”I’m following my father’s plans”

This dream of a middle-aged man illustrates the cultural and personal conflict between the masculine and the feminine principle, with common dream imagery.

The dreamer stands on a vast beach, along with many other scattered people. He is part of a loosely connected group. A low mountain ridge runs across the beach, dividing it in two. The plan is to reach the other side.

The dreamer’s group is set to go through the mountain. Before they begin walking, he notices a smaller group of people planning to take a different route. A middle-aged man smiles humbly and apologetically at the dreamer, explaining that they will walk around the ridge instead of over it. The dreamer shrugs, and the two groups start on their respective paths.

The dreamer's group then proceeds in single file up the path. The group consists of ordinary men and women. The terrain is hilly—with bushes, trees, rocks, and so on. The dreamer is in good spirits; it’s a nice walk.

They begin to walk down toward a flat rock jutting out from the height. Here it’s bare, just rock. The dreamer spots his gray scarf lying there on some bushes. Apparently, it ended up here when he tossed it down from a higher spot on a previous occasion. Casually, he throws it down again so it will land on the ground below.

It seems like everyone is introducing themselves as they walk, because the dreamer remarks casually to those behind him, “Well, you’re all familiar with my father’s plans—and mine.”

Then he steps out onto the protruding, flat rock. (The company is now gone.) That’s when he notices that the scarf is hanging on the edge of the cliff, apparently caught there. He approaches to loosen it so that it can fall down.

However, the only way to do this is by climbing down over the cliff edge, which puts him in a precarious situation. His grip is weak, and he can’t climb back up. He tries to get a hold with his right hand, but it doesn’t work. Panic begins to rise; he’s on the verge of falling.

Nearby on the rock sits a childhood friend of his, busy with something, with his back to the cliff. The dreamer whispers, "Help, help," reaching out for his friend’s hand. The friend stretches his hand towards him but remains facing away, without enough strength to pull him up. The handshake is also weak.

The dream begins in a place that signifies the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, or, in other words, between the masculine (land with many people) and the feminine (sea). It seems to be a resort with quite a few people, of which the dreamer is a part. The beginning describes the dreamer as a collective person, in other words, in a liminal space between not only the conscious and the unconscious, but also—represented by the ridge—between an existing situation and a potentially new one. The plan to cross to the other side expresses the dreamer's ambition to achieve change.

This opening scene paints a picture of the dream's theme: masculine versus feminine, collective versus individual, as well as the dreamer's half-conscious ambitions.

For the dreamer, it is obvious to go through the mountain to the other side. Not even when another option is suggested does he consider it for a moment, at least not for himself. In dreams, particularly in their beginnings, we tend to act in accordance with the attitudes and habits that shape our waking lives. The dreamer’s attitude and habit follow the masculine path, the hero’s way – forward, upward, through.

Another middle-aged man, representing a different group on the beach, humbly announces that they will go around. They follow the principle of water, which was so central in Daoism, the path of feminine yielding. At the age and stage of life the dreamer is in, this is also the right path for him. At the time of the dream, he understands this, which the apologetic man implies. Dream figures that are similar to ourselves represent content that could just as well be conscious (in contrast to, for example, animals, which represent content further away from consciousness). But it is one thing to realize something, and quite another to live according to that realization. There, our attitudes and habits become an obstacle to change.

They move forward and upward to penetrate the ridge. They then veer down toward a rock on the mountain, where the dreamer discovers his scarf, which he must have thrown down from an even higher place at an earlier time. He intends to throw it down again from here, letting it fall to the ground, without further reflection.

A scarf is wrapped around the neck to keep warm. The symbol thus carries an encircling, warming, and therefore maternal quality. The dreamer underestimates the value of this content, maintaining a habitually nonchalant attitude toward it. His insistence on throwing it down illustrates the conflict between the masculine rock and the feminine value. On this father's rock in the mountain, there is no room for the maternal, the intimate—it must simply be cast aside. But this one-sided attitude risks leading the dreamer to his fall.

The dreamer then says, still with the nonchalant attitude that characterizes the dream ego, that everyone knows he follows ”dad’s plans.” Before we delve into what this means, as it has a deeper significance than the literal one, we can notice the post hoc principle that dreams often employ: ”because of this, the other follows.” Here we see that the dreamer first throws away his scarf, which represents a feminine value, only to then proclaim that he follows the masculine value.

In reality, the dreamer does not follow his father's plans. On the contrary, his father never expressed any plans, or even hopes, for the dreamer. Likely, he had no plans for his son. As a young man, the dreamer was something of a rebel and went his own way, and even later, he hasn’t followed in his father's footsteps in any way. He has not made his life choices based on how his father lived his life, neither by following his plans nor by refusing to follow them.

So what does the dream mean when the dream ego expresses that it follows "dad's plans"? We must elevate our understanding from the personal, literal interpretation to the symbolic and universal. The dream says nothing about the dreamer's actual father, but rather about the symbol of the "Father". It is noteworthy that this final scene unfolds as the dreamer is heading towards a rock, where the climax of the dream also takes place. There is a strong religious or symbolic connection between the rock and the father god, not least, but by no means exclusively, in biblical contexts. The rock represents the unshakable, the enduring. In Chinese philosophy, the rock represents the masculine principle yang (while the waterfall represents the feminine principle, yin). When the dreamer casts aside his scarf and steps out onto the rock, he is not making any statement about his actual father but is claiming the masculine principle for himself – "I do what the Father expects of me"; that is to say, the father as an archetypal principle.

As a symbol, the Father represents the collective conscious (in contrast to the Mother, who represents the collective unconscious), meaning our culture’s agreements, our principles and values, the prevailing order, stability, that which should endure, and so on. That the dream ego expresses this principle does not mean that he is especially "manly" or incapable of appreciating traditionally "feminine" traits or activities. Rather, it means that he, like everyone else, has integrated his culture’s spiritual values and expectations to a greater or lesser extent and has become a part of the collective conscious – one who follows the Father’s expectations.

(Note that the dream ego does not say: "I am following my father's plans," which could be interpreted as an independent standpoint; rather, he says, "You all know my father's plans—and mine." Something that "everyone knows" and takes for granted, is collective, and through his way of describing the matter, the dreamer makes himself a part of this.)

While all the qualities of the masculine principle are useful during the first half of life, for both men and women, one-sidedness will eventually lead to an inner counter-reaction. The psyche, like the body, is a self-regulating system that strives for balance. A far-reaching imbalance will inevitably lead, as Jung would express it, to ”neurotic symptoms.”

This understanding of ”dad's plans” as a symbol is strengthened, as mentioned, by the rejection of the maternal scarf and the paternal rock that the dreamer is heading toward, but also by the fact that the dream ego has thus far been in the company of a group of anonymous people – part of the collective.

This one-sided and inflationary attitude up in the mountains inevitably leads to the compensatory counter-reaction: the risk of falling. Just as the scarf got caught on the edge, the dreamer now clings to it and is himself what is about to fall off the rock. The only thing that appearantly can save him is his childhood friend, whom we can call ”N”, who is sitting on the rock, engaged in his own activities.

In reality, they used to hang out when they were children, but the dreamer hasn’t seen N in many years. The first thing the dreamer recalls about N is actually his father, who was known for being a staunch advocate of ”order and discipline.” The dreamer remembered several anecdotes where this man would go around sternly remarking that a certain child hadn’t closed the door properly, that they weren’t allowed to play near his car, and such things. That is to say, a perfect image of the rigid masculine principle.

When N grew up, they saw each other very rarely and only by chance. The dreamer reflected that his old friend had certain, what we might call, manly manners, such as ensuring that the dreamer was doing well, as if he otherwise could set things right. But to the dreamer it felt hollow and contrived. The dreamer had the sense that young N had decided to follow his father, seemingly lacking any other option. Both N and his father embodied, according to the dreamer’s associations, a hollow convention—an attitude that had lost its value.

But this is what remains for the dreamer, on the father’s rock. So, he helplessly reaches out his hand toward this previously familiar content, but it cannot help him any longer. The dreamer needs to develop a new attitude, new habits. The person on the beach who followed the principle of water, in contrast to the rock's, suggests that this path is possible for the dreamer.