Understand Your Dreams by Using Jung’s “Active Imagination” is an article that
was written by Dale M. Kushner and explores Jung’s ideas on “Active Imagination.”
C.G. Jung understood that dreams are messages from the unconscious like Freud, but had
an opposing view on the meaning of our dreams. Kushner utilizes Jung’s ideas as an
example to support her thesis, which states that our dreams are hidden from our minds in
the day-world and as we dream those hidden messages manifest in living color.
Kushner expands her thesis by incorporating examples from the earliest written
stories that include dreams. Some of these examples are the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s
Odyssey, and the Old Testament. The strategy of incorporating these examples
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Jung’s ideas on what the hidden
messages behind dreams mean.
According to Jung, “Our darkest dreams might contain imagery that illustrate our
internal conflicts and point to their cure as well” (Para. 8). In order to test his theory, Jung
experimented by dialoguing his fantasy and dream images as if they were real life
characters in the day-world. Jung called this process “active imagination.” In his
autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung wrote in detail about his actual
experience and how he merged his terrifying encounters with his psyche to create his
lasting theories about conscious and unconscious ideas.
Jung’s experiences are cited in Kushner’s article and they deal with how Jung
tried not to lose his balance on certain ideas, but tried different activities to connect his
mind with the things he found to be strange. Jung considered these strange ideas to be an
“alien world” and that everything in it seemed “difficult and incomprehensible.” In order
to get his mind focused he tried out certain yoga exercises to gather his emotions and
keep them in line, and these exercises became a routine for Jung every time he needed