insideKENT Magazine Issue 22 - January 2014 | Page 81

access these personal links to begin to
understand what the unconscious mind is
presenting to us. For example, to one person
dreaming of teeth may awaken memories of the
childhood ritual of placing milk teeth under the
pillow for the tooth fairy, yet to someone else it
may trigger thoughts of their fear of the dentist.
C.G. Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst and a disciple
of Sigmund Freud, called this process
‘Amplification’ and the following short dream
illustrates how it can be used in understanding
the hidden messages from the unconscious.
In this example the dreamer was a young woman
who had recently moved away from London in
search of a more separate life away from her
family.
‘I WAS IN MY FLAT AND REMEMBERED I HAD
TO GO TO LONDON TO FEED MY SISTER’S
CATS. I WAS HORRIFIED BECAUSE I HAD BEEN
THERE TWO WEEKS AGO AND HAD
FORGOTTEN THAT I’D LOCKED THEM
OUTSIDE WHILST I FUMIGATED THE HOUSE.’
Having created a list of associations with the cat
symbol, the dreamer intuitively chose the one
that clicked with her personal life, which in turn
triggered the following thought:
‘THE CATS MAKE ME THINK OF MY SISTER’S
CHILDREN; THEY ARE HER FOCAL POINT
BUT SHE ALSO HAS TWO CATS AND I FEEL
THEY ARE NEGLECTED.'

The dreamer’s sister was referred to in the dream,
but she was not present. Thereafter, the dreamer
made the connection in waking life of an
increasingly difficult family relationship, which in
turn had made her feel that she wasn’t as
important in the family group as she would like
to be. It then became clear that she felt she was
being neglected because of the change in focus
on her sister’s children.
When I asked her to explore the feeling of being
horrified at forgetting to feed the cats in her
dream, it made her aware of the annoyance she
felt that she was expected to travel to London
just to feed the cats. She said that in her waking
life she was usually the one that was expected
to visit her family and that they rarely came to
her. She described the horror as ‘guilty feelings’
borne out of her desire to be free from the
resentment by not making the journey to London.
This defiance had emerged in the dream as
forgetfulness.
The appearance of animals in dreams can
represent one’s own animal instinct. In this dream
the dreamer shut out (or set free) the cats, which
she associated with releasing her own inner
power by choosing to make an independent life
for herself. This can be described as a myth reenactment of the heroic quest [