⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!

Some mothers attack life in their children. They crush appetite, joy, curiosity, and initiative. They call it love or duty. It is not love. It is domination dressed as care. She withholds warmth to make the child obedient. She intrudes when the child needs space and vanishes when the child needs help. She shames tears, punishes play, mocks ambition, and polices the body. She turns boundaries into punishments and favors into chains. The Death Mother archetype is ancient and modern, requiring careful confrontation to free the parent and the child from its destructive grip. Today, we will help you do this.

⁠Read along with the dream HERE.⁠

LOOK & GROW

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!

Dolls are human stand-ins that invite projection and play; children use them (including action figures and Barbies) to try on identities and develop imagination, then later withdraw the projection as the figure becomes inert again. Icons and idols differ because their meaning is fixed and not for play, which limits imaginative engagement. The healthiest use of dolls is symbolic—relating to them without collapsing into literal belief—while overly realistic “reborn” dolls, talk-box toys, and similar literalizations can narrow imagination, blur symbol and reality. Across history, dolls have served ritual, funerary, and “sympathetic magic” functions, echoing a recurring human urge to craft lifelike figures and “breathe life” into them. A modern parallel appears in AI’s disembodied mirroring—an echo that can soothe but does not foster embodied, self-generated play. The practical test: does the figure expand inner life and integrate feeling, or does it substitute for reality and stunt imagination? Dreams carry the same work inward; their figures function like internal dolls that invite dialogue and meaning-making.

Read along with the dream HERE.

LOOK & GROW

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!

Think of myths as the dreams of an entire culture. Those stories reside in the collective unconscious and influence all of us throughout our lifespan. Mythic patterns shape our attitudes, and when we recognize them, we can link our personal experiences to the universal. When you’re panicking, you’re under the influence of Pan; when you’re sunk in gloom, you’re on a night-sea journey like Odysseus. Jungians’ call linking the personal to the universal, amplification: take a symptom, link it to a myth, and you’ve shifted it from “my private defect” to “a shared force,” which gives us objectivity. Jung noticed that when we lose awareness of the mythic, those patterns secretly affect us and tend to act themselves out, sometimes recklessly. Today, we’ll help you bring these grand narratives into awareness and understand how they help and, at times, hinder you.

Read along with the dream HERE.

LOOK & GROW

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Bullying is about unmanaged aggression and broken containment in early life. Aggression is normal, but kids need adults to name it, hold it, and channel it into play with clear rules. When that doesn’t happen, some children learn to control and humiliate to feel safe, while others shut down and can’t access protective anger. Bullying works as a quick fix for shame or missing recognition, or as an enactment of a harsh inner critic; it gives brief relief and then flips into emptiness. In pairs and groups, people assign disowned traits to a target and attack them, and the crowd effect spreads cruelty while personal conscience fades. Schools should step in directly and calmly: set firm limits, bring the conflict into speech, teach regulation, build empathy, and help vulnerable students practice plain, assertive pushback. Change is easier in childhood; in adults, the pattern hardens and can cross into legal trouble. The ongoing task is individuation and shadow work: own the times you bullied or collapsed, take back what you projected, and use aggression for boundaries and clarity rather than domination or surrender.

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Jung’s Red Book is the primary research record of his systematic experiments in active imagination after the break with Freud, combining calligraphic German text and paintings that document dialogues with his inner guides—especially Philemon and Salome—which became source material for his innovative psychological concepts: Psyche’s autonomy, the collective unconscious, the transcendent function, and individuation. The Red Book reveals the secret source of his groundbreaking ideas.

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In this free edition of Jung Love, our subscriber bonus content, a Patron asks:

"Has there ever been a time in your life when a dream or series of dreams seemed to be telling you one thing, but you decided to go against it regardless? If so, what was the result?

Is it always safe to assume that dreams are acting in your best interest or is there a possibility that, like an autoimmune disease causes a person's body to attack itself, your psyche can be self-destructive and deceitful? How do we know when to trust dreams?"

Support This Jungian Life on Patreon and ask Lisa, Deb, and Joseph your questions for a chance to have them answered on Jung Love.

You're invited to join us for a free Zoom seminar on Dreams and Art on Saturday, September 13th, at 10:30am ET. Register here.

---

Holding the tension of the opposites means that when you’re pulled hard in two different directions, you don’t rush to choose or shut one side down—you keep both viewpoints in mind and let each be heard with equal rights, as if two people were debating inside you. If you can stand that pressure without fleeing, something new appears from the unconscious: a symbol or fresh idea that is a living, third thing that includes truth from both sides.

This is the transcendent function that produces a new attitude you couldn’t reach by willpower alone. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s how Psyche grows without discarding essential parts of itself. Today, we’ll teach you how to do this.

Read along with the dream.

LOOK & GROW

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!

Imagination is a central organ of human perception, as vital as the senses, through which we access meaning, creativity, and the unconscious. It first appeared as an evolutionary leap that allowed humans to run mental simulations, project into the future, and innovate new tools, myths, and symbols. It operates voluntarily—when we actively plan, rehearse, or fantasize—and involuntarily, through dreams, hypnagogic images, and sudden inspirations. It offers insights we could not have predicted.

Imagination provides the bridge between unconscious and conscious life, most present in active imagination, where inner figures reveal truths. It is healing and liberating: it anchors us in personal and collective myth, fosters creativity by joining disparate elements into new forms, and provides access to the mundus imaginalis, a subtle world of archetypal experience. Without cultivating imagination, our inner life stagnates; with it, we belong to something greater, deeper, and more sustaining.

Read along with the dream here.

LOOK & GROW

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