I have never experienced an archetypal symbol emerging into consciousness, which makes it more diffi cult for me to appreciate Jung’s theory. However, I have had one dream that might well fi t the...

I have never experienced an archetypal symbol emerging into consciousness, which makes it more diffi cult for me to appreciate Jung’s theory. However, I have had one dream that might well fi t the description of a “big dream:” I dreamed that I was a physiological psychologist studying cell mechanisms. I was on the track of something unbelievably important, for I was going to be the fi rst person to discover the true meaning of life. But then some invisible super-being put a message in my head: “They kill you if you fi nd out too much. The secret of life is DEATH!” So I gave up my research and decided that it was safer not to know what life really meant. This was not a nightmare; the dream had an awesome quality, as though I were experiencing rare and profound wonders. This dream may indicate that there were unpleasant aspects of my life that I was on the verge of discovering, but preferred not to know about. Or I could have been placing too much emphasis on raising my self-esteem by making brilliant discoveries and achieving lasting fame (like a Freud or Jung), and the dream might have been warning me that this was psychological suicide; I should instead be working on other issues, such as my relationships with important people in my life. (See also the section on dream interpretation in Chapter 6 and the dream of a writer driving up a mountain peak.) Jung might well see an emerging archetype somewhere.