Children`s Dreams

I have learned from booth C G Jung, Freud and many of their imitators that the dreams of children have no profound meaningful significance. But when I had seen how useful dream work had been for my own well-being, I wanted to examine if I could use my own theories and experiences on the dreams of my children. Dreams which they presented to me almost every morning.

I started to look for literature on the subject. However there was not a single book to be found, not in my own language (Swedish) and neither in any other language, as far as I knew, at this time. But I found many books that indirectly told me it wasn't worth trying. This was already said by the greatest authorities on the subject; Jung and Freud, maybe that's why almost none after them dared to give the children's dreams a serious chance.


That didn’t discourage me, on the contrary. I started to collect their dreams and write them down, also the dreams they had told me before. Then, my husband and I, went ahead to systematically work with their dreams.

                              

I used many of the methods that I had utilized in my dream-work with grown-ups. Then I also had to create some specially designed methods that fitted better to the children's needs. We have been working for over fourteen years, and I'm very astonished.


How could anyone say that children's dreams was nothing but, more or less nonsense, or as Freud said just a question of desires. What I have seen and experienced is that the dreams of children have as much to tell us about their inner well-being as those of grown-ups. I have got so many clues to how I best can help a child to find it’s inner balance.


Dream-work became one of the most efficient therapeutic method, in our work with these profoundly injured and abandoned children. All the experiences I gained and all the discoveries I made I have collected in a book named; Dragons and Demons of the Dream, published 1999 in Sweden. (It’s not yet availed in English) Here in the book everyone can see beautiful examples of what Jung called a "big dream", where there are more Archetypes to find than in many of the grown-up ones.

The Shadows also lie in wait for them everywhere, until we together, in our common dream-work, shed light upon them and integrate them in their consciousness and waking-life. There is one great difference between how you treat a child-dream compared with a dream of an adult.




The psychological interpretations will and must never be presented for the youths. By working with their dream, using all the methods I have presented in my book, the young one will, in an intuitive way, take care of what comes up from the exploration of his dream, without having the interpretation forced on him. He doesn't have to understand his dream with his intellect, since the dream works in it's own way through intuition and the young ones are very close to this state of mind. They get every-thing they need to recover from their "illness" without having had one single symbol explained to them. That’s how it works.

I have seen it and verified it throughout all these years when I have been working with children as well as their dreams. I think that I'm one of the first person to systematically and over many years have followed, studied, interpreted and actively worked with the dreams of children, and also have had the unique opportunity to follow up my work, my theories, and the well-being of my children, since they lived day and night with us.


Dream work is very important for all these children who fight a meaning-less battle with all their inner shadows, which they, if we don’t help them, project on evens, persons and things and than accordingly respond to, often with sad consequences, while we, the grown- ups stand besides and shake our heads. If we took their dreams serious, we could avoid many of the tragedies we witness today.

(From my book Dragons and Demons of the Dream)