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Andrew Samuels asks what contemporary analytical psychologists have reacted to in Jung's approach to dream analysis. ‘Are dreams special in any way?’ he asks, and, if so, what do they tell us about? He uses a patient's dream to illustrate differences in theoretical weighting and viewpoint about unconscious/conscious symbolisation and the place of the dreamer in the interpretation.
Kenneth Lambert seems to represent the present-day orthodoxy: remember to analyse the patient, not merely the dream. But Jung also said that a series of dreams may provide its own context, rendering personal data less important. James Hillman stays close to one reading of Freud, concerning an archetypal underworld, a night world, whose language when translated into forms understood by the waking ego is inevitably distorted. Does the personal experience of the waking ego inform the dream, or is it Jung's ‘2,000,000-year-old man that is in all of us’? In any case, analysis looks for some sort of bridge in words.
This paper provides a summary of the present position in both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, and also a helpful and interesting discussion of some of the conflicts and nuances to be found in interpreting dreams. I found the comparisons illuminating and recommend the paper to others.