A Discovery of Meaning: The Case of C. G. Jung's House Dream

Abstract

Jung's work is a serious attempt to engage psychology with `meaning', comparable with narrative psychology, though the two emerged in different cultural and historical settings. Whereas narrative psychologists typically study autobiographical stories, Jung studied images such as those appearing in dreams and myths. This study turns the question on Jung, examining a dream that he had regarded as the birth moment of his `collective unconscious' theory. The dream's contents vary when retold after many years in ways that mirror the interim development of his theory. Representations of the dream as a biographical event in others' writings reflect contrasting attitudes towards him. His use of the dream's image as heuristic in the dissemination of his theory is counterweighted by the dream's effect on him as a poetic image. The psychological function of the image for Jung is considered.