ABSTRACT
This is an informal account of an ongoing quest. It all began when I had a dream some thirty years ago. I lived above an antiquarian bookshop in Cambridge at the time. I was in my mid-thirties and in a period of transition from my career in industrial chemistry to one in psychology. The bookshop had an accessible roof with a number of small gables. In my dream I was on the roof at night when I was accosted by an invisible stranger. A struggle ensued until he had me pinned against a low parapet, with the street four storeys below. I suddenly had the idea that I could get rid of my adversary by throwing him over my head into the void. Which I did. Maybe this was not a propitious outcome, but it did convince me of the reality of archetypal figures, no matter how induced. I was reading ‘The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’ (Vol. 8 of Jung’s Collected Works) at around this time, in which he states,
Significant dreams . . . are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasury house of psychic experience. How many people have I encountered who at the first meeting could not refrain from saying ‘I once had a dream!’
