Black Lives Matter

June 2, 2020

The Salome Institute stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with all activists fighting for change on our streets, in their writing, their healing work, their judicial activism, and their organizing. This support is unequivocal and unqualified.

I continue to channel Kali and Salome in these times. I believe ultimately in the necessity and beauty of peace, justice, love, and the true oneness of existence, but I also feel and honor the rage right now. I honor the rage and the grief that has not been heard and must be heard. It is the righteous rage of protection and love that says, never again will a Black Woman be shot in her home. Never again will a Black Woman be shot in her home by men whose salaries and uniforms her own tax dollars paid for. Never again will a Black Man be suffocated to death. Suffocated to death by a white man who joined the police force to channel his sadism, knowing that year after year, he would be protected in terrorizing people who had no recourse. Never again will a 25-year-old Black Man be hunted down and murdered by white men like it was a game, a game they knew they could win because their weapons and connections would shield them. Shield them as they have for hundreds of years.

Never again.

Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Lorenzo Dean, Eric Reason, Christopher McCorvey, Christopher Whitfield, Atatiana Jefferson, Dominique Clayton, Pamela Turner, Botham Jean, Antwon Rose II, Stephon Clark, Ronell Foster, Aaron Bailey, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and on and on and on… we see you. We are sorry. We see you.

I am navigating day after day, perhaps hour after hour, my own response in these times. I have waited for this rage to emerge. I have prayed for this rage to emerge. I have felt confused for decades about why this rage has not emerged with this force and in these numbers, and I am grateful for the rebellion. If we want change, alchemical, transformative change in our society, it is incumbent on all of us to participate.

We can participate internally as we raise consciousness. We can participate in our communities. We can participate with our money. We can participate with our skills. We can participate with our voices. We can participate with our platforms. We can participate with our writing. We can participate with our art. We can participate with our votes. We can participate with our feet and our bodies in the streets.

How each of us participates on any given day is for ourselves to navigate with truth and honesty. We cannot hide, nor can we grandstand. This is a collective uprising that needs each of us, in our own ways, for fuel and for transformation. This is an opportunity for the healing and creation of a society, a society that has been unequivocally racist and abusive from the first moment a white man stepped on this soil; racist in a thousand interweaving and suffocating ways. It cannot go on.

My own process is slow. I am never much for knowing what is right or appropriate in any given moment. I am not often in-step with time. I never quite know what is popular or what is current — this was as true in high school as it is now. I mostly read dead authors and books, not tweets. I am terrible at social media. I am uncomfortable on social media. But right now, I am fighting my own fears. I know that while I love the Black Writers of the past, in this moment of action, I need to bathe in the Black Voices speaking with urgency each day. I am melting old grief that has kept me frozen in action while staying present with the depths of history that keep me alive and able to participate at all. I am learning who to listen to now. Who to trust now. I am learning from Black activists and thinkers of this moment and will continue to take my cues from them.

Some of the resources that I have engaged with recently and historically, I humbly offer here. I am not the expert so I mean this as a humble beginning so as not to stay silent, nor encourage silence.

More than anything, if there are just two things I know to do right now, it is to take my lead from #blacklivesmatter organizers — to not question their tactics nor positions — and to read the voices of Black Women. I was not handed the books of Black Women in school. I was not taught that their words are often the most extraordinary, radical, embodied, mind-altering words. I was taught, implicitly, that they are invisible. So reading their words has been core to my reeducation for years, and it will continue to be. This is part of becoming conscious, seeing what is hidden in the unconscious of all of society. Black women live in the shadow of patriarchal white supremacy. They know it in their bones. And it is in the shadow where, if we do our work, we find the gold.

Find the books, lectures, and podcasts of Black Women (and Black Men) and learn from them. Learn from them now and for years to come. They do not speak in the same voice, so listening to one is not enough. It is not the job of Black People to save our democracy. It is not their responsibility to speak. But if they are speaking, we can listen, learn, elevate, donate, protest, and vote.

• Brittany Packnett Cunningham, AKA @MsPackyetti

• Alicia Garza

• Raquel Willis

• Kimberlé Crenshaw and the AAPF

• Fanny Brewster, The Racial Complex

• Wisdom Works by Black Women in Depth Psychology

• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

• bell hooks, Killing Rage

• Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard

• Nina Simone

• The Black Women Radicals database

• James Baldwin, “Letter From a Region in My Mind”

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle

• Richard Wright, Black Boy

• Killer Mike

• Kareem Abdul Jabar

Some places I’m sending funds:

• Black Lives Matter

• Black-owned businesses that have been damaged

• NAACP Legal Defense Fund

• The Marshall Project

With love and solidarity,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute

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“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.” - James Baldwin

James Baldwin wrote regularly about the unconscious projections implicit in race relations. I’ve long read his work in dialogue with Jung’s.

Our May 31st salon dove into (stumbled through) some of their writings and what we can learn from them.

Referenced work includes: James Baldwin’s “Letter From a Region in My Mind” & Carl Jung’s “The Undiscovered Self”

In today's salon, Carol Ferris and Satya Doyle Byock step away from the chronology of the Red Book to discuss recent events and the grief and rage surrounding George Floyd's death and police brutality. In solidarity with Black Lives Matter, we explore white projection onto black citizens through Jung and James Baldwin, and we explore Venus retrograde and the alchemy of hard-one love.

What Is Your Metaphor For This Time?

What Do You Need To Embrace This Mess?

May 20, 2020

What is your metaphor for this time?

Everyday, as I teach and counsel, I’m listening for the themes in peoples’ lives and in the collective. I’m wondering what’s unfolding in the subterranean space.

I have found myself talking with a couple of clients about the chrysalis, that in-between place that a caterpillar/butterfly goes when nothing is in form and everything is mush but something is changing. It’s a place of tremendous containment but absolute nothingness at the same time. What do you need to embrace the mess?

I’ve found myself talking with other clients about pregnancy. They are less facing the dissolution of old things and more just struggling against empty time and confusion. This is what Hexagram 5 of the I Ching calls “Calculated Waiting”: the long gestation before the birth, all hidden, all unknown, but still poignant. What do you need to embrace the waiting?

I’ve found myself thinking too about artist and writer’s retreats. What do you need to embrace the creativity?

About hermits, hermitage, convents, monks and nuns. What do you need to embrace the silence?

And about the alchemical retort, the vas, and the witch’s caldron. What do you need to embrace the transformation?

What is your metaphor for this time?

Something is cooking. This containment of slowing everything down has been alchemical, witchy, and hermit-like. This is the dissolving of the old form in preparation for the new. Something profound is unfolding here. It is painful, terrifying, comforting, insane, exciting, grief-laden, and unusual.

And somehow, for each of us, something new is emerging.

I’m seeing people set boundaries like never before. I’m hearing people commit to never go back to jobs or relationships that hurt them but that they couldn’t release on their own. I’m hearing people begin self-work they’ve been putting off. I’m witnessing folks finally, finally face pain that they’ve been too scared to face for years. For some, with effort, they’re beginning to make music, art, and poetry from the anguish. It doesn’t come quickly. It doesn’t always stay. But something may be emerging.

So, I ask you: what is your metaphor for this time? What image of containment—the chrysalis, the gestation, the hermitage, the witch’s caldron—do you need now in order to settle-in to whatever this time has brought you, to embrace the mess and the art too? What image will support you to endure this time, as well as to transform with it and the rest of the world?

XO,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute

What Joseph Campbell Might Have Said About COVID-19

What Joseph Campbell Might Have Said About This Global Pandemic

March 19, 2020

We have an opportunity now to remember the core story of our era: we are a single, global community.

Naturally, as I sat with my therapy clients this week and last, the theme of social and global despair kept arising. As we all wrestle with our own unrelated traumas, grief, and heartbreaks, this chaos of the pandemic and the uncertain economy is exacerbating suffering. People’s anxiety and despair are on the rise. The sense of meaninglessness and fear of apocalypse are rampant. And the simultaneous need for quarantine and “social distancing” for the health of our communities can evoke emotional isolation and a fear of others. But this needn’t turn us into fearful monsters. I find solace, amidst my preparation and changing plans, in some soulful thinkers who sought the deeper story behind the madness of their times.

Some of that wisdom that has helped to calm my heart this week are the thoughts of mythologist Joseph Campbell in the late ‘80s, shortly before his death. As a man who had spent his life devoted to the foundational stories of many cultures, he believed the coming time would call for a new, global one.

Myths, Cambell said, “come from realizations...that have to find expression in symbolic form. And the myth, the only myth that’s going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that’s talking about the planet. Not ‘this city,’ not ‘these people,’ but the planet and everybody on it.”

When asked, in the beloved interview series with Bill Moyers, about the “Earthrise” image that Apollo 8 took of our planet from the Moon, Campbell reflected on our collective opportunity to wake up to how deeply connected we are, not in fear but in solidarity. To remember our fundamental kinship.

“You don’t see any divisions there of nations or states or anything of the kind,” Campbell said, reflecting on the image of the Earth from space. “This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the ‘country’ that we are going to be celebrating, and those are the people that we are one with.”

While climate change has started to move us towards awakening to our true lack of divisions on this earth, the shock of a pandemic may get us there faster. Where there has been a slow coming-to-consciousness through global warming, COVID-19 gives us our crisis moment. Behind the panic and fear, there is a chance for a deep reminder of our common humanity and a commonly shared planet. But it is not all doom. There is always another side to the coin. There is also opportunity. From the pain, we might emerge with a greater sense of unity than we’ve had in many years of intense polarization within individual nations, and globally. 

However ironic it may seem, it helps me to sit with this underlying symbolism of our connections, and that a pandemic may provide a shocking reminder that can wrestle us out of a collective stupor.

We have an opportunity, as happens in sudden disasters, to experience spontaneous compassion and spontaneous acts of service. We can be reminded of our interconnection not through technology, but in the old religious sense: shared humanity, a shared life, and shared biology.  We are connected in ways we had forgotten. This pandemic, as devastating as it will continue to be to many people’s lives and livelihood, can on spiritual and psychological levels bring out the best in us. It can help us to join together in a way we may have forgotten was possible. 

Right now, this interconnectedness is rattling our sense of personal security and rattling the markets. But if we can also see this as an extraordinary reminder of how to build a common future together, then this is an opportunity to find an appropriate balance of preparedness with open-heartedness. We don’t need to indulge in hoarding and protecting only our own families or our own people, whomever they may be. We don’t need another round of nationalism or even another cycle of blaming and fighting the nationalists. We don’t need any “us” or “them.” This is a moment of simply, purely: us.

Strong leadership and coordination are deeply needed right now, but no president, elected or hopeful, is going to single-handedly save us from this. Each of us has agency and compassion. We can each resist the pull to descend into fear and anxiety—or to descend for a time to find the resources, creativity, and wisdom we might have forgotten were in us. We can find, in this time of contraction and introversion, whatever practices keep us engaged in feelings of love, soul, creativity, and kindness. This supports the immune system. It also enhances the felt sense of safety in day-to-day life. And as the dust eventually settles, it will help all of us, as a global community, move forward from this moment to embrace our lack of divisions on this planet in new ways.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute

Carl Jung and Political Action

Carl Jung and Political Action

Satya Doyle Byock

March 08, 2020

In the words of Marie-Louise von Franz: “Jung foresaw great trouble in the coming years and he was deeply concerned, not about politics in the everyday sense of the word, but about the fate of mankind as a whole.”

Jung wasn’t traditionally political, but he never retreated apolitically. While regularly engaged in his military service in Switzerland, Jung also worked diligently as Agent 488 for American Intelligence during WWII. His impact there was, by all documented accounts, of tremendous significance to the American government’s psychological understanding of Hitler, and the success of Nazi thinking throughout Europe.

“Nobody will probably ever know how much Prof Jung contributed to the allied cause during the war.”

— Allen W. Dulles, Chief of OSS

But Jung’s most political work was his fundamental understanding that true social transformation begins and ends inside each individual.

Liber Novus, The Red Book, is an account of Jung’s personal struggle to witness that the inexplicable violence that had suddenly overtaken Europe at the dawn of WWI began with each individual’s refusal to go to battle inside themselves, with their own opposites.

“Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they got mad, and one lays the blame on the other.””

— Jung, The Red Book

His essay The Undiscovered Self was an urgent plea for humanity to recognize the dangers of mass movements of thought, and to search instead for self-knowledge and relationships with others as the antidote.

“It would be an insufferable thought that we had to take personal responsibility for so much guiltiness. We therefore prefer to localize evil in individual criminals or groups or criminals, while washing our hands in innocence and ignoring the general proclivity to evil. This sanctimoniousness cannot be kept up in the long run, because the evil, as experience shows, lies in man.”

— Jung, The Undiscovered Self

He named our inherent lack of inner unity, and the resulting unconscious projections onto others as the cause, and the retraction of those projections as the cure.

“The crux of the matter is man’s own dualism, to which he knows no answer. The abyss has suddenly yawned open before him with the latest events in world history. . . Even today people are largely unconscious of the fact that every individual is a cell in the structure of various international organisms and is therefore causally implicated in their conflicts. . . .It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else.”

— Jung, The Undiscovered Self

The solution came through a meticulous attention to one’s own life, over the lives of others, and an emphasis on connection, relatedness, and common humanity over difference.

“ Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections. This necessary corrective demands self-criticism.”

— Jung, The Undiscovered Self

This understanding is the foundation of our work at The Salome Institute: True, lasting, and inclusive change does not unfold through divisiveness, nor righteousness.

But shrinking away from the current struggle and avoiding events in the outer world is not the answer either.

So, in these times, in addition to our seminars and salons, we invite you to join us for bi-monthly gatherings to discuss, share, write letters, take action, and engage with the national and global political crisis with courage, love, and as much humor as we can muster.

Implicit in our gatherings is a depth psychological understanding of anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-homophobic thought. All people are welcome.

"Someone is Trying to Break Into My House!" A Dream Interpretation

Upcoming Dream Workshop

This practice of community dreamwork at The Salome Institute has been an enlivening opportunity to join with others who are interested in expanding their relationship with the unconscious, symbols, and dreams. In this series, Satya will introduce some foundational elements of recording and observing dreams for those who are new to the practice, as well as our process of exploring dreams in community online. Then, in each of our six sessions, Satya will host live dreamwork for two participants who have expressed interest in “working a dream” in a live, interactive format.

Dear Satya:

Q: I have a recurring dream that someone is trying to break into my house. It's usually a very scary man, maybe about forty years old. (I get chills even thinking about him now). When I wake up from this dream, I often have to get out of bed to make sure the door is locked before I can go back to sleep.

A: Oh dreamer, this is such a common theme. I'm glad you brought it to our attention so we can work through it together. You want these dreams to go away and stop taunting you, I know. You wonder what they could possibly mean and why they're afflicting you. They're disturbing your sleep and penetrating your waking life with the fear they contain. These dreams are very important dreams, but they rarely mean anything like what you're likely to think they do.

First of all, I'd like to refer you to a little post I wrote about recurring nightmares. Please give it a read to help gauge what type of nightmares you typically suffer from. It can be important to identify some trauma history around nightmares, in addition to overall symbolism.

Okay, before we go on, I need to ask you to do one more thing: Get a piece of paper and a pen. Go on... I know it's old-fashioned. Now take a moment to go back into the feeling of this dream, then write down as many descriptors of this scary guy as you can muster. But write down what he's like besides being scary. Does he have a job? Does he have a family? What do you know about him that you might be surprised to know. Then, finally, ask yourself what you think he wants from you.

It's really important that you try to get to know this guy because he is your shadow. He's you. I know, it's yucky to hear that, but keep listening. This is important stuff. When we have an idea of who we are, our perspective about ourselves can become kind of rigid and fixed. Those things you avoid acknowledging about yourself to feel more comfortable don't just go away. They get cut off from your awareness and then tend to fester and get pissed. In your dreams, they turn into actual figures, and they can turn kind of primal and wild in their frustration at being neglected. These figures are part of your whole person, but they're being left out in the cold. No wonder they want to break in.

So, the underlying sense in this dream is that you feel under attack. You likely feel like you're under attack or in danger in some form out in the world too. But your dreams are telling you something very clearly here: despite all the dangers in the world that may cause a person to feel fear, you are currently under attack by your own self. Nothing more. Get real with yourself here. Try to be gentle and forgiving. Take your time. What are you running from? What are you trying not to notice? Who are you scared of being?

The answer to these questions can be found in gently trying to understand who this figure is that's trying to break in. There may also be information in what house you're in in these dreams. Is it your current home or a childhood home, for instance? Notice what time of your life these dreams are situated in, and you may gather more information about what part of your life they're speaking to.

As you do this exploration, take heart! There is always a happy ending when these dreams resolve. You will find that this man actually just wanted to tell you he loved you, for instance. Or he may hand you flowers. I know this might sound absurd, but this man is not as scary as he feels. The anticipation of jumping out of a plane is scarier than the jump itself (or so I've heard...). Similarly, anticipating an encounter with someone you're trying to avoid tends to be worse than the encounter itself. Try not to think about this too much, but work on engaging with this man a little more directly—either in your dreams, if you can, or in waking life projected onto strangers or people you don't like. Get to know him and what he wants. Try not to avoid him internally or externally. Discover what's happening when you start to feel under attack in waking life. Stay safe, but also bring your guards down a little. Get curious. You may discover that your life changes in positive ways as this happens. And you'll be surprised by how.

P.S. You may enjoy listening to this Radio Lab episode called "Haunted Dreams" in which a man who has been plagued by the same dreams as you--for twenty years!-- finds a way to make them stop. It's a great episode but--spoiler alert--they stop rather short of explaining why the dreams were there in the first place and what changed for the man after the dreams stopped. Perhaps your own exploration into this territory can illuminate those questions further.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"I Had a Nightmare that My Father was Dying." A Dream Interpretation.

Upcoming Dream Workshop

This practice of community dreamwork at The Salome Institute has been an enlivening opportunity to join with others who are interested in expanding their relationship with the unconscious, symbols, and dreams. In this series, Satya will introduce some foundational elements of recording and observing dreams for those who are new to the practice, as well as our process of exploring dreams in community online. Then, in each of our six sessions, Satya will host live dreamwork for two participants who have expressed interest in “working a dream” in a live, interactive format.

Originally published on The Hairpin.

Dear Satya:

Q. I took a nap and I dreamed about my father passing away. He was laying in a coffin, but in real life he is still alive. This dream was a nightmare for me I was crying and very afraid.

Dear Dreamer: I'm so sorry! Those dreams are awful. You wake up confused about who's dead and who's alive, and maybe worried that the dream is a premonition of an actual event. As you've adjusted to daily living, you've probably come to find that your father is alive and not in literal danger. So what does this dream mean for you?

Without having spoken with you, I would gander a couple of strong possibilities: your father complex is dying due to some new events or awareness in your life, and/or you have an unconscious and confusing death wish for your father. Let me explain.

If you're anything like anyone alive, your relationship with your father is complicated. In your own particular blend of feelings that all children share, you love your father and are angry with him. You are hurt from past events and also grateful for things. Unconsciously, you balance out all of your conscious beliefs about him with their opposites. For instance, a woman may dream of her father all the time but in therapy will proclaim to have had a very good childhood with him, with nothing more to say. After months pass, however, she may begin to have conscious memories of his angry episodes or feeling his cold tone filter throughout the house. Consciously, she liked her dad. Unconsciously, things were much more complicated.

Carl Jung's notion of a "complex" is a little like what acupuncturists work on when they're seeking to clear a stuck point in the body: it's a bundle of energy in your system that, when triggered by a word or a life event or even a nostalgic smell, can release all sorts of information. Until it's triggered though, a complex sits there quietly, unconsciously, invisible to everyone except in certain patterns of behavior. Your "father complex" is your bundle of memories and experiences related to your father and other influential men in your life--including cultural images of the father or men in leadership positions. As an adult, some aspect of the way you view all men is filtered through this complex. A male guru, for instance, may appear all-knowing to a woman with a positive father complex. On the other side, for women who grew up with an angry, unpredictable father, even the kindest, simplest man may appear conniving.

So I would ask you, in what ways has your father complex been triggered lately? Have you begun dating a new man? Do you have a new male teacher? Or has your relationship with your father in life changed in any way? Listen to the image: The father is passing away. The father is dead. The father is going to be buried. What does that evoke for you? Perhaps you're moving through a chapter of growth and you are gaining your own authority and leadership within yourself, or perhaps you're able to be that much more present with a male partner now because you can see him more clearly for who he is. If you take some time to journal about this dream, letting your mind wander and your body experience the image, some significant insights are likely to arise.

As I said above, the second major possibility to explore is that you have some unconscious death wish for your father. To get into this tricky territory, let me quote Carl Jung on a woman's dream of her dead mother:

…there does exist in our dreamer the tendency to be rid of her mother; expressed in the language of the unconscious, she wants her mother to die. But the dreamer should certainly not be saddled with this tendency because, strictly speaking, it was not she who fabricated the dream, but the unconscious.

Note that Jung is careful to emphasize what I want to emphasize with you: "The very fact that she can dream of such a thing proves that she does not consciously think of it. She has no notion why her [father] should be got rid of."

Knowing absolutely nothing of your particular situation, it is hard for me to venture a guess as to why your unconscious may be harboring some infantile death wish for your father. Again, however, I wonder if your current romantic relationship status may have something to do with it. Are you seeking to enter into a relationship of which you feel your father would disapprove? Are you considering marriage and therefore--forgive my awkward heteronormative take here--needing to psychologically supplant the primary man in your life? Consider the deep cultural roots around the replacement of the father with the husband--think of the tradition of fathers "giving away" their daughters in wedding ceremonies.

Whether it's a secret death wish or simply an increasing awareness around the father complex in your life, your dream suggests a threshold time. Some significant aspect of your life is changing. The image of death says as much. It is not a sleeping image or a wounded image, it is not a near death, but death itself. Old social customs and mythological tradition holds that when an old king dies, a new king is born and begins his reign. Consider this. The ground is being prepared for a new paradigm; an old ruling paradigm is falling away and a new one is coming.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

" I Lost Control of My Car and Went Blind." A Dream Interpretation

Originally published on The Hairpin

Dear Satya:

I was driving and suddenly I could not control the speed of the car or stop it. I could steer, but that was all. I made a wrong turn and entered an on-ramp to an elevated road. The road got higher and higher as the car went faster and faster. The road became extremely curvy with the curves getting sharper and sharper. There were no guardrails. Steering consumed all my attention. As I came to a particularly sharp curve, I suddenly lost my eyesight and went completely blind. I felt the car going off the road and falling. I woke up in a panic.

This dream recurred many, many times until one night when, as the car went off the road, I did not wake up. As it was falling, my eyesight suddenly returned. I looked down and saw that we were falling into a body of water. I did not want to be trapped in the car in the water. I opened the car door in mid-air and jumped out, trying to get as far away from the falling car as possible. The car and I hit the water at the same time, separated by several yards. I surfaced and swam safely to the shore. After that, I never had the dream again.

Dear Dreamer,

Thank you for sharing this series of recurring dreams. Like a labyrinth in which you're trapped, you encounter the same dead ends over and over again until one day, all of a sudden, you discover the way out. Out of the nightmare of the Groundhog's Day curse, you wake up, never to have the same dream again. How and why does this happen?

The dream of driving and being out-of-control is a very common one (perhaps in particular in our culture), and it's a common dream to return repeatedly for dreamers too. Maybe you can imagine why. Dreams in which cars are featured rarely feel sluggish. Instead, they often represent some aspect of the manic nature of the society in which we all live. Everything is moving too quickly; you're barely keeping it together and staying alive. Indeed, much of the dream's message can be found in our language: think of the state of being "asleep at the wheel" and "driving blind." Dreams like yours often indicate a life situation around which the dreamer needs to develop greater awareness, as if their life is happening without their conscious participation.

When I have a client with a driving dream of this kind, I highlight the grave necessity of their increased attention--some might say mindfulness--to their day-to-day actions. The dream is indicating a state of mind or emotional life that can put a person in actual danger in the physical world. One might, in fact, be in danger while driving, but also while crossing the street, or in arguments with their partners, or at work, as they're not as aware as they should be, possibly wreaking havoc on themselves and those around them in ways in which they're unaware.

Cars tend to represent the social persona of the dreamer. They are the armor and structure we use to travel through the world. Questions of relevance to these kinds of dreams can be: Whose car is it? Who's driving? Where are you in the car? Again, consider our language: "who's in the driver's seat?" It's an image that is easily understood. In this case, I'm going to assume it is your car and, as you indicate, you are driving (or trying to).

I would venture, as I've expressed generally, that during the time you were having these recurring dreams your life felt quite out of your control. It may have been a very private experience. It's quite possible that you appeared on the outside absolutely put-together and in control, you may have even felt that you were handling everything pretty darn well, but your unconscious was mirroring back to you a private sense that you were overwhelmed, exhausted, terrified, and in actual danger. One's public persona can very often fool everyone, even the individual, which is why dreams provide such a helpful lens into one's actual well-being--just like a microscope can pick up on an infection that is otherwise invisible to everyone.

Now the progression of your dream is fascinating, and a wonderful window into the forms of resolution that these dreams can take. At first, you were driving and everything was getting faster, curvier, higher… manic. There were no guardrails, no backup plan, no safety or external support around you. All you could do was try to stay in control and keep moving forward. Then, suddenly, just as you were barely managing to survive, your eyes fail you. You go blind. You can no longer even rely on your sight to survive. Things are getting worse, and fast. I wonder two things here: one, was your actual life situation continuing to spin out of control and your dream was working to reflect that to your conscious awareness? Again, we can be remarkably blind sometimes (pun intended) to the chaos of our own lives, believing we're far more in control than we are; I also wonder, however, if you were being pushed towards a state of relying on other aspects of yourself to navigate the world. I'll take this back up in a moment.

In the dreams, you feel that you are falling and wake up panicked. Try to read this symbolically. While you literally wake up, you also metaphorically wake up. These dreams are getting your attention, raising your consciousness to your inner life. Nightmares can work as a psychic immune system: the more out of touch you are with yourself, the graver your nightmares may get. If one can't wake you up with a whisper, they may finally succeed with a loud shout and a shake. Nightmares often arise when we're psychically out to lunch and, for our well-being, in needing of being shaken awake again. Which, I would venture, is just what happened for you.

Recurring dreams stop recurring when there's some internal resolution; their very recurrence is indicative of a story seeking its conclusion like a record skipping until it can get back on track. At the conclusion of your dream series, you stayed conscious within the dream. This is a beautiful detail. Your eyesight returned as you were falling and you saw that you were heading towards the water. You did not want to be trapped so you thought ahead and opened the door, moving away from the car, you got safely to shore. Your awareness of your situation certainly improved, and your sight--again awareness--returned. Something major must have changed, or been about to change, in your life.

You state in your dream that "we were falling" which makes me quite curious who "we" are. This pronoun, as well as the overall tone of the dream, makes me wonder if you were trapped in some kind of toxic relationship at the time of these dreams. The manner in which you leave your car, swimming away completely and as it is buried in the water, indicates to me a total separation from a former way of living. Like a hermit crab shedding its shell, you were molting, abandoning an old life in search of another. Perhaps you gained the courage and the in-sight — the internal sight, the wisdom—through the crises you endured to be able to handle the external situation in which you were feeling trapped and out of control. Just like a baptism, a part of you died in the water when you were immersed, and a new life was gained when you reemerged and found your way to shore, reborn.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"I'm Driving My Car and I Can't Slow Down." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

I have had several dreams in which I am driving and I can't slow down. Sometimes I run red lights, sometimes I am driving and I cannot figure out how to use the brakes. I am usually very scared but I somehow manage to stay in control of the car.

A: Unfortunately, this is a very common dream theme, but it's one that is indicative of a cultural illness of manic activity. The message from the dream is clear: you need to slow down.

You may even think that you have already slowed things down in your life. If so, the dream is saying "try harder." This is your own unconscious giving you a very clear message. Listen.

Cars in dreams are symbolic of you. They're like turtles' shells, the additional homes or bodies in which we travel through the world. If you have dreams of driving, pay attention. Pay attention to the way in which you are driving, or if you are driving at all. If you're not driving, who is? Who's in the driver's seat? This is very important information. You can develop great insight into what aspect of you is actually in control of your life, or perhaps it's another person in your life altogether.

Your dreams are indicating that you are holding onto control by the skin of your teeth. You may think "but I'm killing it right now! I'm totally in control of things!" If that is the case, this dream is clearly indicating another layer of what is going on, that perhaps you're riding on a degree of mania, feeling on top of it while actually beginning to crash (pun intended). While you are safe for now, you don't really know how you're managing it. After a while, you'll start to pay the price if you don't heed the advice of your dream.

Dreams are often the first line of defense in getting us into alignment with our inner selves. If we're checked out or disengaged from our path in life, our dreams will reflect that. Sometimes, they'll turn into nightmares to get our attention. But if our awareness gets too fragmented, we can fall into physical danger too: we forget to look both ways when crossing the street, we stop paying close attention when driving our car in waking life, maybe we just get angry with people in our lives when we needn't be. It's also possible that following these dreams, an injury or illness may appear to slow us down by force. This may again be what the dream is reflecting directly, with the car representing the body. Take a good look at your immune system, your sleep habits, your eating, and your physical well-being.

Your dream world is your ally. If your dream is telling you to slow down, it's not demanding something you cannot accomplish. Find a way to spend more time alone, to breathe, to stay aware of the moment-to-moment details in your life. Bringing yourself into the moment of whatever it is you may be doing will significantly slow down your internal clock and pace. You'll be the better for it.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

How to Stop Recurring Nightmares

Dear Satya:

Can you tell me about recurring nightmares and why I might be having them?

A: People who suffer from recurring nightmares are often desperate for anything to help make them go away. If you are one of those people, there are a few easy steps to take to help the recurring nightmares stop.

The first step is identifying what time of nightmare they are. What Type of Nightmare is Recurring? Nightmares come in many varieties. You can think of their difference in origin and meaning in much the same way you might notice that stomach pain could be the result of indigestion, a bullet wound, or cancer: completely different diagnoses and different treatment required. They all require attention and self-care, however.

The following is a simple breakdown of some different types. This is not comprehensive and is only meant as an initial introduction. If you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to contact a clinician in your area who works with dreams. Not all therapists do (in fact, the majority do not) so take some time to find the right person for you. Nightmares Related to Post-Traumatic StressNightmares related to a traumatic event or events are of a very specific variety. In summary, these nightmares are often highly literal representations of what occurred in waking life. There is room to debate if they are even dreams in the standard definition in that they are drawing so heavily from memory, therefore suggesting a disruption in the way events are generally metabolized. Nightmares that replay events or do not feel symbolic fall into this category. They are nightmares that do not make you think "what is that about??" when you wake up. You already know what they're about far too well.

Non-Literal Nightmares Related to Trauma or Major Life Changes

Many nightmares result from trauma but are not actual replaying of events. These can be dreams like dismemberment, tsunamis, or apocalypse but may be more a reflection of what is being altered in your life, or what is being ignored. Dreams of tsunamis, for instance, are quite common. These are likely to do with some kind of emotional overwhelm which, because it is showing up in dreams, you may not be fully acknowledging.

Stress Related Nightmares 

Nightmares not related to trauma are often a result of being overwhelmed or "disconnected" and not paying attention to your inner life. These dreams can show up in any variety. Maybe you are running from something. Maybe someone is trying to break into your house. Maybe you're seeing sickness or suffering a lot in your nightmares. They're stressful to experience and you can wake up feeling groggy and frustrated and scared.

Sleep Paralysis, "Incubus" Nightmares, Night Terrors

Nightmares that feel like sleep paralysis or in which you experience a force in your room or sitting on your chest are not uncommon. These dreams are often referred to as "Night Terrors" and cultures all over the world have explanations for what is occurring in this highly visceral and terrifying experience. These dreams seem to result from a sense of "disembodiment" or what I think of as the disorientation of consciousness. They may come when you've slept way too long, or when you're sleeping in a new location. They may also be more common for people who have experienced leaving their bodies through dissociation; a history of sexual abuse, for instance, may contribute to a greater incidence of these dreams. If you're feeling powerless or trapped in your life, they may arise in those instances.

How do I Stop Recurring Nightmares?

Almost all nightmares, with the exception perhaps of the PTSD variety, have the effect of grounding you. If you notice the visceral experience they evoke, they may be a psychic immune system response to make you pay attention to your body and the physical world. They seem to support in improved awareness and force an individual to slow down and regain focus in their day-to-day life.

Stopping PTSD Related Nightmares

Help for these nightmares can come through working to jump-start your psychic metabolism by encouraging symbol-making that is not happening organically. This may sound highly abstract, but stick with me here. Writing can help. Writing about what occurred and what the dreams are, but trying to recover what was lost. Reading poetry. Engaging in art or dance. Literally, these forms of relating in the world can help to calm nightmares over time. The "irrational", artistic, symbolizing aspect of the mind has been disrupted. Everything is too literal. There is also some excellent work being done around "re-dreaming" with PTSD nightmares in which certain images within the dream are consciously altered. Some lucid dreaming techniques are also helpful to bring conscious engagement into healing the disruptive dreams.

Help for All other Recurring Nightmares

1) Write your dreams down. Seriously. I bet you that if you write your dreams down in the morning, you will see a decrease in their intensity and frequency within a week.

2) Spend time exploring them. Why did that guy show up? What is that building from childhood doing there? Really explore it. Notice themes: What topics are showing up regularly? Which periods of life? Something is being triggered right now and some aspect of YOU is trying to make contact with you. Listen to it. The less you listen to it, the more intense the nightmares need to get to make you pay attention.

3) Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Do not get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. Sleep. Being under-rested is a chronic issue in modern life and the effects are much more severe than people realize. If you sleep regularly and well and without sleeping pills, your nightmares will almost certainly be less frequent.

4) Consider playing more if you're not playing enough, or consider getting more responsible and focused if you're playing too much.

If you follow these simple tasks, your recurring nightmares are almost guaranteed to stop or at least decrease dramatically. There's much, much more to be gained from working with your dreams, however. If working with your nightmares raises your interest in your inner life, let them take you there. Nightmares are not a nuisance. They tend to be helping you. Pay attention.

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"A Menagerie of Wild Animals in the Backyard." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Q: I am in a house that is overrun by wild animals. I walk into a room, the nook just off the kitchen, and I see a Monitor Lizard buried head first in a big vase full of flowers and scummy water. He scurries up and out of the vase as I enter. Outside in the back, courtyard area, a couple of large cats are sitting, maybe a Lion and Cheetah. They were in and out of the house as well. My mom was there, along with other female family members. The animals did pose some danger to us, but there were wary of us as well. It occurred to me that they wanted water, that they were here looking for water. Is that why they had come in from the wild? I assumed that wild animals have ways of getting what they need in the wild, but not anymore, I guess. Not these days. As we stood looking over the yard from above, I wondered to my mom about filling up a kiddie pool with water for the animals. She suggested we do it tomorrow as trying to navigate around them at that moment would be dangerous. I felt for them, though. Tomorrow is a long ways off if they're really thirsty.

A: Thank you, dreamer, for sending in this dream. You shared with me in writing that you woke up from this dream with the word "Menagerie" in your head, and that you hadn't been entirely conscious of the meaning of that word: "a collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition." This word, and the tone of its definition, may provide an interesting insight for us as we explore the rest of your dream. You also shared with me that you weren't feeling physically well at the time of the dream and you wondered if there might be clues to that in the dream.Indeed, the animal nature of your dream suggests a reference to your own animal nature: your physical, instinctual self. The animals have come in from the wild and are invading your home. They're thirsty. I immediately began wondering in exploring this dream why they're thirsty, and what they (you) are thirsty for exactly. I wonder too what it means that they're displaced. The realities of environmental degradation and global warming are bound to show up in the dreams of anyone living in the modern era (we're consciously and unconsciously experiencing it), but the image should still also be looked at symbolically. The ever-expanding cities and shrinking natural world has a psychological correlation for us all. In the modern era, psyche becomes heavily weighted towards the conscious, literal, rational mind and further distanced from the interconnected, mysterious realm of the universe in which we live.

The modern psyche is raised to be narcissistic and sociopathic, with ever-expanding egos and ever-decreasing reverence for whatever it is that we can't understand. But, whether we like it or not, the wild comes back to us. The grass grows up between the cracks of the concrete, the ants return just when you thought they were gone, and the winds and rain may bring a city to its knees with little warning. Is that what's happening in your life? Your wild nature is demanding attention. It's reclaiming territory and making its presence known. Before exploring the deeper symbolic layers of Water, the first "interpretation" of this image might simply be that you're thirsty. Really. This fact may be buried in your consciousness, something which you're not terribly aware of and therefore shows up with your animal nature stating what it's feeling: "I'm dehydrated." Whether or not this could be a symptom of your sickness or of a tendency for you in general, I don't know, but it's a simple reading of the dream that might be valuable for you to explore. The unconscious inhabits all of us, our cells and our muscles, not just the dark reaches of our mind.

On a more symbolic level, I'm going to start by offering you what might seem like another simple statement (or a stoner's attempt at profundity): Water is central to life. Without water, there would be no existence as we know it. Adult humans are nearly 60% water. Social centers have typically been built around major water resources, rivers or lakes or oceans. Fountains have been placed in the center of city landscapes and kingdoms. Water is central, literally and symbolically. So we know, instinctively, to bow to the water within us and outside of us. What might this mean for your dream? It may be that you're feeling somewhat disconnected from life itself, that you're needing to reconnect to the life force in some way, to your emotions (another aspect of water in dreams), and to the spiritual, soulful realm that gives life meaning. This could also be seen as the Yin aspect of life, the feminine, anima, source of life that animates material existence. This nod to the feminine seems to arise in particular with the mention of your mother and the female members of your family, a theme also echoed with the particular species of cats you mentioned.

The Monitor Lizard in the vase of water is curious to me, especially in that he is situated in "the nook just off the kitchen." I'm curious here again about the way this dream may be orienting you towards very specific parts of your body. The kitchen tends to be correlated with the stomach in dream symbolism. The kitchen is the place where food is chopped and cooked and broken down, where the alchemy of food digestion begins. So the language around this lizard's hiding place just make me wonder if there might be an illness or imbalance (not necessarily serious) associated with your liver perhaps, or spleen. I also wonder this because this particular animal is named from the Latin root word Monit, to warn. What, perhaps emotionally, might be stuck in one of the smaller organs near the stomach? You might explore Chinese medicine for some answers here, or visit a good practitioner. The image of the lizard in dreams can also be related to lineage; that from which we evolved. This might tie in again with the appearance of your mother and family in the dream and what you might be working through in your physical and psychic inheritance. Perhaps there is a lineage of disconnection from some emotional depths that you are working to heal. And, of course, perhaps you have personal associations to Monitor Lizards that are valuable for further insights into why this animal is there, off the nook of your kitchen.

Finally, to return to the word with which you awoke: Menagerie... Menagerie. The notion of captivity that defines that word is resonant to me in working this dream. It makes me wonder: are you feeling trapped? Are things feeling too controlled and confining in your life? Are you needing to be wilder? Ask yourself these questions. Spend some time really sitting with the notions. Is your life feeling as though you are in captivity and that your deepest self is not getting a chance to roam and be free? If there is an inkling that this might be true, see what you can do to rectify the situation. In your psychic landscape, you can transform the wilderness, bring the flow of water back to where it belongs, and encourage the animals to return to their natural environments where they want to be. In the future, hopefully in the near future, if you can bring more flow back into your life, your dreams will reflect these changes and it will be you who is visiting the animals, out in the wilds where they are most alive and free.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Sexuality and the Baby Elephant Upstairs." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Q: I go upstairs into a room that I'm surprised I've never been to before. Then I realize I used to be up here all the time, but not for a while. There is a sweet baby elephant jumping and playing in the room, small and gray. I'm with another woman about my age and with my coloring. She's there to spend time with the elephant. I ask her if she comes up here every day to visit, but she tells me that she's only able to come up every other day for a few minutes. I think that the elephant needs more time than that. It's otherwise alone up here. I worry for its loneliness and lack of companionship. Then there is a bear. The baby elephant gets distracted. The big brown bear is in a wooden trailer, heading towards the wall opposite us. The trailer is making noise like the low rumbles of an adult elephant, and the baby bounds after the trailer. Then, I'm shocked to see the bear go head first into what I know is a shredder or meat grinder. I gasp. I watch the baby elephant jump in too. Both are immediately dead and bloody. I see their bodies deflate as if all that is left of them is their skin. I am so sad, and I turn away.

A: Oh dear, what an image. This makes me sad too. What's been happening in your life for these images to arise? You noted that the elephant is getting only very sparse attention and you reflect, "I worry for its loneliness and lack of companionship." As a dream's elements are all elements of one's own psyche, I wonder if you have been feeling only intermittently cared for yourself, lonely and without the relationships you'd like. What playful aspect of you has been relegated to a corner of your life, like a rarely visited room you once knew well? I've noticed that dreams of elephants often arise with the beginnings or endings of intimate relationships, so I'm drawn in particular to this mention of companionship in the dream. I inquired with you about this aspect of your life. You told me that you had just spent the night with someone new when you had this dream, and that you were feeling uncertain about your emotions in the days following. I can only imagine, given the way the dream ends, that you were indeed experiencing some mixed feelings and perhaps hurt. The image of the bear and the elephant being deflated makes me wonder about your own sense of emotional deflation, like having the wind and momentum of life taken out of your sails.

The archetypal layers of this dream are very interesting. I was intrigued by the association of intimacy and elephants in dreams, so I did some research into the symbol and was further struck by the correlation. In Hindu philosophy and metaphysics, the elephant is associated with the root chakra Muladhara, located at the base of the spine. This chakra, one of seven points in the body thought of as centers of vital energy, is said to govern sexuality, mental stability, and sensuality. It is the base of Kundalini energy, the place from which that fire of life initially rises; it is for this reason that sexuality plays a major role in tantric traditions. Sexuality can create physical life in the form of new conception, but it also can kickstart new energetic life and awakening in each individual. In Buddhist mythology, it is said that an elephant calf is responsible for Buddha's conception when it caressed Queen Maya's body with its trunk while she slept. Conception and awakening in one.The Muladhara chakra is also associated to the color red, a color that Jung described in his exploration of Kundalini philosophy as "the color of blood, of dark passion" (Kundalini Seminar, p. 17). This association provides a twist (a less upsetting one) on the appearance of the blood within the dream. The red is an inherent aspect of this chakra energy associated with the elephant, suggesting here more an emergence of passion and life energy than the destruction felt within the dream. Is it possible that while you were feeling a bit mixed-up after your recent evening, you might also be feeling a new energy for life these days? I found the information on the Muladhara chakra fascinating and hope you'll continue to learn more about it on your own. There is a strong correlation here between the activity of your physical body and the reflections of your psyche, one which might be a gateway to greater insight. Exploring the symbolism and diving into the literature around the various images in your dream will almost certainly provide you with greater connections and kickstart some wonderful creativity too. Dreams can provide tremendous comfort when you discover an image that, by its very emergence, provides insight into your life. If you haven't experienced that feeling yet, dive in and start exploring. Perhaps that too is the attention your baby elephant desires.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

Trauma, PTSD, and Dreaming: Understanding recurring dreams and nightmares.

I've written before about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and dreaming, that is, on the way that severe trauma can alter the dreaming function of the unconscious. Keep in mind that severe trauma can not always be easily assessed by the person who experiences it. For the most part, individuals who experience trauma are likely to minimize what they experienced. Even if the trauma itself can be cataloged as a part of war or an assault, the individual who underwent the difficulties (the shock and likely psychic or physical experience of near death) is not always able to see clearly how traumatic an experience they endured. Our psychic self-protections are strong. We can become tough as nails to defend us from terrible difficulties and it is not until those defenses begin to soften (often over time, with a lot of patience and love and gentleness, assurances of safety, and good bodywork and therapy), that an individual can acknowledge how terrible the trauma they experienced truly was.

The official diagnosis for an individual who becomes affected by a traumatic event is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known simply as PTSD. This label can address a variety of symptoms, both physical and mental, but the exploration of how an individual becomes afflicted with dreams that repeat the traumatic event, having to relive what they experienced in recurring dreams, remains under-explored. A few years ago, I wrote a post about the work of Dr. Barry Krakow, refuting the notion that his work with the dreams of patients suffering from traumatic recurring dreams was new work, or non-Jungian. Indeed, as far back as the beginning of the 20th century, Jung understood what was happening within the unconscious of traumatized individuals, as well as how to cure the further trauma of recurring dreams.

Recurring Dreams and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Jungian Psycholgy

I came upon this passage today from a seminar that Carl Jung delivered in 1938 that explores the dreams of individuals suffering from "Shell Shock" the diagnosis of psychologically affected returning soldiers that preceded the modern diagnosis of PTSD. Jung explains how recurring dreams from trauma ("shell shock") indicate an absolute shift in the psychic system, and are a singular exception to the way dreams typically process and digest material from life.

The dream is never a mere repetition of previous experiences, with only one specific exception: shock or shell shock dreams, which sometimes are completely identical repetitions of reality. That, in fact, is proof of the traumatic effect. The shock can no longer be psychified. This can be seen especially clearly in healing processes in which the psyche tries to translate the shock into a psychical anxiety situation. (Carl Jung, Children's Dreams, pp. 21-22)

Jung continues in his explanation, elucidating the way in which some traumatic experiences must be altered, slowly, into more symbolically rendered shocks in order to be metabolized and integrated into the individual's psyche. (Ultimately, this is very similar to what Dr. Barry Krakow and others are currently working on; it must be pointed out for historical record that Jung was already treating patients in this manner over 75 years ago.)

The reaction of shell-shocked patients is that a knock, or anything reminiscent of a shot or an explosion, suffices to trigger nervous attacks. The attempt to transform a shock into a psychical situation that may gradually be mastered can also succeed toward the end of a treatment, however, as I have observed myself in a series of dreams of an English officer. In this man's dreams, the explosion of the grenade changed into lions and other dangers that he was then able to tackle. The shock was, so to speak, absorbed. In this way, the dreamer was able to master the effect of the shock as a psychical experience. Any time we are confronted with a shock in its "raw," not yet psychical, form, our psychical means are not sufficient to overcome it. We are not able, for example, to cope with physical injury or a physical infection [directly] by psychical means. ... It also seems that a shell shock is so hard to cure because in most cases it is accompanied by  heavy, bodily shocks that probably cause very fine disturbances of a nonpsychical nature in the nervous system. (Carl Jung, Children's Dreams, pp. 21-22)

That's a lot of material to digest! But the summary of Jung's work here is pretty simple to summarize and is (thankfully) being integrated into work today with PTSD patients and the recurring dreams and nightmares that they suffer. The summary is that typical dreams are never just repetitions of daily events (they always include telling, important differences), but total repetition can occur if the dreams are the result of a traumatic event. These dreams seem to overpower or overwhelm the symbol-making function of psyche and likely also come with a physical residue of trauma that must also gradually be worked through (the field of Somatic Experiencing is doing very interesting work in this area). If you are suffering from recurring dreams or traumatic nightmares, there are methods of treatment that are very effective and that can provide relief and renewed health. It is critical, however, that you seek treatment. The loss of sleep and anxiety that can result from traumatic recurring dreams, along with all of the other pain being experienced, can be detrimental -- not only to you, but your loved ones. Seek out a mental health professional who has experience with tending to recurring dreams and traumatic dreams.

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Two women. One dream. Gum Stuck in My Throat." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Dreamer #1: I have a recurring dream that I have gum wrapped around my back teeth and am trying to get it out. It feels like a lot of gum, and sometimes it will start to go down my throat, which really freaks me out. I feel anxious that it's there. Sometimes, I am trying to get the gum out of my mouth because I'm doing something in which I need to speak.

Dreamer #2: I have a recurring dream that there is gum in my throat, a thick wad of it, and I'm desperate to get it out of my mouth. The more I pull, the more gum keeps coming. It never ends and I'm totally freaked out.

Whew! Here we have two different women, living in different states, who reported to me their primary recurring dream. Forgive me for being a bit of a nerd here, but is this not just the most fascinating thing? Many people have heard of the common back-in-school and teeth-falling-out dreams and might be desensitized to how very strange it is that we can dream very similar dreams at night. But it really is pretty amazing. How does that happen?? What is the unconscious (collective or personal) representing here? What human experience is being captured by these images?

Let's explore this dream viscerally. To start unlocking this dream, imagine yourself in this situation. Imagine you're in public and you have a huge wad of gum in your throat and in the back of your mouth that (of course) you really want to get out. You try to remove it... you begin to get anxious... the gum's not easily coming out... there's a lot of it... it keeps coming... What do you do? How do you protect yourself? What are the types of fear that arise?

In this dream, the ability to speak has been thwarted. One's mouth and throat are all gummed up. The capacity for self-expression has been prevented and shoved aside by more complicated feelings of fear, shame, and insecurity. As one is privately managing a fear that she is in a strange, maybe dangerous situation, out of control of what's happening, she is simultaneously trying not to let others know of her predicament out of shame. She is in a "sticky situation," managing her own fear while trying not to let others catch on. T

he images in this dream are representing certain inner experiences; as it's a recurring dream, those inner experiences are likely rather persistent and common to the individual: a difficulty with authentic self-expression, with finding one's true voice, and therefore feelings of insecurity, of being alone with one's own emotions despite being among people, and feeling that things are not easily within one's own control.

To you two beautiful ladies who dreamt this dream (should my analysis of it prove at all true), you might consider playing with this dream a little to alter it and take care of yourself in the process. Dream it forward. You've got gum stuck in your throat, and you're anxious and panicked, but you don't have to deal with this very strange crisis by yourself. Imagine the dream and add someone in who you trust completely and who you can look to for help. How do they react? What do they do? What do you need? What help can they offer? See what arises and explore what comes next...

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Gross! I Pooped and Put it In the Fridge!" A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Okay, this is kind of gross, but I'm really curious... in this dream I'm standing alone in a nice, big kitchen in a house that feels somewhat communal. I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't want to use one of the bathrooms because I want to avoid people knowing. The next thing I know, I've pooped in a plastic compost container and am placing the full container in the refrigerator! I know I intend to flush it all later. It's really full and gross. Later, I am in another room and there's a crew of people, in their 30s, happy, gathered and cooking in the kitchen. I have anxiety that the container will be discovered. When they leave, I go to the fridge and find that someone has dumped and cleaned the container and that it's now full of cooked white rice. What?!

Awesome! Yes, in a way this is a totally gross dream. Fine. But the symbols behind it are also pretty awesome. Here's the quick-and-dirty (so to speak) about poop dreams: they can very directly reflect what's going on in our "psychic digestive systems." The psychological processing of things is not unlike physical digestion in the way it works: we take things in, process them, integrate the nutrients, and release the waste. When life throws us things that are requiring more of our attention, poop dreams often show up. The dreams are pointing to the need to digest something, to fully take something in, or they can point out problems with the processing. With "psychic digestion," there are endless social norms that can keep us from properly integrating what we take in. Each day, the emotions, experiences, memories, relationships, stimuli, information, and conversations in our lives cannot all be fully digested because we don't have the time, or we get interrupted, or we're at work and on deadline. Too much of the external expectations and not enough of the internal awareness can leave us constipated, or sick. Symbolically and literally.

In this dream, you're scared to go to the bathroom because other people are around. This can suggest that you have needed to process something that's happening in your life away from others, or that you were unnecessarily concerned about the opinions of others in regards to what you're sorting through. I say this in the past tense because this dream has a full conclusion. To start, you do poop, reflecting that something that you were processing (a relationship struggle? a work difficulty?) has worked its way through your system (you've found some clarity with it), but before you let it go completely, you put it in the fridge! You "put it on ice." Something more was to be done.

The critical, wonderful twist to this dream comes when you discover that the poop is no longer in the bin and that there is cooked rice in its place! Wow. This kind of image reversal is known as alchemy, the act of turning stone into gold, or the psychic human equivalent, poop into food: the S*&t of life into personal growth. This is a pretty literal symbol when you look at it that way. (The compost bin, if you consider the concept of compost, is the other symbol that really points to this.)

This theme of transition is such a crucial one in dreams that I know we'll have to explore it more soon. For now, I would venture to say that this dream is reflecting that you have successfully processed through some things recently and have turned the experience into nutrients for a new beginning. Get to know those people in the house who helped you do that. They're your allies and support and good parts of you to know for the future.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"My Teeth are Falling Out!" A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

I've been having a recurring dream in which I discover that my teeth are falling out (I've heard this is a common one). In the dream, I am doing some mundane task when all of a sudden I reach into my mouth and pull out one of my teeth. Subsequently, I realize that numerous teeth are loose. Before I know it, I have a handful of teeth in my hand. I am consumed with a feeling of panic.

Yup, you're absolutely right, this is a very common dream (and so unpleasant!). I would even venture to say that this may be the most common dream that people share with other people after having it, it's just so weird! First, let's review that recurring dreams show up when things are sort of stuck when there's an issue or emotion that is working its way through our systems and can't quite get resolved. The easiest way to get recurring dreams to go away (should you want to be rid of one) is to write the dream down and talk it through with someone who can help you objectively explore it. What you're looking for is the emotion in the images, that is, it's not an entirely intellectual process. For instance, you know you feel panic in this dream, but what kind? What does it remind you of? What are the specific fears wrapped up in it? The emotion will have to find its way out of your system and be felt. Unfortunately, no impersonal dream interpretation can accomplish this task fully without your participation. The "aha!" moments are just too personal, too particular, and have to be experienced to be transformative.

But let's see if we can get a head-start on this process! Teeth. Teeth are the very beginning of the digestion process, they break down food before it enters our stomach so that the nutrients can be better integrated into our systems. Symbolically, they can point to the beginning of a similar process of psychic digestion, trying to process information and events that enter our awareness. If they're falling out, it may suggest that we're struggling to integrate something, perhaps as a result of being overwhelmed by it. Importantly, teeth also fall out naturally at only a couple of stages of life: early childhood when we are gaining our adult teeth, and in old age. We've got bare gums when we're babies and often when we're old. The shared experience between babies and the elderly is one of a lack of autonomy, a feeling of sort of being swept along by your own physical needs and the requirements of the outer world; for both stages in life, personal choice and personal desire are something of a luxury.

You say you're regularly doing some mundane task in this dream, which suggests to me a feeling of monotony and boredom in your life. I venture to say that for you, this dream is pointing to a feeling of persistent boredom and a loss of autonomy in your life, a feeling of being infantilized (by work or school?), and then panicked about how to reverse that experience and regain a sense of adulthood and control. My guess is that your panic in this dream involves an anticipatory feeling of having to face the world now. These teeth-falling-out dreams may be a version of the naked-in-public dreams: pure panic, terror, and a sense of desperation — "how am I going to get out of this situation and make this go away?"

So, I'm terribly curious about the nuances of your emotions when you discover that you're losing teeth. I wonder about that panic. Perhaps the notions of not being in control of your day-to-day existence, of having to face the world before you're calm and collected (a bit naked), resonates. What more is in there? These images may point to themes that others experience too, but the nuances are yours alone. What are the very specific fears and contemplations about the future, unique only to you, that arise when you look in your hand and see a handful of teeth? What do those feelings remind you of from your waking life?

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"I'm With a Lion on a Beach..." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

In this dream, I am on a beach with others. I know it was just nighttime, but now it feels sort of in-between times. We are walking on the edge of the water but then I walk up the beach. Then, after a short while, I turn around and see a full-grown lion standing halfway in the water, looking right at me! The lion is not threatening, but it is very real and I am struck by its size, strength, and presence as it stares at me. It was an incredible dream!

Fabulous. What you've got here is a dream clearly marking a major life transition. Do you see some of the indications? It's "in-between times," as you put it, and you're walking on the edge of the water, between water and land. There's a pattern there. It may sound cryptic initially, but the imagery suggests that you yourself are somewhat in between worlds, bringing something that was not conscious (of the night and the watery ocean) into the daytime and onto land, where we humans are more comfortable. You're transitioning from one attitude or way of life into another. It's a liminal time, a transitional time.

The incredible imagery of the lion appearing to you is a visceral experience, right? It's those moments that stop you in your tracks and make you go "Whoa!" And for good reason. That lion is a presence, almost a messenger, staring straight at you, and acknowledging you. These kinds of dreams tend to give the dreamer a feeling of meaning, versus many other dreams that can be more easily tossed aside as "day residue." It's got an archetypal feel; you just know that lion is not in your dream because of any nonsense from the day before.

Lion's are not just any old animal, they are the kings of the animal world. When a lion appears in a dream, coming up from the depths of who-knows-where to pay you a visit, it's a good idea to pay attention. Your attitude towards the lion in the dream is important. You do not rush up excitedly to hug him, nor do you run in the other direction in fear. Your attitude suggests a kind of reverence and gratitude, a good sign, suggesting that you are open to this transition in your life instead of fighting it. If, instead, you had misunderstood the lion's power to hurt you in the dream (jumping on its back or getting too close), I would not feel as optimistic about your "prognosis" for the transition. You get it. You get that this lion has power, and you get that it's sort of an honor to have him there, staring right at you. I know this is a big time in your life, because kings don't pay visits for just any old reason.

Have you had a dream like this? Share in the comments!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Feral cats! In My House and Everywhere!" A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

I am in my house and look outside and see a swarm of feral cats invading my yard. I am extremely frustrated and anxious. I go around to the kitchen and open the door to scare them away, but the cats start coming into my house! There are other people in my house, and everyone wants me to get rid of the cats! I pick up one of the cats but it starts scratching my arm so I drop it. I try to start shoving them out, but they're all dodging my efforts. Then a big, Native American blanket is somehow thrown over a cat and it transforms into a giant, stuffed, toy pony that falls to the ground. The whole scene changes. The cats are gone and everything is now outside.

Like a proper story, this dream provides the setting, the problem, the climax, and then the unlikely solution. You're in your house looking into your yard. Feral cats are swarming outside and, in your desire to be rid of them, you inadvertently let them in! Your attempts to get rid of them by force fail, but then, out of nowhere, an unlikely shift: with the help of something more ancient and unfamiliar, the cat is transformed into a cuddly, inert, soft, pony. And just as you desired, the cats are all gone.I know from conversations with you that this is a recurring dream; these feral cats have been haunting you for a long time. As a recurring dream, you are being presented with a challenge of some kind, a personal difficulty, that persists because (almost like an injury) it requires your attention. So what do these cats represent for you and why are you determined to keep them out?

Cats are companions for many people and bring comfort; they live in our homes, sit on our laps, sleep in our beds, and cuddle up with us. They are also dependent on us for food and shelter. I won't go into the varied mythological symbolism of cats here, because I think the primary question is why these cats are so regularly in your dreams, seeking your help, and why you are so determined to keep them out.

In the dream, are you at all concerned that these cats are homeless and seeking shelter in your home? You and I have spoken about this dream, so I'll share with our readers that when I asked you this question if you were worried about them, you replied that you were just annoyed with them, and that, perhaps, you wanted them gone quickly so that you didn't have to worry about them. Out of sight out of mind.

That's it, though. The more we try to avoid things, the more they bother us. A small part of you, I think, is actually concerned about these cats but avoiding thinking about it. So what does that mean? Every character that arises in a dream is a part of us. These cats, whatever they represent, are a part of you, a part that may be rather soft and even somewhat dependent on others, that you may prefer were not part of you at all. All this work you are doing to protect your home (another important symbol) suggests that you are working hard to keep your defenses up, fortifying walls in order to keep from admitting that something a little gentler, maybe emotional, is being neglected and left out.

All of your tools to keep the cats out of your house are not working. They never will. In order to get rid of these cats once and for all, you may just have to let them in and engage them. The incredible solution at the end of your dream, the Native American blanket and the toy pony, will need to wait for explanation for another time. But I promise you, if you learn to pay attention to this cat part of you and what it needs, this recurring dream will either change dramatically or will never come back again.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a note in the comments below!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Spiders in my Bed!" A Dream Interpretation.

Upcoming Dream Workshop

This practice of community dreamwork at The Salome Institute has been an enlivening opportunity to join with others who are interested in expanding their relationship with the unconscious, symbols, and dreams. In this series, Satya will introduce some foundational elements of recording and observing dreams for those who are new to the practice, as well as our process of exploring dreams in community online. Then, in each of our six sessions, Satya will host live dreamwork for two participants who have expressed interest in “working a dream” in a live, interactive format.

Dear Satya:

Alright, so the other morning, I had a terrifying dream of a huge yellow spider sitting on my chest. I'm a pretty rational guy, but I woke up convinced that there were actual spiders in my bed and I had to get up!

My dear boy, rational or not, these kinds of dreams are scary! Modern research on the brain is validating what our bodies have long known: instincts often don't know the difference between what is real in the outer world and what is real in the inner world. If there's a huge spider on your chest, you get the heck out of bed! So don't feel too silly about this kind of thing, you were doing what anyone would have done... and maybe, in the meantime, you got a taste of how the unconscious mind can influence your behavior...But you're probably wondering what that spider was doing there. Well, as with all dreams, I would be curious about the details and I'd recommend you explore them: the location, who you were with, what was happening before the spider landed on your chest, and so forth. These details will offer you more clarity about the specific meaning of the dream.

Spiders are certainly archetypal symbols: that is to say, they have deep symbolic roots that extend cross-culturally and across time in the human psyche. Perhaps encoded in our human DNA somewhere, the image of the spider is evocative of the ancient feminine, mothers, and the mother complex. That the spider is huge suggests that something related to this archetype is looming large in your life these days; and that it has landed on your chest and "woken you up" suggests it is seeking your true attention. (If I were a shaman, I would say you've had a visitation.)Given that the spider appeared in your bed, I would pose the following questions: Is your mother somehow lingering in your relationship with you? Is your partner's mother in bed with you?

These questions are obviously not to be taken literally, but... in a way they are. Contemplate how your own mother, or your subtle relationship with your mother, may be influencing your romantic relationship. This image of spiders in bed is a very dream common image, and it's my own hypothesis that it has something significant to do with the way that a certain kind of energy or confusion, perhaps sort of bewitching, perhaps hypnotizing, can enter into relationships and mess shift them.

If you find spiders in your house in your dream, spend some time journaling about your emotions and the chaos in your life. Assess, in particular, your love relationships and the relationships to the mothers in your life.While the spider can often point to the dark feminine (as opposed to a house cat), and while it was scary, I wonder if its yellow color suggests a less ominous connotation. I find that when yellow appears boldly in dreams it is often reflecting a deep sense of aliveness, contentment and richness, as if representing our associations to gold or the sun. Yellow can be a symbol of culmination or change. If you're not too opposed to journaling, I would recommend you take a little time to explore this dream (it sounds like a big one!), as well as why these images from the unconscious mind might be tugging at your conscious attention.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

Jungian Dream Interpretation

What is Jungian Psychology? 

Photo by Satya Byock

Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a pioneer of psychiatry and modern psychology. Trained as a medical doctor in Switzerland, his work with schizophrenic patients led him into an exploration of the stories and images expressed in states of delusion and illness, through the words, physical movements, and art of his patients. As a scholar too of religion and mythology, Jung began to see profound parallels between the expressions of his patients and stories from around the world with which his patients could not possibly have been familiar. It was from these early beginnings that Jung postulated the collective unconscious, an inherited aspect of each human experience.

Jungian Psychology, also known as Analytical Psychology, Complex Psychology, and as part of Depth Psychology, emphasizes the relationship and emerging dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious aspects of psyche. Jung postulated that the conscious mind, typically referred to as the ego gains form gradually through childhood out of the unconscious until it separates from the unconscious and believes itself to be autonomous. The dialogic relationship that can then develop again between the ego and the Self will often begin with a crisis or a trauma, but can lead to a profound, spiritual, and enriching life. A lack of relationship to the unconscious psyche is a common modern phenomenon and leads to loss of energy, disorientation, a variety of mental health and physical health problems. Neurotic expressions in personality are seen, for instance, as spiritual crises seeking renewed relationship with the enriching center of psyche. In addition to Jung's identification of the Collective Unconscious, he also coined the terms “synchronicity” as well as “extroversion” and “introversion” while laying the groundwork for the MBTI, popularized the term “archetype,” and significantly influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jung’s work and theories have influenced countless artists, philosophers, psychologists, and writers since his time, though his name remains less known.

A Few Resources on Jungian Psychology

Analytical Psychology: its theory and practice, Carl Jung. A transcript of a seminar that Jung delivered, providing a readable, colloquial review of many of the concepts that underly Jung’s work.

Jung and the Story of our Time, Laurens Van Der Post.  An exploration of Jung’s work and its relevance for a turbulent world, by South African writer, activist, and contemporary of Jung.

The Essential Jung, Anthony Storr (ed.). A selection of Jung’s writings on a variety of topics, is well organized and introduced.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung. Considered to be Jung’s memoir, this book provides an insight into Jung’s personal development and the development of his theories, with beautiful explanation of their value for an individual life.