Today, I am concluding the section on Memories in dreams. Freud gathered many ideas and examples on this topic, which is interesting. However, it also made me think of something larger and more profound.

As we read the following section of this chapter, we can see how the memories in Freud’s analysis remind us of Jung’s purposes for symbols. I believe Jung further examined the role of memories in dreams to illustrate their purpose, delving deeper into this concept through his understanding of symbols.

Dr Jung examines how dreams employ symbolic imagery rooted in the collective unconscious and explains how interpreting these symbols can yield a deeper understanding of the self and the human mind. Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, using symbols that are not direct language but images rooted in the collective unconscious. Symbols bridge the conscious mind and inner worlds, carrying deep, multifaceted meanings that extend beyond personal experience and often reference universal archetypes. Interpretation involves exploring these associations to uncover unconscious wisdom and promote balance and individuation. Symbols in dreams facilitate dialogue with inner depths, revealing fears, desires, and potentials, and engaging us in the ongoing drama of the human soul.

Now let’s refocus on our starting point: the beginning! Sequel to the previous season.

The Material of Dreams—Memory in the Dream (Das Traummaterial – Das Gedächtnis im Traum)

I can recount a dream of my own here, in which the impression to be recalled is replaced by a connection. In the dream, I saw a person whom I knew to be the doctor from my hometown. His face was indistinct, yet it merged with the image of one of my high school teachers whom I still encounter occasionally. Upon waking, I could not determine what connection linked the two individuals. However, when I asked my mother about the doctor from those early years of my childhood, I learned that he had been one-eyed, and the high school teacher whose figure had overlaid the doctor’s in the dream was also one-eyed. Thirty-eight years had passed since I last saw the doctor, and to the best of my knowledge, I had never thought of him in my waking life.

It sounds as though a counterweight to the outsized role played by childhood impressions in dream life is being proposed when several authors claim that elements from one’s earliest days can be detected in most dreams. Robert (p. 46) even states: In general, the normal dream concerns itself only with impressions from the most recent days. We shall see, however, that the theory of dreams constructed by Robert imperatively demands such a relegation of the oldest impressions and a foregrounding of the most recent ones. Yet the fact to which Robert gives expression is—as I can confirm from my own investigations—valid. An American author, Nelson, suggests that the impressions most frequently utilised in dreams are those from the day prior to the day of the dream or from three days earlier, as if the impressions from the day immediately preceding the dream were not yet sufficiently faded or distant.

Several authors who did not wish to question the intimate connection between dream content and waking life have noted that impressions which intensely occupy waking thought only appear in dreams after they have been somewhat pushed aside by the mental work of the day. Thus, as a rule, one does not dream of a beloved deceased person during the initial period when grief completely consumes the survivor (Delage). However, one recent observer, Miss Hallam, has also collected examples of the opposite pattern and asserts the validity of psychological individuality in this regard.

The third, most peculiar, and most baffling characteristic of memory in dreams manifests itself in the selection of the material reproduced; for, unlike in the waking state, it is not merely the most significant elements that are retained, but—on the contrary—even the most trivial and inconspicuous details are deemed worthy of remembrance. Here, I shall let those authors speak who have expressed their astonishment most emphatically.

Hildebrandt (p. 11): “For the curious thing is that the dream generally draws its elements not from the great and profound events, not from the powerful and driving interests of the day just past, but from the incidental details—from the worthless scraps, so to speak—of the recent or more distant past. A shattering death in the family, under the impression of which we fall asleep late, remains blotted out of our memory until the first moment of waking forces it back upon us with distressing intensity. In contrast, the wart on the forehead of a stranger we encountered—someone we did not give another thought to after passing by—plays a role in our dream” …

Strümpell (p. 39): “… such cases where the analysis of a dream uncovers components that, while originating in the experiences of the previous day or the day before that, were nevertheless so insignificant and valueless to waking consciousness that they were consigned to oblivion shortly after the experience itself. Such experiences might include, for instance, casually overheard remarks or the superficially observed actions of another person, fleeting perceptions of objects or individuals, isolated snippets from something one has read, and the like.”

Havelock Ellis (p. 727): The profound emotions of waking life, the questions and problems on which we spread our chief voluntary mental energy, are not those which usually present themselves at once to dream consciousness. It is so far as the immediate past is concerned, mostly the trifling, the incidental, the »forgotten« impressions of daily life which reappear in our dreams. The psychic activities that are awake most intensely are those that sleep most profoundly.

Binz (p. 45) takes the very characteristics of memory in dreams under discussion as an occasion to express his dissatisfaction with the explanations of dreams that he himself had previously supported: “And the natural dream poses similar questions to us. Why do we not always dream of memory impressions from the days immediately past, but instead often plunge—without any discernible motive—into a past that lies far behind us and has all but faded away? Why does consciousness in dreams so often receive the impression of indifferent memory images, while the brain cells—precisely where they harbour the most vivid traces of past experiences—usually remain silent and dormant, unless an acute reactivation during waking hours had stirred them shortly before?”

It is easy to see how the peculiar preference of dream-memory for the trivial—and therefore disregarded—elements of daily experiences was bound, in most cases, to lead to a failure to recognise the dream’s dependence on waking life altogether, or at least to make it difficult to demonstrate that dependence in any individual instance. Thus, it was possible for Miss Whiton Calkins, in her statistical analysis of her own dreams (and those of her associate), to be left with eleven per cent of the total in which no connection to waking life was apparent. Hildebrandt is surely right in asserting that all dream images could be explained genetically if we were to devote the time and sufficient concentration to tracing their origins. He calls this, of course, “an extremely laborious and thankless task.” For it would usually amount to unearthing all manner of psychologically worthless items from the most remote corners of the memory’s storehouse—bringing back to light all sorts of completely inconsequential moments from the distant past, buried perhaps as early as the very next hour. Yet I cannot help but regret that this astute author allowed himself to be deterred from pursuing a path that began so inconspicuously; it would have led him directly to the heart of dream interpretation.

The behaviour of dream-memory is certainly of the utmost significance for any theory of memory whatsoever. It teaches that “nothing we have once possessed mentally can ever be completely lost” (Scholz, p. 34). Or, as Delboeuf puts it, »que toute impression même la plus insignifiante, laisse une trace inaltérable, indéfiniment susceptible de reparaître au jour« (“that every impression, even the most insignificant, leaves an unalterable trace, indefinitely capable of reappearing”)—a conclusion to which so many other pathological phenomena of mental life likewise point. One should bear in mind this extraordinary capacity of memory in dreams in order to vividly appreciate the contradiction inherent in certain dream theories—to be discussed later—that seek to explain the absurdity and incoherence of dreams by positing a partial forgetting of what is known to us during the day.

One might, for instance, hit upon the idea of reducing the phenomenon of dreaming entirely to remembering—viewing the dream as the expression of a reproductive activity that does not rest even at night and that exists as an end in itself. Reports such as those by Pilcz would seem to support this view; they suggest that demonstrable, fixed relationships exist between the time of dreaming and the dream content, such that deep sleep reproduces impressions from the distant past. In contrast, the dream reproduces recent impressions as morning approaches. However, such a conception is rendered unlikely from the outset by the way the dream handles the material to be recalled. Strümpell rightly points out that repetitions of actual experiences do not occur in dreams.

The dream may well make a start in that direction, but the subsequent link fails to appear; it emerges in altered form, or something entirely alien takes its place. The dream yields only fragmentary reproductions. This is certainly the rule, to such an extent that it allows for theoretical application. Yet exceptions do occur in which a dream repeats an experience just as completely as our waking memory can. Delboeuf recounts the story of one of his university colleagues (who currently teaches in Vienna) who, in a dream, relived in every detail a perilous carriage ride—one in which he had escaped an accident only by a miracle. Miss Calkins mentions two dreams that consisted of the exact reproduction of an experience from the previous day, and I myself shall later have occasion to report an instance known to me of the unaltered recurrence of a childhood experience in a dream.
One might, for instance, be tempted to reduce the phenomenon of dreaming entirely to that of remembering—viewing the dream as the expression of a reproductive activity that does not rest even at night and serves as an end in itself.

The upcoming post will address dream stimuli and sources. However, I am currently facing some health-related uncertainties. My urologist and I view my condition as critical, yet during a discourse at the hospital on Thursday, I was scheduled for surgery in August. So it’s all up in the air whether I can work on the new post; I need to consult my doctor next week!
Wishing everyone good health and safety. 🤗💖🙏🌹