Archetypal Content in An Everyday Dream
This dream serves as an example of how archetypal patterns hide beneath everyday environments and people in our dreams.
Somehow, I discover that my wallet is missing. I realize that the kids, like pickpockets, have taken it.
I get off the bus at the top of Barsta Hill, where the children live.
R comes towards me smiling from one of the apartment buildings. It is unexpected to meet him here. He is somewhat of a prankster. I realize that he is behind it all. He is in an excellent mood and invites me inside. The theft seems to have been just a joke.
He lives in a basement beneath the high-rise, but at the same time, it looks like an underground apartment. The space is small, two rooms with a low ceiling. Quite cozy, with things everywhere—sofa and bookshelves. He goes into the far room to fetch something. I get claustrophobic; it is too cramped. I say that I can't be here and head towards the exit.
But then I find myself sitting in the large room anyway. R keeps smiling the whole time. He is almost like a hippie but seems to have influence over the area. He sits down across from me, on the other side of the living room table. I understand that he can steal things from me whenever he wants.
He pours out what he was holding in his hands onto the table. It consists of nuts and bolts and other things one might store in a box in the garage. He smiles and says that, for example, he has taken these from me.
I can get them back if I want; it's all just for fun. He is entertaining himself, but at the same time, he has influence over me in a way I cannot control. This creates a sense of uncertainty.
The dream seems entirely mundane—bus, familiar residential area, an old acquaintance, screws and nuts. But there are actually archetypal content in the dream that one might not notice when first reading it or even when writing it down oneself.
In the beginning, the dreamer is sitting on a bus with many people, going up Barsta Hill (my translation of the original place name). The narrative thus describes the dreamer as a collective person, in a collective situation. As is evident from many other texts on this blog, the opposites of collective and individual are a recurring theme. This is because the largely unconscious and autonomous individuation process is a differentiation process whose goal is to develop the individual personality. In other words, this inner, autonomous process is, to a greater or lesser extent, in opposition to the ego as a collective person and seeks to distinguish the individual from the collective environment's values and expectations, which have been introjected over time and become part of the ego's identity.
This inner impulse is represented in the dream's opening by the children on the bus, who steal the dreamer's wallet, which briefly symbolizes his ability to navigate the outer world (ID card, possibly a bus pass, bank card, etc.). Children often represent playful, spontaneous impulses, frequently with an element of mischief, as in this dream. In other words, they have a trickster-like quality. Playfully stealing something is a trickster impulse.
In our dreams, children, especially when they appear in groups as they do here, express the dwarf motif. Both children and dwarves represent creativity, playfulness, and pranks. Jung says:
"The dwarf is always a subordinate creative force in the unconscious that can either be helpful and retrieve things from the unconscious or steal things." (Visions, p. 626.)
The motif of something being stolen unnoticed in dreams indicates a temporary eclipse of consciousness. The ego is absent for a moment, and during this instant, the "little folk," the unconscious impulse, snatches the treasure.
This eclipse occurs when the dreamer is sitting on a bus with many people, meaning when he is in his collective state. Being collective implies a lower level of consciousness. To be individual and conscious requires energy; one is swimming against the current instead of merely drifting along. This is why striving for individuality is uncommon. Not only does it encounter resistance from the surroundings, but it also, to use Jung's words, goes against nature. In the collective environment and collective state, the dreamer loses his identity as an individual, which the wallet represents.
The dream is characterized by playfulness; it is not a nightmare. Often a conflict between opposites first manifests through some form of dwarf motif. It is a whisper, a barely noticeable impulse— a "Psst! Hey you?" We usually do not notice it in our busy lives, where we tend to distract ourselves when we finally have time to relax. We do not listen to our inner dwarves, even less so the more distractions we have access to, such as mobile phones. Sometimes, the dwarf withdraws with a shrug, only to return much later. Other times, it escalates, making itself known with increasingly severe symptoms. The dwarf has become frustrated and multiplies, experienced as an inner enemy. That has not happened yet in our case.
We should mention one more thing about the children, who disappear from the picture when the dreamer meets R. The dreamer writes that they are around twelve years old. For the dreamer, this age, for specific reasons, marks a transition from childhood to adolescence. For example, the dreamer was an imaginative child who expressed his creativity in play. But at twelve, he simply stopped playing and subsequently—though not necessarily for this reason—experienced an encroaching darkness that deepened during his teenage years. During this transition period, something was lost, which the dreams often remind him of. The twelve-year-old boy is a recurring figure in his dreams, often as an orphan or otherwise alone.
The bus thus drives up the hill and stops there. The dreamer gets off the bus because this is where the children stay, and he wants his wallet back. According to folklore, hills were home to all kinds of supernatural beings, making it a fitting place for the mischievous children and the one who meets the dreamer like a folkloric dwarf king. He is, after all, the leader of the thieving children/dwarves.
R is a recurring figure in the dreams, and for the dreamer, he represents, according to his associations, extraversion, spontaneity, playfulness, and so on. In reality, he could actually be something of a prankster as well.
The dreamer’s primary association with Barsta Hills is that there was a laundry here, run by the parents of an acquaintance when he was young. Washing is a recurring image of purification as part of the alchemists’ work. The stains of the unconscious, in the form of projections, shadow qualities, and so forth, must be attended to regularly. von Franz says that therapy, to a large extent, is about "washing one's sheets." (Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales.) The washing motif is, in other words, a counterpart to the theft on the bus. We saw that the theft was a result of an unconsciousness that can be "washed away" with a bit of effort.
R’s archetypal dwarf-like quality is emphasized by the fact that he lives in a cramped burrow underground on a hill. When he welcomes the dream ego, he does so smiling, warmly, and the dreamer now realizes that the theft was a prank orchestrated by R. This energy, which belongs to the dreamer but is in conflict with his everyday self, wants to challenge his current identity through the theft of the wallet, to make him reflect on who he is or has become as he sits on the bus. The theft also leads the dreamer to the halls of the dwarf king, undoubtedly according to the latter’s intentions.
In the dwarf’s burrow, the dreamer experiences claustrophobia—it is cramped, and things are scattered everywhere—suggesting a descent into the domain of the unconscious. Encounters with the unconscious sometimes produce such symptoms—one may feel seasick, dizzy, a sensation of drowning, and so on. The ego fears that the unconscious is about to flood over it and seeks to escape. But again, this dream does not aim to shake the dreamer to his core, so to speak, but rather represents playful, dwarf-like impulses that merely wish to draw his attention to something beneficial to become aware of. Thus, the dreamer finds himself sitting on the couch after all, now without claustrophobic feelings.
There in the burrow, he realizes that the dwarf king can steal things from him at any time. As soon as his consciousness sinks due to the collective attitude, the dwarf can snatch something the dreamer needs—and in that case, there is nothing he can do about it. But with increased consciousness and individuality, he can establish a creative relationship with the dwarf. Characteristic of the dwarf motif—both in fairy tales and dreams—is that it can either help or hinder, depending on one's own attitude and actions toward the dwarf.
The dreamer writes that R is something of a hippie, that is, a representative of a peaceful rebellion against prevailing conservative structures. When the dreamer has this dream, he is in midlife, with children, work, and a solidifying structure of colletive consciousness. The playful dwarf is, of course, a counterreaction to this.
As mentioned, it wants to remind the dreamer of something valuable he has left behind in order to succeed with his "adult project." Dwarves are also associated with treasures beneath the earth. But what the dwarf king pours out onto the table to show the dreamer what he has already stolen from him is not treasure but nuts and bolts, the kind of things one might keep in a box in the garage—in other words, essentially scrap metal. The dream ego does not understand this. Why has he stolen screws, bolts, and such? Well, these are used to build strong structures. While the dreamer, for his part, strengthens his increasingly rigid consciousness structure, the dwarf is there, destabilizing it. It is precisely this structure that prevents the dwarf and the children from becoming part of his life. The metal framework becomes like a barrier between the ego and the unconscious' creative impulses. This ongoing sabotage of the ego’s ambitions instills "a sense of uncertainty," which may be a first step to wisdom.
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With this text, I have sought to illustrate how even dreams with more or less everyday content can be infused with archetypal imagery. When studying Jungian theory, one often encounters images such as dwarves, dragons, and angels. One might think that one never dreams of such things, so why devote so much space to outdated imagery? But if one allows oneself a bit of playfulness in relation to dreams and never loses sight of the fact that dream images should not be seen literally but symbolically, one often finds that such archaic content does appear in our dreams, though typically dressed in modern garb. Instead of an actual dwarf in the folkloric sense, we dream of children; instead of a dragon, we might dream of a large lizard; instead of angels descending from the sky, we may dream of aliens. It is, of course, not about making dreams more mystical, but the point is that with an archetypal approach, we can gain a deeper understanding of the figures, places, and events in our dreams. Since dreams originate from the unconscious, there is almost always an archetypal element present, to a greater or lesser extent.
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