Why We Dream: Jung’s Hidden Door to Our Own Supply of wisdom
Most people dismiss their dreams as random static leftover images from the day, scrambled memories, or meaningless fantasy. But Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw something much deeper.
To Jung, dreams were not noise. They were signals and meaningful communications from the unconscious, rich with metaphor and insight.
In fact, he wrote:
“The dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious.”
In other words, when we sleep, the unconscious mind speaks in symbols. This not just for entertainment, but for integration. The intention of dreams is always to move us towards wholeness.
The Purpose of Dreams
Jung believed we dream to restore balance.
If the conscious mind is dominated by control, discipline, or ego, the unconscious pushes back with images of chaos, vulnerability, or emotion. This is not to punish us, but to restore harmony.
Dreams are a kind of psychic thermostat.
They help us see where we’ve overcorrected in one direction so we can self-regulate in another. Where Freud saw dreams as repressed wish-fulfillment, Jung saw them as the unconscious compensating for an overactive or unbalanced conscious state.
How to Work With a Dream (Jung-style)
Jung didn’t believe in generic interpretations. He believed dreams were deeply personal and symbolic, and that we should never impose fixed meanings onto universal symbols.
Instead, he offered a process:
Record the dream – Include as much sensory detail as possible.
Feel into the symbols – What does that house, that person, or that landscape represent to you?
View it as a message from the unconscious – What is it trying to say about your current psychic state?
Dialogue with the dream – Ask: “What part of me is trying to speak through this?”
Look for integration, not domination – The goal is never to “defeat” the unconscious but to befriend it. Listen, converse, ask, explore and wrestle with meaning until the message is received and balance is restored.
The Inner War of Most High Achievers
This is where Jung’s ideas intersect powerfully with the work I do with ambitious, high-performing midlifers.
So many successful people live in constant internal tension. They appear to be doing all the right things on the surface, using productivity hacks, cold showers, clean living, disciplined habits to constantly manage themselves, but inside? There’s a constant hum of unrest. They are at war with themselves. They dominate, suppress and control that which they don't like or understand within, and as a result, live in constant dissonance with their own soul.
Jung would say: the dream state is a chance for the unconscious to push back and demand attention be given to all the ways your inner system is out dangerously of alignment.
Your set up must be safe. Until it is, you will be resisted and agitated from within. That is the best of you demanding wisdom prevails to protect you from ruining your life.
The unconscious will resist anything it experiences as war, even if that war is self-imposed. And it should. That resistance isn’t weakness — it’s wisdom.
It’s your psyche demanding peace.
The Unhindered Experience: A Reset at the Deepest Level
Surely this is the true value of great coaching: To act as an advocate for the unconscious mind and help a person listen to, understand and integrate their own wisdom.
It’s not about more strategy or performance.
It’s about restoring internal safety, coherence, and trust so that the unconscious no longer needs to block your progress, because it’s no longer being attacked.
This is the essence of the Self-Permission Method.
It is the deeper integration Jung pointed to.
And it’s the exact kind of transformation created in The Unhindered Experience. A 3 month process for high-performing mid-lifers who are tired of holding it all together and ready to finally live in flow and freedom again.
If that sounds like you, send me a message.
Dreams are not nonsense. They are the soul’s way of trying to bring us home to ourselves.
The question is: will you listen?