J F Vernon Blog

Two dream snippets. I can recall the full story arc of neither. What follows is Jungian dream analysis of both.

I take a strictly Jungian approach to their interpretation. I ask ChatGPT to provide a set of context-based questions that spiral around the meaning as Jungian dream analysis requires. I then answer these prompts and we build it from there over serval passes.

The first dream: I am staying in a tired, large English seaside hotel. Leaving the people I’m with, I seek out the quiet of a sitting room and find such a place, a room that could sit sixty, surrounded by windows made of many small glass panes. I take a seat on a large sofa with a coffee table and begin to read. There is no one else in the panes of glass

Not long after, three women, friends or sisters, all happened to have dark hair, happened to be broad-shouldered, well-fed, curvaceous even, the kind of figures shaped more by life than by gyms. Not quite a twin-set and pearls, but dressed for a day out shopping. They sit on the sofa with me as if there is no one else in the room. I say nothing; my look of disdain says it all. One catches my expression and says something blunt but not crude, as if I were at fault. I leave, not caring to stay in the room; they are loud enough to fill it. 

The second dream: I’m in front of a private hire helicopter, not the pilot, but perhaps taking lessons. We circle a former RAF airfield with a building that has a bit of Arts and Crafts 1920s architecture about it – a distinct Vesica Pisces, painted completely in white. These days, only helicopters of various shapes and sizes come in to refuel. I initially helped with this.  More client than co-pilot, after refuelling, my tutor, mentor, or guide invited me to look around the building. It had been sold as luxury apartments. The exterior hints at one story, the interior shows another. It has seen better times. One or two apartments are formally occupied, but the rest have fallen into disrepair due to a lack of maintenance.  It is like walking into a small shopping mall. There is a central atrium. There is a sad, unused dejection about the place. There are squatters, a person sleeping rough, and the toilets are blocked and need cleaning. 

Two Dreams, One Threshold: Using Jung to Think with the Unconscious

I did not set out to interpret a dream. I set out—more ambitiously, and more dangerously—to enter into conversation with it.

That distinction matters. Because what I’ve been doing here is not decoding symbols as if they were clues in a crossword. It is something closer to what Carl Jung insisted upon: treating the dream as a living communication from the unconscious, one that cannot be reduced to a tidy explanation but must instead be approached—patiently—by circling it.

At first, these seemed like unrelated fragments. But using a Jungian method—one that relies not on quick interpretation but on layered questioning and personal association—they began to align.

The Method: Not Analysis, but Dialogue

The process works like this:

You do not ask, “What does this symbol mean?” You ask, “What does this image mean to me?”

So the seaside hotel becomes:

• not a generic symbol, but Beadnell, age sixteen
• not decay, but nostalgia, Britishness, quiet communal space

The windows become:

• not “fragmentation,” but my grandmother’s pride in her casement glass

The women become:

• not archetypal abstractions, but a recognisable social type
• even, absurdly and tellingly, something like a Monty Python sketch

And the airfield building becomes:

• not “a structure,” but unmistakably my own inner creative world
• a “writers’ room” that has not yet fully come alive

This is the crucial move. The dream stops being symbolic in the abstract sense and becomes psychologically specific.

From there, instead of drawing conclusions, one circles:

• return to the same images
• ask sharper questions
• allow contradictions to stand

Gradually, something forms—not a conclusion, but a pattern.

The Pattern That Emerged

The two dreams are not separate. They describe a single dynamic:

Dream

Condition

The hotel

A space I occupy—but refuse to share

The building

A space I value—but do not fully inhabit

In one:

• I arrive first
• I claim the space
• I reject others

In the other:

• the space exists
• it is rich with potential
• but remains under-occupied, waiting for life

Somewhere between these two states lies the truth.

The Central Tension

At one point, I wrote:

“I want to occupy a large space but am yet to do so with any legitimacy.”

That sentence now feels like the axis of both dreams.

Because alongside it sits another admission:

“I need to be invited in.”

And suddenly, everything rearranges.

I can take possession of a quiet room—if I arrive first.
But I hesitate before entering a larger space that requires self-authorisation.

So:

• I protect small spaces too tightly
• I delay inhabiting larger ones

Eros and Logos, Lived (Not Theorised)

Jung would recognise this immediately as a tension between Logos (structure, thought, control) and Eros (relation, engagement, life between people).

In the hotel:

• I seek Logos: silence, reading, thought
• Eros arrives: social presence, conversation, unpredictability
  → I withdraw

In the building:

• Logos is present: architecture, structure, design
• Eros is absent: no true inhabitants
  → the space decays

Put simply:

Where relation enters, I retreat. Where relation is absent, nothing comes alive.

The Squatter

One image has stayed with me more than any other. In the abandoned building, there are squatters.

And I wrote:

“Maybe I am the squatter outside the world of the published or produced.”

In Jungian terms, that is not a metaphor. It is an identification.

The squatter:

• is already inside
• already using the space
• but without recognised legitimacy

This is not failure. It is a psychic position—one that contains both truth and limitation.

The Condition for Thought

Another line emerged, almost casually:

“My thoughts only form when I’m left alone.”

This feels true.

But the dreams complicate it.

Because they suggest:

• solitude may be necessary for thought
• but not sufficient for realisation

To realise something—to bring it into the world—requires:

• occupation
• presence
• sometimes even interruption

Even, perhaps, conversation I would rather avoid.

What This Has Become

What began as two fragments has become a map of something precise:

• a relationship to space
• a question of legitimacy
• a tension between solitude and participation

And at its heart, a question that has not yet been answered:

Do I wait to be invited into the larger space of my own work and life—or do I enter it without permission?

Why This Matters

Jung’s great claim is that dreams are not random. They are compensatory. They show what the conscious mind does not see—or does not wish to see.

What these dreams have done is not solve anything.

They have made something visible:

• the protected room
• the uninhabited building
• the squatter
• the women I refused to engage with

They have shown me a system.

And now that I can see it, I can—carefully—begin to test it.

Not by interpreting further. But by living slightly differently within it