Oneiroi

[Steelhead]

I came across this passage in the neo-Jungian James Hillman's fascinating
book The Myth of Analysis (1972).  I think it has some relation to things
that are going on in GR.  But I will leave it up to minds more highly
developed than mine to decide exactly what that is.

"The dream ego is another name for the imaginal ego.  It is that aspect of
the ego complex which takes part in imaginal reality.  There are
discrepancies between day ego and night ego; usually what we do in dreams
shocks the waking ego.  But perhaps what we do during the day is equally
disturbing to the I of our dreams.  Therapuetic analysis generally tries to
bring a rapprochment between the two.  It attempts to bring about a
correction in the dream ego, much as it tries to transform the waking ego
into attitudes that take more account of what is happening at night.  So
far, so good, concerning the nightblindness of the day ego:  of course it
must learn from dreams.  But must the dream ego also be corrected upward in
the light of our day vision?  Here, the idea of the dream as compensatory
corrective gets us into trouble, for it assumes that the I in our dreams
should react with the values of day consciousness.  From this vantage point
dreams become "good" and "bad," and we judge the wrongs and rights of dream
behavoir.  We return from sleep to the analyst with a punishment or a
reward.  But must everything psychic be put at the altars of the biblical
personages and their warnings?  Do dreams belong to Moses and Jesus and
Paul, or to Night and her children (Oneiroi, Hypnos, Thanatos, Old Age and
Fate) and Hades?  Is soul made with guilt?  Rather, I think, responsibility
for the behavior of the dream ego and attempts to correct it stregthen the
old ego of will and reason.  When we take the dream as a corrective to the
left overs of yesterday or as instruction for tomorrow, we are using it for
the old ego.  Freud said the dream is the guardian of sleep.  And indeed
the dream ego belongs to the family of Night (Nyx), serves there regularly,
and takes its instruction in terms of its own "family," from its mother and
its brother and sister phenomena.  Perhaps the point of dreams is that,
night after night, year after year, they prepare the imaginal ego for old
age, death, and fate by soaking it through and through in memoria.  Perhaps
the point of dreams has very little to do with our daily concerns, and
their purpose is the soul-making of the imaginal ego."
                                        Hillman, page 186-187
Affectionately submitted,

Steelhead