Dreams 2

Carl Jung and Erich Fromm

Carl Jung, a contemporary of Freud and an important figure in psychology was President of the Psychoanalytic society, started by Freud. He disagreed with Freud concerning the emphasis on sexuality in dreams. Jung accepted that dreams could represent repressed sexual or hostile acts as Freud believed, but argued that it was not always true. Jung pointed out that during day we experience thousands of things we don’t consider at the time because we are occupied with the normal tasks of daily life. At night, when we are not occupied by more immediate tasks, dreams may consolidate events not attended to during the day.  Thus, responding to visual stimuli and physical experiences we ignore during day, dreams could be predictive – not prophetic, predictive - of future events.

One of his examples was of an influential business man who dreamed that he was driving a train through the mountains at ever increasing speeds, up and down and around curves until he went off the tracks and crashed. Some months later, the man’s business failed from too many speculative investments. Jung argued that the man recognized, in his dream, the recklessness of his business ventures, which he overlooked in the bustle of daily life, and that the dream predicted his business failure.       

Jung identified three different types of symbols in our dreams: archetypes, national symbols and individual symbols. Archetypes are international symbols, such as “mother” who is a loving and giving person in all societies. National symbols include objects such as the American flag or the English queen. Individual symbols are things we have experienced as individuals which come to hold meanings for us that are not common to many.

The only example of an individual symbol, for me, that I could recall involved the game of “hide and seek.” Everyone present at my talk agreed that the game represented a fun activity. Then I told of asking a friend, Sullivan, who was one of seven men from K Company able to walk off of Outpost Harry the morning after the first night of attacks on that hill, what his job had been. He replied, “machine gunner.” When I asked why he was alive, he replied, “My gun jammed so I played hide and seek all night.” I knew what he meant. In my squad, when we were sent out on a “fight” patrol it was common to be told, “We are playing hide and seek tonight.” It meant we would be hunting an enemy who would be hunting us. Patrols were exciting, but not pleasant.  Hide and seek has a different meaning for me than for most people.

Jung also said that only the dreamer can interpret his dream, but that he can be helped by analysis. However, if the dreamer disagrees with the analyst, the analyst is wrong. A nice example of this occurred during my talk. One lady asked about “nude” dreams. I replied that they were common among people, such as preachers and politicians, who exposed their own beliefs in talking to groups, in effect taking off their “clothes” before an audience. On the other hand, professors such as I, who taught classes in statistics and testing, do not expose themselves during their classes and rarely have such dreams. Another lady spoke up and said that she had dreams where she was nude and went to work, walked in and sat at her desk without any concern at all. She was never embarrassed by her nudity in her dream. After the lecture, she told me that she typically had these on nights when she hadn’t done laundry and didn’t have clean clothes for work the next day! Amateur analysts would have interpreted her dreams as typical dreams of exposing some secretive part of herself, instead it was a dream based on her individual knowledge that she didn’t have anything to wear to work the next day.

In understanding dreams, you must remember the language of dreams is not the language of our waking life. In waking life we think with words: at night we think in pictures. Thus in life we may call a person a pig, but in the dream we would see a pig: acting as the person does.

Erich Fromm discusses this in “The Forgotten Language.” He also points out that during the day, we obey the laws of time and space, but in dreams we don’t. During day, we can say, “I am like my father.” But we know we can’t BE our father: in a dream, we can. Similarly, during our waking life we know that if something happened last year, it cannot be happening now. But in a dream, it can be happening now. We can even split ourselves in two. I had a nice example of this given me by a senior student.

An attractive blond coed told me, in private, that she dreamed she was floating in the air and looked down upon herself having sex with a young man she was dating. We discussed this and she agreed that she disapproved of what she was doing. This ended a happy experience for one young man. A couple years later, crossing the floor during half time in a basketball game, she came running up to me and gave me a big hug, then turned and introduced me to her fiancé, a seminary student.  It is always nice to get a hug from an attractive young woman, but not in front of two thousand students, faculty and administrators in a school where you are a professor who is already distrusted by the administration.

Much of Fromm’s book, “The Forgotten Language” is devoted to the manner in which different civilizations and tribal groups have interpreted and responded to dreams. While interesting reading – to me – much of it is not directly relevant to dream interpretation – at least as we now understand it.

More on dreams later.

Considerably later, but now almost a half a century ago, I had the privilege of teaching a summer graduate course at the University of British Columbia. I had a delightful summer, and I believe the students enjoyed it also after they learned I was serious. At the end, I threw a party for them at my house. I bought five cases of beer and one of soda pop, a student from Scotland brought a bottle of scotch and at least one other student brought more beer. It was a relaxed party. One student came up to me and confessed that she was really upset with her daughter. She was a Cameron; her daughter was marrying a Campbell. It seems that about three hundred years earlier, in Scotland, an army of Campbells had met and slaughtered an army of Camerons. Another, a lady from New Zealand, was distressed that the American colonies had revolted from England. She said the United States was illegal. She meant it!

Only a few years after that, teaching at Drury College in southwestern Missouri, John Goodwin, a friend, former student and the best fisherman I have ever known was introducing me to fishing in the Ozarks, where he had been raised. It interested me that, as we drove through the hills, he identified each family area by which side they had fought on during the Civil War. If I recall correctly, as we passed one group of houses he said, “That’s Smithville, they weren’t on either side. They were just thieves. 

All of these, of course, are trivial, even amusing examples of how long hatreds, fears and concerns can last. What has been amazing is the extent to which such antipathies between groups have disappeared in the United States, a nation built by immigrants from different lands, with different languages, different laws and different moralities. It is only where peoples have been separated that animosities and fears remain. Working in North Dakota I learned that it would be a mistake for a Sioux to wander onto a Chippewa reservation (or the reverse) even if that person were there to help as in the form of a nurse or social worker. 

I believe the unification of the diverse peoples of the United States to be a consequence of public education. It is understandable for established residents to be concerned about new groups, as the people in my community were about the Italian immigrants who flooded The Hill in St. Louis, but when all of the children attend school together, as did Germanic me, Irish Rosie Burke and Italian Ernie Di Amico, where they use a common language, are taught a common cultural history (as opposed to ethnic history) and develop a common set of skills (as well as common complaints about teachers!) those ethnic concerns disappear. 

Recently, however, the great god “diversity” has appeared. Now new groups can demand their cultural “rights.”  Hispanic immigrants can be taught in Spanish, while laws and even advertisements appear in Spanish as well as English.  I suppose if a wave of Turks migrate here, we shall need classes in Turkish and street signs in Turkish.  Where is the logical end of this approach?

Less publicized, but equally important are the demands of Muslim immigrants to be permitted to be judged by their own laws, a demand which was accepted by a judge in Florida who permitted a Muslim woman to have her photograph taken for her driver’s license with her face concealed. Similarly, Muslim taxi drivers, licensed to meet travelers at the airport are permitted to refuse customers carrying sealed containers of alcoholic beverages or “seeing-eye” dogs. A Texas judge even ruled that a divorce according to Muslim law was acceptable in Texas.

Diversity, as worshipped, is making the United States a land of multiple languages and laws based on multiple moral bases. What will be the long term effects of this? Can anyone tell me of any nation or any geographic area in which such diversity exists that the different peoples live together in mutual respect and unanimity? 

Consider the Balkans. Croatians, Serbs and Albanians have occupied the same mountain area for centuries and for at least the last thousand years, having different religions and languages, have spent their time fighting and killing one another. Currently they are at peace, but a peace enforced by United Nations forces. 

Which brings us to “Bush’s war,” a ten year attempt to bring democracy and peace to Iraq, a land of Kurds, Sunnis and Shi′ites – all peace loving Muslims but involving two races, Kurds and Arabs, and two Arabic sects. However, following the “peace” enforced by the United States, these peoples are returning to killing one another. It appears they would rather hate and live in fear of their lives than accept the right of all to exist together. 

Even in democratic and peaceful Sweden and Norway the southerners look down upon, even despise, the Laplanders of the north and don’t tell me there are no problems in Canada between French speaking Quebecers and the English population of the rest of Canada. I’ve lived there.

The United States became a great and unified nation as a consequence of a common language and a common set of laws and cultural goals. It needs to return to being a one language nation obeying laws derived from the Christian principles which have permitted its growth as a single, unified, peaceful nation. Diversities long term consequences are fragmentation and warfare. 

Considerably later, but now almost a half a century ago, I had the privilege of teaching a summer graduate course at the University of British Columbia. I had a delightful summer, and I believe the students enjoyed it also after they learned I was serious. At the end, I threw a party for them at my house. I bought five cases of beer and one of soda pop, a student from Scotland brought a bottle of scotch and at least one other student brought more beer. It was a relaxed party. One student came up to me and confessed that she was really upset with her daughter. She was a Cameron; her daughter was marrying a Campbell. It seems that about three hundred years earlier, in Scotland, an army of Campbells had met and slaughtered an army of Camerons. Another, a lady from New Zealand, was distressed that the American colonies had revolted from England. She said the United States was illegal. She meant it!

Only a few years after that, teaching at Drury College in southwestern Missouri, John Goodwin, a friend, former student and the best fisherman I have ever known was introducing me to fishing in the Ozarks, where he had been raised. It interested me that, as we drove through the hills, he identified each family area by which side they had fought on during the Civil War. If I recall correctly, as we passed one group of houses he said, “That’s Smithville, they weren’t on either side. They were just thieves. 

All of these, of course, are trivial, even amusing examples of how long hatreds, fears and concerns can last. What has been amazing is the extent to which such antipathies between groups have disappeared in the United States, a nation built by immigrants from different lands, with different languages, different laws and different moralities. It is only where peoples have been separated that animosities and fears remain. Working in North Dakota I learned that it would be a mistake for a Sioux to wander onto a Chippewa reservation (or the reverse) even if that person were there to help as in the form of a nurse or social worker. 

I believe the unification of the diverse peoples of the United States to be a consequence of public education. It is understandable for established residents to be concerned about new groups, as the people in my community were about the Italian immigrants who flooded The Hill in St. Louis, but when all of the children attend school together, as did Germanic me, Irish Rosie Burke and Italian Ernie Di Amico, where they use a common language, are taught a common cultural history (as opposed to ethnic history) and develop a common set of skills (as well as common complaints about teachers!) those ethnic concerns disappear. 

Recently, however, the great god “diversity” has appeared. Now new groups can demand their cultural “rights.”  Hispanic immigrants can be taught in Spanish, while laws and even advertisements appear in Spanish as well as English.  I suppose if a wave of Turks migrate here, we shall need classes in Turkish and street signs in Turkish.  Where is the logical end of this approach?

Less publicized, but equally important are the demands of Muslim immigrants to be permitted to be judged by their own laws, a demand which was accepted by a judge in Florida who permitted a Muslim woman to have her photograph taken for her driver’s license with her face concealed. Similarly, Muslim taxi drivers, licensed to meet travelers at the airport are permitted to refuse customers carrying sealed containers of alcoholic beverages or “seeing-eye” dogs. A Texas judge even ruled that a divorce according to Muslim law was acceptable in Texas.

Diversity, as worshipped, is making the United States a land of multiple languages and laws based on multiple moral bases. What will be the long term effects of this? Can anyone tell me of any nation or any geographic area in which such diversity exists that the different peoples live together in mutual respect and unanimity? 

Consider the Balkans. Croatians, Serbs and Albanians have occupied the same mountain area for centuries and for at least the last thousand years, having different religions and languages, have spent their time fighting and killing one another. Currently they are at peace, but a peace enforced by United Nations forces. 

Which brings us to “Bush’s war,” a ten year attempt to bring democracy and peace to Iraq, a land of Kurds, Sunnis and Shi′ites – all peace loving Muslims but involving two races, Kurds and Arabs, and two Arabic sects. However, following the “peace” enforced by the United States, these peoples are returning to killing one another. It appears they would rather hate and live in fear of their lives than accept the right of all to exist together. 

Even in democratic and peaceful Sweden and Norway the southerners look down upon, even despise, the Laplanders of the north and don’t tell me there are no problems in Canada between French speaking Quebecers and the English population of the rest of Canada. I’ve lived there.

The United States became a great and unified nation as a consequence of a common language and a common set of laws and cultural goals. It needs to return to being a one language nation obeying laws derived from the Christian principles which have permitted its growth as a single, unified, peaceful nation. Diversities long term consequences are fragmentation and warfare.