While The Red Book is an extraordinary display of extraverted dream content that has moved from the interior to the exterior, most of the Jungian display of dreams resides firmly within the purview of the internal. The domain of the internal remains unavailable for external view. While the “Persona” (Mask) identified by Jung is intended for public display, all other elements of the human psyche, such as the shadow, anima, animus, unconscious, archetypes, and collective unconscious, are not for public display. It is to this very full and complex introverted domain that I now turn.
Introverted Dreams
While many dreams seem to involve an interaction between our internal world and our external world, serving an adaptive function or providing guidance and support in meeting the challenges of the external world, there are other dreams—or at least interpretations of dreams—that are fully intra-psychic. These dreams seem to be in the business of portraying the psychic intricacies of our inner world.
There are essentially two kinds of portrayals of our psyche being offered in our dreams. There are portrayals that suggest ways in which we are distinctive and different from many other people. These are the dreams that reveal something about our personality. Long-standing models of personality differences, such as the Enneagram (Palmer, 1991; Riso and Hudson, 2003), as well as more recently presented models such as that offered by Carl Jung (1971) suggest ways in which to understand what our dreams are conveying about the unique ways in which we perceive and act in our world.
There are also portrayals that focus on those functions and structures of our psyche that are commonly on display in dreams we all produce. These portrayals include the introverted perspectives offered by many psychoanalytically oriented dream interpreters, beginning with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Attention is devoted to the various agencies in the human psyche that seem to play a role in the production of our dreams, as well as the way the interaction between these agencies are portrayed in our dreams.
I consider both types of intrapsychic dream portrayals, beginning with those that attend to personality differences. I specifically consider the portrayal of dreams offered through the lenses of the Enneagram. I then consider those portrayals that focus on what is commonly displayed in all dreams. I reveal something about the fundamental structure of the human psyche. My focus will be on the psychodynamic theories of Carl Jung.
Nine Views of the World Through Dreams: The term “Enneagram” comes from an Egyptian word for Nine. This ancient model of personality differences provides a nine-part template. We find all nine views displayed in dreams, as well as the appearance of the three powerful emotions that Riso and Hudson bring to their presentation of the Enneagram: anger, shame and fear. For instance, many of us dream of a forceful person or event that intrudes on our life (Enneagram 8), an uncomfortable setting in which we are asked to somehow mediate a dispute between two people (Enneagram 9), or a circumstance where we are required to be perfect in our execution of a test or physical performance (Enneagram 1). In each case, we experience anger—and we are often powerless or unsuccessful in addressing the challenge we face.
