The use of dreams in homeopathic treatment

Much of what I know about using dreams I learned from my mentor and supervisor, the Jungian analyst V. Walter Odajnyk. Dr Odajnyk was analysed by both Marie-Louise von Franz and Edward Edinger, who were well-known colleagues of Carl Jung. I thank all four for their research and teaching.

Why do we include dreams in the case history?

Our predecessors asked about cravings for particular foods, about physical sensations and about emotional feelings, and often received clear, comprehensible answers. Today it is unusual for a homeopath to treat a patient whose mental, general and physical symptoms are not suppressed. We live in a very complex and over‑treated society in which no physical or mood symptom remains untreated. Most people today lead lives so far removed from nature that their symptoms have become intellectualised and unreliable, making it difficult to arrive at the correct remedy.

Fortunately we cannot manipulate our dreams. We cannot create a false reality in our dreams or influence them deliberately. Things that are suppressed in conscious life move into the unconscious and often express themselves in dreams. For the dream is an attempt by the organism to heal itself, if it is used and carefully analysed. Dream contents can lead to some of the most reliable symptoms in a case. Although they may seem fleeting and transient, dreams in fact contain objective facts about a person's psychic and physical condition.

Carl Jung considered it very likely that there are not two separate things called body and mind, but that both are merely different manifestations of the same life and are subject to the same laws, and that the body does what is going on in the head. This relationship is, on the one hand, already fairly clear to homeopaths; on the other hand, we often use dreams in a way that lacks a sense of this connection. We use the dream as if it were a separate symptom taken out of the context of the totality of symptoms.

Techniques of dream interpretation

To obtain accurate information from a dream, we let the patient talk about their dream and ask only occasional brief interjections when they get stuck. It is the dreamer who makes the connections in the dream, who puts the pieces of the puzzle together. This corresponds in case-taking to the question, “What else?” Applied to dream analysis it becomes: “I don't know what you mean by that.” Or: “What do you associate with this or that aspect of the dream?” As the process proceeds, information unfolds, and if the homeopath maintains an “I don't know” stance long enough, a quite surprising and complete picture can emerge.

Dreams recounted during homeopathic case-taking are subtly different from dreams that are dreamt for psychotherapy. This is because the dreamer dreams the dream for themselves and for the therapist. In homeopathic case-taking the dreamer's psyche knows that we are working in the symbolic realm, so the information is often encoded with images related to the remedy. In addition, the patient's associations are more likely to focus on the remedy.

All this occurs on a level below the conscious mind; it strikes from the centre of the patient's soul upon the receptive psyche of the homeopath. The more receptive the homeopath's psyche is to the dynamics and interactions of the dream state, the more intense this process will be. The psyche has its own intelligence and does not open itself to those who cannot or will not hear what it has to say to an unbiased ear.

When we work with dreams we enter the world of images and symbols, a primary route by which people experience their inner and outer worlds. This symbolic realm is pre‑verbal and often has a greater reality than could be expressed in linear form. Symbols and images so fundamental that they show a connection between mind and body can lead us into the reality of an individual's dilemma. Carl Jung defines symbols as expressions of a spontaneous experience that point beyond themselves — and beyond the limits of rational thought. They are the best description of an unknown fact.

Very often it is precisely this unknown fact that we need to know in order to find the simillimum. The following case illustrates how symbolism in a childhood dream not only leads to the simillimum but also helps us to understand what needs to be healed in the individual.

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