"Dreams have fascinated humankind since the earliest time, with the first dream report recorded in Sumerian texts in the third millennium, BC (Hall, 1982). Historically, dreams have played a significant role in religion (Old and New testaments), art and mythology, seen as messages from gods or as visions. The earliest Greek perception of dreams as a divine visit from god led to numerous shrines being erected where dreams were honored in a sacred manner with elaborate rituals and preparation to facilitate healing (Van de Castle, 1994). Manuals of dream interpretation were in existence even well into the Christian era. The human world was seen as existing within a larger world, encompassing divine order, where messages for one's future were revealed at times in dreams.
"By the time Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1909, modern psychology had reduced dreams to "the function of disguising unacceptable thoughts in order to preserve sleep" (Hall, 1982, p. 123). Dreams had lost their divine purpose and meaningfulness until Carl Jung's pioneering work in recognizing dream's profundity: Jung began to understand that the telos (goal and purpose) of psychic development is the self. The more he penetrated into the unconscious, the more complex his theories about the structure of the psyche became. He noted in his dreams representations of successive layers in the unconscious, from the personal to the archaic, prehuman and transpersonal levels. What he later named the collective unconscious, the "ancestral heritage of possibilities of representations ... appears to consist of mythological or primordial images." These images Jung named archetypes, which are dynamic, numinous and capable of arousing strong affects. They carry both positive and negative energies. These universal symbols can be found in religion, fairytales and myths. Individually, they are manifested in our dreams and fantasies.
"In his autobiography, Jung reflects on death and afterlife, entertaining the idea of a "creative determinant" that decides the rebirth of the souls. He further writes, "Once the soul had reached a certain stage of understanding ... it would then no longer have to return, fuller understanding having put to rout the desire for re-embodiment ... and attain what the Buddhists call nirvana. But if a karma still remains to be disposed of, then the soul relapses again into desires and returns to life once more" (Jung, 1961, pp. 321-322). Jung demonstrated an incredibly open mind and a deep understanding of karma and rebirth, concepts that are also part of the Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy model. As early as 1935, he wrote in "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of The Dead":
"In his autobiography, Jung reflects on death and afterlife, entertaining the idea of a "creative determinant" that decides the rebirth of the souls. He further writes, "Once the soul had reached a certain stage of understanding ... it would then no longer have to return, fuller understanding having put to rout the desire for re-embodiment ... and attain what the Buddhists call nirvana. But if a karma still remains to be disposed of, then the soul relapses again into desires and returns to life once more" (Jung, 1961, pp. 321-322). Jung demonstrated an incredibly open mind and a deep understanding of karma and rebirth, concepts that are also part of the Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy model. As early as 1935, he wrote in "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of The Dead":
the spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life,
therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to
attain; it also generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man
to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any
object, and thus to rest on the Hub of rebirth, freed from all illusions of
genesis and decay (Jung, 1978, pp. 74-75).For Jung, the goal of treatment is not to cure the pathology but to heal the soul, helping the individual to become integrated and whole. The process of individuation is, therefore, sacred and filled with numinosity. The relationship between the patient and the analyst is profound and it is in the relating that healing takes place. "Here we must follow nature as a guide, and what the doctor then does is less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities latent in the patient himself" (Jung, 1966, p. 41)." Barbara Raven Lee "Dreams, Jung and Hypnotherapy". Journal of Heart Centered Therapies.
FindArticles.com. 31 Dec, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FGV/is_2_2/ai_65014117/
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