Book Club 1.2 - Inner Work by Robert Johnson

End of intro; Dreamwork Step One: Associations

tl;dr the psyche operates by conflict (end of intro); Step 1 of dreamwork is association which entails a. articulation of all the associations with each image in the dream, b. picking the associations that “click” and c. searching for mythological amplifications of archetypal dream elements. Also d. dream dictionaries are bad. Also some good articulation of the major players in the Jungian psyche: Shadow, Animus/a, Great Mother and the Wise Old Man

A great week’s reading here. One big theoretical point that was mind-stimulating was his bit about the Shadow. After it, I think I must go read his book on the Shadow. It added more nuance than I have thought about the Shadow with. I thought of it as a reservoire of our repressed/rejected aspects and manifested always in some conflict with the ego because of this. But Johnson offered a supplementary frraming that I liked:

“How the shadow appears in a dream depends on the ego’s attitude. For example, if a man’s attitude is friendly toward his inner shadow, and he is willing to grow and change, the shadow will often appear as a helpful friend, a “buddy”, a tribal brother who helps him in his adventures, backs him up and teaches him skills. If he is trying to repress his shadow, it will usually appear as a hateful enemey, a brute or monster who attacks him in his dreams.” (p.50)

That’s fascinating. I realise that I’ve become a bit of a secular Jungian over the years and the grip of the Jungian theory’s specific archetypes has lost its hold on me (more on this below). I think deeper study is warranted again and testing to learn more of the theoretical nuances to them and see whether they matche my own intra-psychic experience.

Associations and their limitations

On the dreamwork front, Johnson’s method is slowwww. What he’s talking about with associations in step one is incredibly time intensive. I think when I first got into Jungian dreamwork this is how I used to do things. I think it has its value but in my experience this is not the way to go with dreamwork. Going through every single image in a dream and plotting out the associations? That’s mental.

In a perfect world perhaps but from a pedagogical point of view it’s not a great way of motivating beginners.

That said, I can see its value and I think I will use it but more as a surgical scalpel rather than the entire toolbox. If (when) I encounter a dream where I just can’t get a handle on it then doing this delicate work of mapping out my associations to each image might be a good way to break the ice. Or if there are symbols that aren’t clicking together with the rest of what I know then this might be a good technique. But as a way of consistently doing dreamwork? I have to say it seems bananas to me. I remember having a copybook in Australia where I tried to work this way and fascinated as I was by the unconscious I just couldn’t break through.

That ties in with another point: the Jungian bias against dream dictionaries. I found it in Jung and in every other Jungian author I’ve encountered. It’s almost a dogma in the Jungian tradition and I think it’s way off point. Dream dictionaries can be awesome — dreambible.com and dreammoods are great as is Tony Crisp’s dreamhawk. They can also be god awful (I’m looking at you myislamicdream.com).

The point that grinds my gears is that the Jungians will tell you to go off and read a load of ancient mythology and surf the vibes there but when it comes to doing this with a dream dictionary — “dreams are individual you must find your own meanings”. Johnson almost acknowledges this at one point.

For a regular practice of dream work I would recommend dream dictionaries. The key thing to keep in mind is Johnson’s second point in the associations chapter — the “click”. Your judge for whether a dream dictionary entry is correct is not one of the manifold meanings it offers — it’s about what sparks something in your soul. You read discerningly — the same way you work with your own associations.

Of course dream dictionaries have their limitations. When it come to what a friend, family member or former acquaintence, teacher, colleague or boss might symbolise, they are OF COURSE going to be useless. That’s when we get into the work of association (and my own dream working techniques: keeping diaries and tracking correlations between these symbols and your daily life as a way of triangulating in on the meanings of a symbol).

While dream dictionaries are going to be useless for these personal connections they are better with the associations for things like cars or hippos that are more collective cultural artifacts than personal (between personal and collective unconscious let’s put a cultural unconscious).

Jungian Framing of Unconscious

Another thought I had when reading this was Johnson’s framing of the unconscious. It overlaps with the framing of the Self among the Jungians. It’s the metaphysical axiomatic of the Jungian tradition that makes it so functional as a religion substitute.

This observation of mine isn’t very rigorous as yet; it’s more vibe-based. It’s less of a sharp critique than it is a framing disagreement.