Carl Jung was born in 1875. He studied the mind and it’s mysteries under Sigmund Freud. Freud and Jung are foremost among the established names in dream interpretation. However similar their career paths became, their hypotheses couldn’t have been more different. To start with, Freud and Jung both believed that the subconscious existed in its own right.  It is the definition of the unconscious where they disagreed.

Sigmund Freud saw the unconscious as a primitive mind where the baser human instincts and emotions reside. Carl Jung believed that the unconscious mind represented a higher, spiritual platform.

Carl Jung believed that dreams were the best method for people to acquaint themselves with their unconscious mind. He saw dreams as a message from the unconscious providing a guide to conscious and helping the dreamer achieve a kind of wholeness.  Dreams were a way of offering solutions to problems the dreamer was experiencing in his or her waking life. Sigmund Freud postulated dreams as a mechanism used to hide the dreamer’s true feelings from the conscious mind.

The most common facet of dream interpretation associated with the work of Carl Jung is that of archetypes. Jung believed that there are certain universal themes and universal images that were common to every culture and every civilization around the world. To Carl Jung, these universal archetypes were proof of what he called the collective unconscious – or memories handed down through the ages from one generation to the next.

Some of the most well known archetypes described by Carl Jung include:

The Persona – Jung described the persona as the image presented to the public by each person. In essence the persona is the public mask, the part of you that is shown to the world at large. The opposite of the persona is the shadow.

The Shadow – Whereas the persona represents the parts of the personality that are shown to the world, the shadow archetype represents each person’s rejected aspects of themselves. The shadow is often seen as a symbol of fear, anger or weakness.

The Anima – Jung saw the anima as the feminine aspects of the male mind. The anima is the repressed female parts of the male psyche.

The Animus – The animus is the opposite of the anima. Where the anima is the feminine part of the male psyche, the animus is the masculine part of the female mind. Like the anima, the animus is most often repressed during waking hours.

The Divine Child – The divine child was described by Carl Jung as a symbol of the true self. The divine child is often seen to represent the sense of potential or the sense of vulnerability.

The Wise Old Man – Jung saw the archetype of the wise old man as a symbol of the self or of a powerful figure.

The Great Mother – The great mother is seen as a symbol of nurture, growth, or fertility. The great mother archetype is also associated with dominance and seduction. 

Carl Jung believed that these archetypes appeared in every dream culture with some variations to accommodate cultural restrictions.

The information given here is a small part on the whole topic of dream interpretation. To provide you with even this small part of the study is a great pleasure.