Dream Interpretation from the Perspectives of Freud, Jung, and Hillman
Aydin Areta

This file is the third part of a session on comparative dream interpretation and dream symbolism from the perspectives of Freud and Jung, presented in the company of friends from the Janus group and centred on the following themes:

- Similarities and differences in dream interpretation in the psychoanalytic traditions of Freud and Jung.

- The difference between dream interpretation in Hillman’s archetypal psychology and the approaches of Freud and Jung; Hillman’s emphasis on moving from interpretation to image and from Logos to Mythos; and the way in which his approach to dream interpretation, critical of ego-centred interpretation, has deep roots in the Iranian intellectual tradition. By Hillman’s own emphasis, through Henry Corbin’s connection with Jung’s Eranos Circle this became one of the most foundational ideas in his archetypal system of thought. From this perspective, Hillmanian dream interpretation can be understood as a continuation of the idea of “Zand” in ancient Iran, or of a phenomenological hermeneutic extending from Khusrawani wisdom to the philosophy of Illumination, transmitted through Henry Corbin and the Eranos Circle into the central idea of James Hillman’s system of dream interpretation.

Hillman’s view of dreams was neither, like Freud’s, based on latent and repressed wishes, nor, like Jung’s, centred on compensating consciousness through the unconscious. Hillman came to believe that this entire process of interpreting dreams for the sake of greater awareness of life and the empowerment of the ego was profoundly mistaken. In his view, Freud had indeed used the royal road of the unconscious in dream interpretation, but in practice his method became a one-way, congested road from the unconscious into the city of the ego.

For Hillman, dreams are part of our larger historical and mythic stories. We must understand them in the process of dream interpretation without centring the ego, and allow dreams to enter into relation with our Being through a phenomenological process.

Hillman was deeply opposed to the tendency within analytical psychology that attempted to turn psychology into a science in the positivist sense. In his view, mythology is the psychology of ancient humanity, because it describes the relation between human beings and the images and forces that shape and guide the human mind and its actions. Psychology, in turn, is the mythic thought of our own age, replacing the ancient gods and images with forces such as ego, superego, and shadow.

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