ABSTRACT
Although Freud defines "psychoanalysis" as a therapy that analyzes "the facts of transference and of resistance" (SE 14: 16), he could, with equal justification, have defined it as a therapy that interprets dreams. For Freud, the dream is a via regia, "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious." The dream, he says, is "the securest foundation" of psychoanalysis (SE 11: 33). Jung, too, believes that the dream is "the direct expression" of the unconscious (CW 16: 140, para. 295). Freud says that every dream "has a meaning and a psychical value," and he considers the possibility that one dream might be the fulfillment of a wish; another, the fulfillment of a fear; another, a reflection; another, the reproduction of a memory (SE 4: 123). In the end, however, he asserts, quite emphatically, that every dream, without exception, "is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish" (SE 4: 160). In contrast, Jung says that the theory "that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfilments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date." He acknowledges that some dreams do "represent wishes or fears," but he also contends that other dreams "contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides" (CW 16: 147, para. 317). In spite of this apparently liberal perspective on dreams, Jung does propose a theory of interpretation virtually as unequivocal as the one that Freud proposes. Instead of a wish theory, he offers a "compensation theory" (CW 8: 253, para. 489). According to Jung, in many or most (if not all) dreams, the unconscious presents to the ego, which always has a partial, prejudicial, or even defective attitude, various alternative perspectives for consideration. If the ego is non-defensive enough, it is able to entertain seriously, in a self-reflective, self-critical way, whether it ought to adopt any of these perspectives.
