Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940 (Philemon Foundation Series)
Professor Jung:
Yes, we have to conclude that there is an inner constellation that did not change over the years.
When a dream recurs so frequently, I usually refrain from searching for the specific motives.
Moreover, I quite generally take the view that a neurosis is not of traumatic origin, that is, that it can’t be traced back to a singular frightening experience; I try to understand it in the context of its present meaning.
For what lives and takes effect today is also recreated today, again and again.
I also relate frequently recurring dreams to what is currently going on, therefore, and to what is recreated over and over again, and not to something that lies many years back.
So this dream, too, refers to an inner constellation, which has not changed over the years.
We already know from the previous dream that there exists a certain splitting in the dreamer, that is, that consciousness and the unconscious are split off from each other.
We further saw that the unconscious and consciousness even attract each other, as expressed in the threat that the snake poses to the dreamer.
This dream goes a step further than the mere threat; the danger becomes manifest: the dreamer falls into the water, in which she is, so to speak, completely swallowed by the monster of the unconscious.
We have to take into account a peculiar detail, the fact that she falls down in an upright position.
This is very unusual, because usually one falls sideways one way or the other.
When someone, as in this case, falls down with the hands on the body and with the feet first, this expresses a certain stiffness, as if one were enclosed by something.
The feeling of suffocation the dreamer experiences when sinking also points to this tight enclosure.
It is as if she were pulled into the mouth of a monster and swallowed.
Myths express the sucking and suffocating aspect of water by populating it with monsters, dragons, or other water creatures.
Many primitive heroic myths also tell the story that the hero is devoured by the dragon, complete with his ship.
In the monster’s belly he is pressed to such an extent that, so as not to be crushed, he pushes the remains of the ship against the walls of the stomach.
The experience of being pressed is a very important motif.
In our dream it also finds expression in the feeling of suffocating.
To what does this refer? From where do we have such a direct experience?
Participant: From birth.
