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In this paper I endeavour to demonstrate a Jungian approach to dream interpretation by describing the working through of four dreams of an ex-patient whom I shall call Clara.2 I mean a way of working which puts emphasis on the integrating, individuating self, where archetypal imagery is valued and explored and, while early experiences are viewed as important, the focus is not on transference-countertransference (Samuels 1985). In the main body of the paper there will be some background information about the patient but in no way does it attempt to be a case history.
Three of the dreams are referred to as the ‘lion-dreams’. Taking note of the images in her dreams marked the beginning of the patient's psychic work towards individuation, the urge for self-realization and wholeness. This means a development which leads to a mature personality able to cope with and be attuned to both internal and external realities. Jung defines individuation as becoming more fully who one is, ‘a separate, indivisible unity or “whole”’ (Jung 1968, para. 490). Linked to the process of individuation is one of Jung's central concepts concerning the nature of the psyche which he understood as having a bipolar structure containing both the creative and the destructive and which continually strives to reconcile the opposites contained within it. This integration of unconscious contents is gradual and continuous. It is a growing synthesis between the ego, that is, the conscious personality, and the unconscious. For Jung the psyche is a self-regulating system, an organism striving for healing with a telos, or end, towards which