," "metamyths" and "archetypal patterns" function, both consciously and unconsciously in our lives, both awake and asleep. Even more importantly, in my view, these studies illuminate the ways we continue to shape and craft both art and history from our completely unique and personal lives, while at the same time, drawing from ancient, transpersonal, collective patterns of life energy and expression.
Jung paved the way but many "Jungians" have resisted the further development of Jung's brilliant insights. It's worth finding and exploring the ideas regardless of the terms the authors use to describe them.
