Introduction

Dreams are healing symbols of the unconscious. Dreams are like icebergs rising out of the deep waters of the unconscious. The founders of depth psychology, Sigmund Freud and Emma Jung, both believed in the value of working with dreams. Jung himself is the prototype of the person healed by dreamwork. He worked through a difficult psychological crisis by self-interpreting a series of dreams. He also showed how to ground and contain the unconscious through art, journal work, and amplification of dream symbolism. Dreamwork provides a vibrant alternative to long-term use of psychoactive medications and lives of misery and unhappiness. Dreams are symbolic messages from the guiding and ordering centre of the personality, the Guiding Self—director of the individuation drive, the innate urge to become what one is. In Jung's view, the relationship between the ego and the unconscious occurs through symbolism, through what he called the "uniting symbol".