DREAMS.... Please make your comments.

We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by commonsense. An ancient man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits, or gods. The terrors that stem from our elaborate civilization is far more threatening than those that an ancient man attributed to demons.

Many DREAMS present images and associations that are analogous to the ones presented in ancient times as ideas, myths and rites. They are psychic elements surviving in the human mind from ages long ago. The associations and images of this kind are an integral part of the unconscious and can be observed everywhere - whether the dreamer is educated or illiterate, intelligent or stupid. They are not in any sense lifeless or meaningless "remnants." They still function, as they are especially valuable because of their "historical" nature. They form a bridge between the ways in which we consciously express our thoughts and a more natural, more colorful, and pictorial form of expression. It is this form that appeals directly to feeling and emotion. These "historical" association are the link between the rational world of consciousness and the world of instinct. 

There is an interesting contrast between the "controlled" thoughts we have when we are awake and the wealth of imagery produced in DREAMS. When we are awake, we strip so many ideas from their emotional energy, we do not respond to them in any way. Something more is needed to bring them home to us effectively enough to make  us change our attitude and our behavior. That is what "DREAM LANGUAGE" does; its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.

The general function of DREAMS is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. This is what we call the complementary (or compensatory) role of DREAMS in our psychic make-up. It explains why people who have unrealistic ideas or too high an opinion of themselves, or who make grandiose plans out of proportion to their real capacities, have dreams of flying or falling. There was, for instance, a lady who was well known for her stupid prejudices and her stubborn resistance to reasoned argument. This typical behavior can be manifested through the feminine forces either in men or women.
One could have argued with "her" all night to no effect; she would have taken not the slightest notice. Her dreams, however, took a different line of approach. One night, she dreamed she was attending an important social occasion. She was greeted by the hostess with the words: "How nice that you could come. All your friends are here, and they are waiting for you." The hostess then led her to the door and opened it, and the dreamer stepped through -into a cowshed!   The woman would not at first admit the point of a dream that struck so directly at her self-importance; but its message nevertheless went home, and after a time she had to accept it. 

In our conscious life