Ven. Gang Xiao: The Mysteries of the Zhou Yi — Psychology, Chapter 3: The Free Association Method of Dream Analysis, Where the Benevolent See Benevolence and the Wise See Wisdom

Chapter 3: The Free Association Method of Dream Analysis, Where the Benevolent See Benevolence and the Wise See Wisdom

Dream divination is also an ancient form of divination. On the eve of a civil service examination, a scholar dreamed he was reading in his study while holding open an umbrella. His mother said this likely meant his efforts were redundant — why hold an umbrella inside a study? It meant that going to sit the exam this year would be a futile gesture, "redundant." The scholar, however, was full of confidence in himself and said, "No, it means I'm even safer, foolproof. The study may leak in the rain, but I still have my umbrella — isn't that safer?" The different associations drawn from the same dream reveal something about a person's confidence. It really is a case of the benevolent seeing benevolence and the wise seeing wisdom.

Free association on a dream can reflect the dreamer's feelings, expectations, and predictions regarding the problems of life.

One night I had the following dream:

I was in a large building. After eating, I was washing bowls when one suddenly slipped from my hands, hit the floor, and shattered. Without even glancing at it, I went downstairs and found myself in Yuanzhuang Village. I didn't see the village itself, but I knew with certainty that this was Yuanzhuang Village. Looking west, not far off was Yaoshang Village. I wanted to go there, but there was no path at all — the surrounding hills and fields were overgrown with thorns. So I gave up and kept heading south. In the distance was an east-west asphalt road, but to reach it I would have to come down a cliff seven or eight meters deep — there was simply no way down. Standing at the cliff's edge and looking across, I saw someone. It turned out to be the old village chief from my home village. He had opened an inn but had just moved out, leaving only an empty building behind. Birds had left plenty of droppings inside. But the sky was already growing dark, and having any kind of shelter at all was a blessing. At that moment one of his dogs came over and licked me. I hurriedly tried to cozy up to the old village chief: "Let me stay — I know your dog!" I leaned against a large persimmon tree. This half of the tree was called Xiaogang, and the other half was called Shanghai.

At first glance, this dream seems to say nothing at all. Let's look at what "I" associated it with, what life problems "I" was facing, and what "I" predicted about resolving them.

1. The episode of the bowl shattering upstairs brought back the dormitory building from my student days studying physics at the normal school. Once university entrance examinations were permitted again, all the students who had been piling up over the ten years of the Cultural Revolution rushed to sit at once. Competition was extraordinarily fierce. The year I was admitted to normal school, the acceptance rate was only four percent. After all the struggle of getting in, by the thinking of the time I had secured an "iron rice bowl." Later I taught at a county-level high school. Over the years my students, too, faced fierce competition for advancement. For the sake of grades, a primary school student named Xia Fei was beaten to death by his own mother. For the sake of grades, a high school student named Xu Li killed his mother — a case that shocked the whole nation. Many of the students I taught developed psychological disorders; some went mad, and there were even suicides. Teachers were in constant torment, both psychological and moral. Moreover, today's normal-university graduates have a hard time finding work, and under the principal accountability system a principal can dismiss a teacher without needing any particular reason or condition. Teaching is a heavy burden. The rice bowl earned through such hard-won exams is not made of iron — it can be shattered at any time, meaning this teaching job can be lost.

2. Coming downstairs, I was at Yuanzhuang Village. The deputy county magistrate in charge of education in our county is from Yuanzhuang Village. He began as a community (minban) teacher, got into a university, and after graduation joined the County Education Bureau's teaching-research office as a researcher. He rose to Director of Education, then to deputy county magistrate overseeing education — the most successful teacher, a role model for young teachers, a banner for the educational world. In the dream I passed through Yuanzhuang Village without stopping, meaning I had given up the lofty hope of making my way up through teaching. I had lost faith in being a teacher, and no longer looked to this Yuanzhuang educator as someone to emulate.

3. To the west was Yaoshang Village, but there was no road — I couldn't get there. In Yaoshang there was a locally well-known rural doctor. I had seen several of his prescriptions; most used medications aimed at regulating the mind and spirit. I warmly agreed with this approach — psychological causes can produce physical illness, modern medicine pays too little attention to it, and many doctors cannot cure such conditions. The Yaoshang doctor had found the right method. As a teacher I had seen again and again how students fell ill under nervous strain, and I had deep personal experience of this. I had already published papers and books on the subject and could claim some expertise. If I gave up teaching to become a doctor, perhaps I could follow the Yaoshang doctor's example — but there were also great difficulties. Without technical skill I couldn't support myself; with technical skill it would still take years to build a name. What would I live on during those years? It seemed going into medicine was no path either.

4. My exchange with the old village chief. What was I to do? I couldn't accomplish anything. I might as well go back home. Even when taken in by the old village chief, I still had to curry favor: "I know your dog." This expresses the helplessness of life.

5. One half of the persimmon tree was Xiaogang, the other half Shanghai. That semester I was teaching "Economics," and had just covered China's household contract responsibility system, which originated in Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province. Shanghai made me think of the material I had covered a few days earlier: urban reform.

Putting it all together: I had lost confidence in teaching — even though my publications had earned me some reputation in educational-theory circles — and was considering doing something else, some other way of getting by. One could predict that during that period, given the slightest opening, I would have resigned and changed jobs. But the final images of Shanghai and Xiaogang suggested that, with no other way out, continuing to teach and giving "Economics" lectures to students remained the most likely path.

If another person had this dream, their associations would certainly differ from mine, and they would reflect that person's own life problems.

The following dreams interpreted by Dr. Jung are classics. His interpretations should be regarded as trustworthy by the standards of scientific psychology.

Jung, born in 1875, was Swiss. In 1920 he received his doctorate in medicine for his paper "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena." He gained worldwide renown for his outstanding achievements in psychology and psychiatry. Clark, Fordham, Yale, and Harvard in the United States vied to confer honorary doctorates on him. Oxford University in England, the University of Calcutta and Benares Hindu University in India, the University of Allahabad, the University of Geneva, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich likewise awarded him honorary doctorates. He was also granted many honorary memberships and professorships, including honorary membership in the Royal Society of Medicine of Britain.

There was a headmaster of a public school, a man of broad learning, who was preparing to seek a professorship in Leipzig. Then he fell ill — with dizziness, palpitations, nausea, and weakness. To seek treatment and also to foresee whether his pursuit of the position would succeed, he turned to Dr. Jung.

He reported three dreams, which Jung recorded in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (trans. Huang Qiming, Workers' Publishing House, 1987) and The Practice of Psychotherapy (trans. Cheng Qiong and Wang Zuohong, Sanlian Bookstore, 1991).

1. He dreamed of a small village. He cut the figure of a scholar, while a group of country children pointed at him and whispered.

2. A train was about to depart. He was trying to catch it, but however hard he ran he couldn't make his legs move — the ground seemed soft and sticky. The train pulled out along an S-shaped track, but a sudden acceleration caused the rear cars to overturn.

3. In a humble farmhouse he was talking with an older woman. Outside, farmers were piling up hay. A creature, half lizard and half crab, crawled first to the left, then to the right. He was standing right in the path it was taking. With a stick he killed it with a single light blow, then stood there staring at the creature in a daze.

Regarding the first dream, Jung explained that it referred to his origins. He now had social standing and was respected, but he was the son of a country farmer. His present achievements were the fruit of much personal effort and hard struggle. Among the sons of country farmers he had already distinguished himself — a figure to look up to. In the dream this took the shape of a scholar of imposing bearing, while the country children still pointed and whispered.

The second dream: he was chasing something he couldn't catch — in the dream a train, in reality the Leipzig professorship. The driver's eagerness to accelerate along the S-shaped track, overturning the cars, was a warning to the dreamer: moving too fast — advancing too quickly — also carries danger.

The third dream: the older woman still pointed back to his origins — his mother, his roots. The farmhouse could have been explained as his old country home, but the dreamer said it looked like St. Jakob's Hospital, which for a moment left Jung at a loss.

Then both of them recalled that St. Jakob's Hospital had originally been a leprosarium. The building was famous because of a war. In 1444, the Swiss had fought there against the forces of the Duke of Burgundy of France. Some thirteen hundred Swiss soldiers made a bloody stand at the leprosarium, resisting an attack by thirty thousand French. The fighting was utterly fierce, and every one of the thirteen hundred Swiss soldiers died a heroic death. The event is famous in Swiss history, and every Swiss person speaks of it with patriotic feeling. Yet the battle unfolded like this: the vanguard of the thirteen hundred had been ordered not to engage the enemy in a decisive fight but to wait for the main force to arrive. On seeing the enemy, however, they disobeyed their orders and recklessly launched an attack. The deaths of these thirteen hundred brave men inspired both reverence and regret in later generations.

Both Jung and the dreamer were scholars of deep learning. Both remembered this event, and both calmly analyzed the gains and losses of the battle. When conditions are not yet ripe, rushing after a victory is likely to invite defeat — just as with these Swiss warriors. Such was the dream's warning about fate. Seeking a professorship in Leipzig was not appropriate.

In the latter half of this dream, the dreamer kills a monster — a transformation of the hero battling the dragon found in the mythologies of many peoples. And the dreamer's killing the creature so easily shows him casting himself as a hero, overestimating his own strength.

But by then the dreamer was already a patient — dizzy, with palpitations, nausea, and weakness. Isn't that precisely altitude sickness? When someone from a lower station rises too quickly to a great height, he may develop altitude sickness. To treat it, either lower his position or let him adjust slowly up there.

Pulling it all together, Dr. Jung said: you rose from the lower strata of society through hard struggle to your present achievements and standing. This position is already not low for you — perhaps even somewhat high. If you press forward faster or rush to win greater success, overestimating your own strength, you will be taking a tremendous risk (the train overturning, the warriors' sacrifice). That is the warning of fate. Dr. Jung further advised him to stay in his post as headmaster of the public school without stepping down, to let himself slowly adjust there — that would be fine — and not to resign in order to compete for the Leipzig professorship; that would be dangerous. To put it more plainly: the Leipzig venture boded more ill than good. But he did not heed Dr. Jung's advice. He resigned his headmastership, failed to win the professorship, and within a few years he had deteriorated.

In the practice of free-association dream analysis, one starts from a fragment of the dream and lets the dreamer's mind rove wherever it will. But this association is not really arbitrary — it is always drawn by the dreamer's complexes, steering the associations toward those complexes, toward his life problems and psychological issues. I associated the building with the dormitory of my student days; Jung's patient associated it with St. Jakob's Hospital. From "Shanghai" I thought of the urban reforms in China I was teaching my students. A merchant might associate "Shanghai" with business; a doctor might think of a new drug made in Shanghai that is highly effective against some disease — and so on.

Dreams are wonderful. They leave the mind an infinite space to think and associate. You can go this way or that, so that the benevolent and the wise each find what suits them — the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom.

In Buddhism there is a practice known as cān huàtou — investigating the "word-head," or critical phrase. Starting from any question, however simple, you keep on asking until at last you reach the deepest complex in your own heart. For example, if I take up a huàtou: what is this building? (the dormitory from back then). How did you get here? (by sitting the college entrance exam). What did you come to do? (study). What did you do afterwards? (became a teacher). How did that go? (extremely hard and heavy — there is much to tell). What do you want to do about it? (whether I want to do it or not, I have to). Or take up the same huàtou — if the former-teacher-turned-deputy-county-magistrate were to answer these questions, his answers would surely differ, reflecting his own state of mind: being a teacher is just fine, full of possibilities; if you're not doing well, it's simply because your efforts or your talents aren't enough.

Cān huàtou is also a form of free association, only predating by far the term "free association" coined by Freud, Jung's teacher. It accords with the principles of psychological science — let Buddhism spurn the label "science" if it will.

From cān huàtou one can extend another psychological method, often seen in literary and dramatic works: an eminent monk says something profound and unfathomable to a certain person; when pressed for more, he answers, "Heaven's secrets must not be revealed." The person goes home and turns the words over in his mind endlessly — in effect he is investigating a huàtou, triggering unlimited free association that reaches his own complexes. This is not a case of deliberate mystification; it accords with the principles of psychological science.