The Language, Shape and Logic of Dreams

I am in a cavernous area being stalked by wild cats with sharp hair that looks like needle thin arrows pointed at me. The cats seem to be on leashes held by invisible hands just out of the picture. I think they might be from a witch’s brew, an out-of-control costume party or another Halloween stunt. But I remain wary, circling them as they circle me, prodding them when I can, as much tormentor as victim.

Dreams often come in shards, in bits and pieces, and as cut-out parts of the day. But this wild cat dream seems particularly well organized with the dreamer (me) playing a role in the internal narrative and providing analogies or metaphors within the dream, shaping or trying to shape it from within.

What’s going on?

I often turn to Carl Jung for a refresher course on dream analysis. His “Symbols of Transformation” is especially useful in this regard and a check against interpreting the dream too personally, thus taking the psychic energy out of the experience.

For Jung the basic principle of analytical psychology is that dream images should be understood symbolically and not literally. That dreams should have a meaning and be capable of interpretation has been known to mankind for thousands of years. But few among us are likely to believe “that a God existing outside ourselves should cause us to dream, or that the dream foretells the future prophetically. But if we translate this into the language of psychology, the ancient idea becomes more comprehensible”

The dream, we would say, originates in the unknown part of the psyche and prepares the dreamer for the events of the following day. In contemporary language we might say the dream is a series of images which seem contradictory and meaningless but contains material which provides a clear meaning when properly translated.

Jung raises what is perhaps the crucial question when it comes to symbolic dream content: how is it that dreams are symbolic at all? And where does this capacity for symbolic representation come from as it seems so far outside our conscious thinking?

Jung reminds us that our conscious or directed thinking in words is an instrument of culture, centuries in the making. He suggests that, with few exceptions, the ancients “lacked the capacity to concentrate their interest on the transformation of inanimate matter,” thus being able to control the forces of nature. For Jung the “secret of cultural development is the mobility and disposability of psychic energy.” Directed thinking is a fairly modern acquisition that earlier ages lacked.

Then what happens, Jung asks rhetorically, when we don’t think directly and let our thoughts “float, sink or rise according to their specific gravity?” This is an example of ordinary or associative thinking that “leads away from reality into fantasies of the past or future. At this point thinking in verbal form ceases, images pile on image, feeling on feeling” and an increased tendency to shuffle things as we would like them to be. In everyday language, this state is called dreaming.

Both Freud and Jung found parallels between dream language and the mythological thinking of the ancients and in children to this day. Infantile-thinking and dream-thinking are a recapitulation of earlier evolutionary stages. Jung reminded us that “a mere eighty generations separate us from the Golden Age of Greek culture.” Much as we think that we have progressed over the centuries, our psychology at the bottom remains much the same. We are ready at the drop of a hat to slip into fantasy language.

Jung lists three fantasy products that engage the conscious mind. First are waking dreams or daydreams. Second are ordinary dreams “which present to the conscious mind a baffling exterior and only make sense on the basis of indirectly inferred experience.” Third are dreams that are completely unconscious fantasy systems or split off complexes that seemed to constitute themselves as separate personalities.

For Jung, this range or spectrum of dream activity underscores how much the products of the unconscious have in common with mythology. He adds that “any introversion occurring in later life regresses back to infantile reminisces which, though derived from an individual’s past, generally have a slight archaic tinge.”

Jung reminds us that while a conscious fantasy may be woven of mythological or other material, “it should not be taken literally but must be interpreted according to its meaning. If it’s taken too literally, it remains unintelligible, and makes one despair of the meaning and the purpose of the psychic function. Fantasies tend to illustrate “through the use of mythological material, certain tendencies in the personality which are either not yet recognized or are recognized no longer.” Of course, the conscious mind has a tendency to reject dream material that seems inconsistent with our conscious character. The dream often carries material that the conscious mind ignores, rejects, or dismisses as immoral or impossible.

So, in light of Jung’s remarks, what about my cat dream? I first thought of the musical “Cats,” a favorite, and passing the NYC theater hosting this show hundred of times over a twenty-year period on my way to work. I remember the images of the wacky cats and at times found myself singing lines from “Jellicle Cats” to a disinterested Manhattan audience. Jung is telling me to leave the musical.

The spark for this cat dream likely came from a more pedestrian place. I had read that in the small county where I live north of NYC there were about 50,000 feral cats. That population seemed very high since there are only 320,000 people in the county. I confirmed the number of feral cats and researched efforts to support and curb the feral population. There are an estimated 90 million feral cats across the U.S.

Every weekday while waiting for a NYC express bus I watch a colony of feral cats play, fight, sun themselves and wait for someone to feed them. I have watched over the weeks and months the cats become wilder, more skittish and wary of humans. I’m a longtime cat owner and have tried to befriend the litters of kittens that show up on a regular basis. My domestic noises have no effect.

Based on Jung’s advice I can consider the cat dream an ordinary dream which presents a baffling exterior based on a realized or inferred experience. I have no fears of cats or dogs for that matter. Perhaps the dream grew out of my observation of the cats’ growing wildness and my concern about the fate of the kittens.

The dream space is archaic and full of energy. True to its mythological roots this space often takes on a dramatic and poetic structure. On reflection, my dream seems a little like a dance, a cartoon, a comic rendition. These elements certainly outweigh any ominous hints from the needle thin arrows. The circle movement that the dream parties pantomime suggests this story has momentum.

Jung has written that a dream imparts a certain ethical responsibility, suggesting we take it seriously. He also encouraged us to dream the dream forward, in effect, fantasizing about the fantasy. I find poetry a great outlet for dream content because a poem possesses a certain tension and is rich in symbolic language.

Here is a link to my “Set Pieces of the Feminine,” poems based entirely on anima dreams. https://www.amazon.com/Set-Pieces-Feminine-James-McCullagh/dp/1439231281/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524160491&sr=1-1&keywords=set+pieces+of+the+feminine&dpID=31qPrjyKl7L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch