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Freud and Jung both grappled with the vexing fact that dreams seem not to be produced under the control and through the will of one's waking self. Their very different solutions to this problem led to distinct models not only of dreaming, but of the mind as a whole. For Freud the source of the dream was an impersonal 'it', the System Unconscious, which he saw as primitive, unorganized, and dominated by pure instinct. Jung saw the dream as originating in a very different kind of unconscious locale, which he termed the Self. In contrast to the disorganized and chaotic qualities of Freud's unconscious, Jung's 'Self' was characterized as a superior, if archaic intelligence, incorporating an inherited 'Collective Unconscious' with highly spiritual qualities.
Jung's dissatisfaction with the drive discharge-repression model which dominated Freud's thinking may have been shaped in part by his own religious background. Additionally, his clinical work with more highly disturbed patients probably sensitized him to problems of identity and integration which became central in his theoretical formulations. Jung was thus led to a theoretical position which on the surface, at least, addresses some of the limitations of the drive discharge model. However, Jung's model brings with it considerable problems of its own, and it is a failure to address these problems that leads to the shortcomings of Dreams, A Portal to the Source.
Whitmont & Perera present a modern Jungian approach to dreams, and make some effort to integrate that approach with perspectives on dreams emanating from other more recent developments in psychoanalytic theory in the areas of ego psychology, object-relations theory and self psychology. This combining of viewpoints leads to an approach which is clinically useful, addressing aspects of work with dreams that are not often considered in the more traditional psychoanalytic literature. But the authors' integrative effort ultimately runs aground on the shoals o