Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat Monthly Interviews Mohammad Reza Sargolzaei: The Wisdom of Dreams

Text of the Interview with Dr. Mohammad Reza Sargolzaei on: "The Wisdom of Dreams"

Published in Issue 153 of Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat Monthly – Spring 2020

Interviewer: Naghmeh Parvan

Introduction: What "Carl Gustav Jung" (the Swiss psychiatrist) adds to the wisdom of life, beyond other members of the psychoanalytic movement, is the "wisdom of dreams." The discussion of dreams has always existed in various religions and in the pre-modern view, and dreams, though not all of them, were considered a message from the higher world; moreover, the dreams of specific individuals could serve as a kind of guide for their own lives and even for others. For example, one can refer to stories in the Old Testament or the Quran, such as Joseph's own dreams and his interpretations of others' dreams. Dreams are also mentioned in the Shahnameh, for instance, the dream of Anushirvan and Bozorgmehr's interpretations of it.

However, with the emergence of modernity in the West, whose most important characteristic, according to "Max Weber," was disenchantment, this sacred halo was removed from around many things. Hence, in the modern era, even the Holy Scriptures become subjects of psychoanalytic, literary, linguistic, and historical analysis; thus, dreams are also analyzed as a part of the mind that is in a defeated state during wakefulness but can assume a dominant state in the dream state. In this conversation with "Dr. Mohammad Reza Sargolzaei," we will explore how, from Jung's perspective, the "dream" can serve as a kind of guide, reminding a person of their mission in life.

Dear Dr. Sargolzaei, if you agree, let us pursue the discussion of the "wisdom of dreams" with a brief description of the views of "Sigmund Freud" and "Carl Jung" on dreams. That is, please tell us on which specific parts of this subject these two psychoanalysts agreed, and where their paths diverged.

As you know, in the psychoanalytic movement of the modern era, attention to dreams is not a sanctifying current but rather a desacralizing one; therefore, according to "Erich Fromm" in the book "The Forgotten Language", when Freud looks at dreams, he is in fact looking at our lower self, which includes all those things that are animalistic, primitive, or childish; that is, all that part which we believe we have left behind when we grew up and reached this point, and consequently we ignore it. But in truth, that part is always within us; for example, when we get angry, we grind our teeth, meaning there is a pull within us that makes us want to bite like great apes, but we do not do so; yet ultimately, this component from within reveals itself to us in dreams.

Does this mean that Freud considered the realm of the unconscious to be the baser aspect of our existence, and not merely a realm devoid of positive or negative value within us?

Yes, from the Freudian perspective, the unconscious realm is the baser aspect of our being. In fact, within the field of psychology (and not in the entire history of philosophy), the view that the unconscious realm is a superior realm is a Jungian perspective. Therefore, in the stream of psychology that emerged after the Industrial Age, it was Jung who, for the first time, once again considered the mysterious realm of dreams to be a higher realm. Of course, I emphasize that we are not talking about all dreams. Jung says that for Freud, "our unconscious is like a kindergarten; I also confess that I have a kindergarten within myself, but its volume is negligible compared to the immense volume of history." Jung's view is that all the historical achievements of humanity are accumulated in our higher unconscious, which resides within all of us; but Jung offers no explanation as to how these achievements are transmitted: "Are these achievements stored on our genes based on a Lamarckian view, or is there a non-genetic, non-material realm?" And of course, we still have no explanation for it. Thus, the belief that the entire historical-cultural achievement of the human species has been transmitted to us and, if we can somehow connect with it, it can help us like a sage, a guru, a spiritual guide, a compass, or a mentor, is a new point that Jung adds to the modern age.

So can it be said that both Freud and Jung assign value to the contents of our unconscious, meaning that neither of them considers this hidden realm within our being as neutral?

Yes, neither Freud nor Jung has a neutral view on this matter, and each evaluates it in their own way, and this positive or negative evaluation depends on how we view human reason. If we consider reason to be valuable, then anything that stands against reason is judged negatively, whether it be instinct, irrational thought, or indoctrination. The reason Jung assigns a positive value to the unconscious realm is that Jung believes in a kind of Hegelian historical reason. This means he believes that each of us has an individual reason which, no matter how complete, can never surpass historical reason. Therefore, Jung and Freud take a stance based on the virtue of reason; but the reason that Freud considers virtuous is "consciousness" itself, while the reason that Jung considers virtuous is historical reason, the spirit of history, or in Jung's terms, our "collective unconscious." Consequently, in contrast to the virtue of my individual reason, my sexual instinct becomes a base thing. Jung also believes in the virtue of reason, but he considers our individual reason to be a very incomplete reason and deems a historical reason to be wiser than my reason.

If what you mean by this historical reason is the collective unconscious (Collective unconsciousness), it seems that Jung sometimes also has a negative view of it; for example, where he states that negative burdens are also transmitted to subsequent generations through this collective unconscious.

No, in fact what Jung views negatively is repression. Repression leads to a part of my personal or collective unconscious turning into the shadow. This shadow gains energy in direct proportion to the degree it is repressed. One could interpret this as the scientific outlook of that era, based on Newtonian and Laplacian mechanics concerning forces and pressure, having influenced Freud and Jung, and thus this law of mechanics—that for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction—becomes a metaphor for them. On this basis, when, for example, due to an educational or cultural system, we seek to repress a drive or instinct, that which is repressed is not gone or destroyed, but will manifest itself in another form and elsewhere with the same energy of repression. Therefore, in Jung's view, the collective unconscious takes on a negative aspect when a part of it has been severely repressed and seeks to discharge its energy. For instance, from his perspective, the German nation, in part of the period before World War II, excessively repressed its instinctual and animalistic side and considered itself more cultured than it was. Consequently, in Jung's interpretation, all these primitive and elemental instincts of the German nation transformed into a dormant dragon. Jung here uses the term Wotan, which in German legends is a monster lurking underground. He considers the rise of German Nazism and Fascism to be the result of such a process. This holds true both for Germany and for other countries that were, in a period of history, exploiters and pirates; like Spain, which was a colonizer, and Italy, which is the heir to the ancient Roman Empire. After entering the cultural age based on human value (humanism), these countries repressed their plundering side and tried to sever their connection with the wild beast within and behave in a very polite and cultured manner; however, Fascism was able to draw out this existing pull within their collective unconscious. In fact, Mussolini's Fascism came to draw out an empire like ancient Rome, the Nazis came to draw out the Wotan of the German nation, and the Spanish Fascists came to draw out that colonialism and exploitation of a Spaniard. Thus, it can be said that it is repression that is negative because it causes an accumulation of energy in the deeper layers of the psyche, but as for the collective unconscious being inherently negative, no. Of course, as I mentioned, Jung says that, like Freud, I believe a part of us is the lower part. For example, an opera conductor having a bowel movement is considered his lower aspect compared to when he is conducting an opera. Of course, someone like Michel de Montaigne, who holds an extreme naturalistic view, might not accept this positive and negative or the lower and higher aspects, but based on this Kantian presupposition (attributed to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant) that the cultural and aesthetic aspect of the human being prevails over his bodily, somatic, physical, and instinctual aspect, artistic activity is superior to digestive activity. Therefore, if we think that we only have one reason and one non-reason (instinct, custom, habit…), naturally the entire collective unconscious is considered non-rational, which we have repressed, and it is our lower self. But since Jung considers a part of the collective unconscious to be trans-rational, which is reason, but historical reason or reason-like and collective wisdom, he therefore believes in an "upper self" or, as Hafez says, the "heavenly soul."

Let us return to the main topic of our discussion; how does Jung establish a connection between dreams and having a good life, or in philosophical terms, attaining eudaimonia?

Part of what we all seek in life is well-being, and we want our basic needs to be met, but in the pursuit of this well-being or good life (well-being), we may fall into error. For instance, we might believe that our need is to live in a penthouse, and this is our error—that is, a desire that has taken the place of a need. But being able to live somewhere where the temperature can be adjusted according to the situation is my need, because my survival depends on it. Therefore, part of our life's need is the pursuit of this well-being, and its affliction is precisely the ambiguity in the concept and boundary between need and desire. Up to this point, the wisdom of life is a part of practical wisdom that tells us how to achieve this well-being, and it was once called the "wisdom of livelihood" or economics, which was once a part of philosophy. When this art of livelihood, or the wisdom of the body and health, is well performed, we reach a point that is our point of well-being. At this point, our physical state is good, meaning we are neither cold, nor hot, nor hungry, nor in pain; essentially, our "Maslowian needs" (attributed to Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist) have been met. After this point lies the fulfillment of social needs, which we call the "wisdom of relationships." The difference between humans and animals only reveals itself after these needs are met; it is where the human says to themselves: "What is it all for in the end?!" Our conception of animals is that they do not search for meaning and purpose, and as "Jean-Paul Sartre" says, they are being in itself, meaning that once their needs are satisfied, they do not ask what the purpose and meaning of this need and its satisfaction is. But the human is being for itself, meaning they ask what this being is for. From the moment this question becomes serious, room opens up for "spiritual wisdom," and the human feels "felicity" or happiness in the philosophical sense only if they can achieve eudaimonia, meaning the discovery of spiritual truth. Consequently, in one place, food, in the psychological sense, brings about happiness, and in another, love... But in yet another place, food, sex, respect, and love do not give the human happiness, and it is at this point that eudaimonia is needed, and the question arises of where we can find it. Jung's answer is that this Higher Self can communicate with us through dreams and dream-like states, and this is where the discussion of the "wisdom of dreams" comes into play. For example, if someone dreams that they met an old acquaintance on a trip to India, "Freud" would ask what or whom India reminds them of. We might answer that such a trip evokes a lack of hygiene, a movement toward Asian democracy, a rural economy, "Buddha," or "Krishna." Freud believes that India here has a personal meaning, it is the embodiment of something from your life, and based on what your associations are, he tells you what India has substituted for in your dream, and ultimately, after exploring and dissecting all of these, we will arrive at the conclusion that you did not fulfill one of the desires of the primitive human within you—for example, the inner child or the inner savage—during the day; you censored this desire and twisted and twisted and twisted it until it finally named itself a trip to India, and this is the Freudian view, which ultimately traces the dream back to the needs of the Lower Self.

But Jung's view is that the dream does not always lead to the Lower Self, and there are times when the dream leads you to the Higher Self. That is, from Jung's perspective, for someone who wants their life to become meaningful, this system of associations may contain a message with the theme that the meaningfulness of their life must pass through a specific path. For example, it might tell you that in Christianity, you cannot find a myth that resembles you enough to make your life meaningful; but, for instance, in Hinduism, you will be able to find a myth that provides you with the code to achieve eudaimonia. And this is the Jungian view that I have named the "wisdom of dreams."

But what is the mechanism of this coding through dreams? In other words, mentally and psychologically, what process unfolds that allows us to claim that our dreams carry a message for us?

Let us begin with spirit to explain this mechanism. A “transpersonal” reality surrounds us, which Jung calls “spirit.” Jung holds that because this reality envelops us, we are within spirit, not spirit within us; we are a part of spirit, not spirit a part of us. Thus, the tens of billions of human beings who have lived and are living throughout history have all breathed and continue to breathe this air, and at the same time this air is inside all of them. Jung calls a breath of this air that is within my lung the “Self,” which Mr. Baqer Parham translated as “khodi” and which can be rendered as “kheshtan.” It is this part that we call the “Higher Self” and, in Hafez’s phrase, the “heavenly soul,” and revelatory dreams are also the product of this part’s activity.

This Self is the equivalent of the “Zoroastrian Fravashi” or the “divine breath” in Islamic texts, a breeze within us,[1] from the reality that surrounds us, whose name is spirit. Jung believes that we must not identify ourselves with this transpersonal reality. If the “ego”[2] imagines that I am spirit, “psychic inflation” occurs, like Hallaj’s utterance of “Ana al-Haqq.” Therefore, Jungian “spirituality” is understood here in this way: since each human being is a subset of this spirit, each of these Selves has a role in this great process of the transformation of spirit, or the Hegelian “Geist.” On this basis, they can find their meaning and life can become meaningful for them when they are able to connect with the “Self,” or the inner revelation or revelatory dream within themselves, and it is in this way that eudaimonia is realized for them.

So, is it possible that by paying attention to our dreams we can discover our role in the universe, why we are here, or in truth, our mission in existence?

Yes, exactly. In fact, Viktor Frankl says that to find the meaning of life we must go beyond ourselves. He uses the term “self-transcendence.” Of course, the “self” Frankl uses is different from Jung’s Self; Frankl uses the everyday meaning of self. Therefore, if we want to interpret Viktor Frankl’s self-transcendence in Jungian terms, we must say ego-transcendence; that is, when we go beyond the ego. But what does ego mean? It means the very thing that each person considers their “I”; for example, I consider myself an Iranian psychiatrist interested in philosophy and myth; all of this is ego. Everything we call will is influenced by this part of consciousness; these decisions are ego-based decisions. The mission or meaning that Jung has in mind differs in that he says perhaps your mission in this world is not really what you outwardly think; for instance, perhaps your mission is to translate Tagore’s poems.

But here someone might ask, when my ego tells me something else, how am I to discover that this is my mission?

Jung believed that you must decode dreams until you finally grasp their message and understand what your mission is. It is in this state that you attain transcendence from the ego, you go beyond, or find transcendence. Now, this self-transcendence can lead to self-actualization. According to Viktor Frankl, although Abraham Maslow believes that some individuals reach the developmental stage of self-actualization, he does not explain the mechanism for achieving this self-realization. Frankl himself introduces this mechanism as self-transcendence, meaning going beyond the self, which, in my opinion, would have been better termed ego-transcendence. That is, as long as I use the tools of the ego, such as executive thinking and data analysis, I cannot find my mission and achieve self-actualization. In this state, I am not the agent of a spiritual command but rather the designer and executor of my social identity. But when I transcend this ego, it is only then that I can take steps toward self-actualization, and Maslow's self-actualized human is the very person who has attained Aristotle's eudaimonia. That is, in fact, they have found their revelatory dream, mystical experience, or fravashi, and it is this that is commanding them; for instance, it says "Iqra'", read[3]; he says, "But I am illiterate"; and he hears that literacy or illiteracy does not matter when you have been given the mission to read. According to Jung, this eudaimonia occurs in dreams. Of course, what we mean here is dreams and dream-like states[4]. That is, any state that leads to the expansion of ego boundaries.

Is this the same thing that William James calls the experience of the "sacred" or the "transcendent"?

Yes, and according to Abraham Maslow, this can happen in a peak experience. As if in a moment, in a second, in an instant, a person feels they have encountered the transcendent or that the transcendent has touched them. The touch that occurs in this process is what we refer to as the Self. Just like Michelangelo's painting where the "Father" in the heavens and "Man" on earth stretch their hands toward each other and at one point their fingers touch; this touch is the Self. In truth, the experience in which the spirit touches the ego is the experience of the Self, or "Khodi," through the ego or "Khud," and in fact, "Khodi," unlike "Khud," is not something that belongs to me but rather signifies an experience that reveals the transcendent to me.

The points discussed here about transcending the "self" (Khud) and actualizing the "Self" (Khodi) are all topics that the ancients, for example Aristotle in the final chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, placed great emphasis on. Therefore, the question arises: what specifically distinguishes Jung's theory from the rest? In other words, how can we claim that Jung has something new to say?

In fact, when we say a new idea, we mean that Jung's ideas in psychology are new after the era of the Industrial Revolution; otherwise, one could say that Jung's ideas are, in one sense, Platonic, in another sense a Gnostic reading of Christianity, or even, in a sense, Zoroastrian or Mithraic—that is, Jung's thought is essentially pre-modern thought. But on the other hand, in the therapy room, no one other than Jung and the Jungians uses this wisdom—and I would also place Viktor Frankl in this same group. Therefore, one could say that Jung introduces a kind of pre-modern thought into psychology, and it is natural that modern psychology does not accept Jung, nor should it; because psychology must ultimately clarify whether it wants to be a science in the Popperian sense (attributed to Karl Popper) or not, and if it says it wants to be a science in the Popperian sense, it must reject Jung. Consequently, in my opinion, while we must say that Jung's ideas are unscientific and that scientific psychology is not supposed to accept them, his words can be called a kind of wisdom, which, although not called science, is valuable because it addresses the issue of meaning and the spiritual aspect of the human being, a realm that scientific psychology has left empty. If one day scientific psychology can fill that space, in the sense that psychology based on neuroscience and measurable data provides an answer to the human need for meaning, I myself will certainly say that Jung should be consigned to the museum of the history of wisdom and knowledge; but, since scientific psychology has not yet filled that space, and I doubt it will be able to fill it anytime soon—meaning the current of scientific psychology also shows no sign of being able to answer this need in the near future—I think that Jung still has something to say to us humans. Yes, as you said, this discourse in the realm of the therapy room is a distinguished and distinctive discourse, but if we take this discourse to the realm of the history of philosophy or the realm of religion, it is no longer considered a distinctive discourse; it is very old and ancient; even shamans believed in such a thing.

Regarding trusting dreams and finding meaning and life's mission within them, this question arises: can we find wisdom in our dreams at any time in life? I mean the different periods of life; childhood, youth and adolescence, adulthood, and middle age?

Interestingly, Jung clarifies this matter for people based on a specific discipline, and in the discussion of socialization and individuation, he addresses where in life people should enter the realm of exploring the unconscious. In Jung's view, during the developmental stage of socialization, we must find the wisdom of livelihood and the wisdom of social relations. Consequently, Jung does not prescribe or recommend the process of dream analysis for an adolescent. For Jung, it is important for an adolescent to develop their waking intellect. Therefore, he deems critical thinking, analytical thinking, and evaluative thinking necessary for an adolescent; that is, the same practical wisdom; such as, what does economics mean? How is money earned and how is it spent? What is the difference between a need and a want? How can pleasure and benefit be distinguished from one another, and so on. In Jung's view, as long as a person has not achieved the gains of the intellect of livelihood, their unconscious realm is the realm of the inner nursery. Consequently, exploring the dreams of an adolescent will only tell us that this adolescent wants to move from childhood into adolescence; that is, they are standing on a bridge where, on one side, they have the wish to be carefree and irresponsible like a child, and on the other side, the wish to be accepted into the adult community and to have the authority and right to choose of adults. Consequently, during sleep, this part that they must move beyond in wakefulness takes its share, so an adolescent may see the continuation of their childhood games in sleep, just as in a child's sleep we may observe pre-childhood needs, that is, the needs of the inner wild beast—for example, animals appear far more frequently in children's dreams than in adults' dreams, as if the child's jungle self is still active within them and has not yet become very tame and domesticated. Consequently, regarding these stages of life, Jung is in complete agreement with Freud that there is a lower self in the dream, and therefore, in these developmental stages, he does not speak of the wisdom of dreams.

The same applies to entering a trance; for instance, nowadays among teenagers and young people, the use of hallucinogenic substances has become prevalent, and they think that through them they can attain a state of mind that expands the boundaries of the ego. If we were to look at the matter from a Jungian perspective, Jung would tell a teenager: even if you use marijuana, you will still want to watch cartoons; you might experience your childish games and childish ecstasy more deeply, but you will not find anything else. It is when human beings traverse the practical wisdom of life, attain well-being, and the search for meaning becomes the central concern of their lives that the exploration of dreams or the search for methods that lead to the expansion of the mind's boundaries can be valuable. This discipline is one of the things Jung worked on, and on this basis, Joseph Campbell says in The Power of Myth: 'The mystic swims in the sea in which the madman drowns.' In Jung's view, the premature exploration of dreams or dreamlike experiences will only lead to a kind of psychotic lifestyle rather than a spiritual and soulful one.

Therefore, it seems very vital, especially in this age of communication and media where everything is easily accessible to everyone, for a person's task to be clarified and for them to understand which, among the infinite things available, is suitable for their condition.

Yes, just as in the first half of life it is important not to confuse need and desire—for example, not confusing the need for comfortable housing with the desire to live in a luxury tower—similarly, we might confuse need and desire in this way: because learning the economics of livelihood is difficult, even though I need to learn the economics of livelihood at this developmental stage, I begin a fruitless search for meaning. This is a crisis that exists particularly in our time, and in an interview with another magazine called Sepideh-ye Danayi about existentialism, I raised the point that in our society, there is an escape into existential discussions. By 'our society,' I mean Iranian society in general, and the society of young people entering the field of psychology in particular. Because if you want to reach existential psychology like Irvin Yalom, he first studied medicine and learned about the body, then studied psychiatry and came to know the functions of the brain well, became a senior researcher in the field of psychopharmacology for a period, and after that, began psychoanalysis, went through the standard educational model of orthodox psychoanalysis, and finally reached a point where he addresses existential issues, that is, the existential concerns and crises of human beings, which are different from issues like repressed sex or repressed anger. But Irvin Yalom becoming a novelist and the simplification and popularization of his theories leads to a generation of young, novice psychologists who very quickly claim to be existentialists. In my opinion, this escape into the existential realm is the method of some who lack the patience to proceed step by step and learn behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. Specifically in the psychology community, or generally in Iranian society, this existential and spiritual escape is evident; a society whose fundamental issue now is the issue of civic responsibility and civil rights, where the position of the nation and the state is undetermined, whose important issues are the domains of authority and economy, and like an immature adolescent, it takes refuge in existential and spiritual discussions. Jung clarifies our task in this area, whether for an individual or for a society: have you reached that rationality to be able to be critical and analytical, and have you attained that practical wisdom of life to be able to create well-being for yourself? Or are you even helpless in providing the minimum necessities of your life? Spiritual discussions for such a society are a confusion of need and desire, or a confusion of benefit and pleasure.

Thus, it can be said that the path to transcending the self in Jung, as with his predecessors, passes through society and socialization, and living a good life, both theoretically and practically, is the path that leads a person to that individuation which can be a prelude to transcendence and sublimation.

Yes, that is exactly the case, because fundamentally, individuation for Jung differs from autism. By autism or egocentrism, I mean the behavior of a person who sets aside people and society to go and find themselves. But when Jung speaks of individuation, he is talking about the fact that I must find my own mission in the world. A mission that transcends the ego and differs from the mission of the socialization period, differs from the familial, occupational, ethnic, and national missions that become the ego's identity. Individuation is not a self-centered process; it is, again, the undertaking of a mission for the world, for life; but, my unique, individual mission; the 'I' not as a citizen influenced by social convention, but the 'I' as a human being, an existence in interaction with the spirit. In truth, at this stage, a new 'I' is defined, not in interaction with society, but an 'I' in interaction with history, an 'I' in interaction with the 'Transcendent,' which carries out a mission beyond social convention and the grand narrative of its society. Consequently, the individuated person is not someone who lives like a monk in a cave or monastery; the individuated person is someone who knows their mission is for this world, for this biosphere, for this historical moment, but not according to the data of the ego. Rather, they arrive at this mission through grasping the wisdom of the dream, and often they pay a price for it. That is, individuation is not an escape from social responsibility; rather, it can be said to be a liberation from the responsibility that social convention imposes on a person, and instead, taking on the responsibility that the spirit, through that very touch we called the Self, has given us. That is, the mission of society gives way to the mission of the Self. Therefore, if we were to change the name of this individuation to spiritualization, perhaps its meaning would become clearer. In this sense, for me, the 'Transcendent' has taken the place of society, and the social super-ego has been replaced by a spiritual super-ego that transcends my human ego.

Sources for further study :

- The Forgotten Language: Erich Fromm

- Memories, Dreams, Reflections: Carl Gustav Jung

- The Power of Myth: Joseph Campbell

- The Doctor and the Soul: Viktor Frankl

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[1] Nafkha means breath, exhalation, and soul, and based on the verse "and I breathed into him of My spirit," it is a breeze of the divine spirit within the human being.

[2] The ego is the center of gravity of the conscious part and the volitional faculty of the human being.

[3] A reference to the beginning of Surah Al-Alaq, and the revelatory experiences of the Prophet of Islam.

[4] (Dream-like states=altered states of consciousness (asc)

*In colloquial language, 'ro'ya' means a 'pleasant dream' and stands in contrast to a nightmare (bad dream), but in psychoanalytic language, the word 'ro'ya,' equivalent to the English word 'Dream,' refers to all the images and events we see in sleep, regardless of whether their content is sweet or bitter.

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