Dream: I got caught up in an ownership dispute over a Chapel on the grounds of a castle. It’s called Appleby Castle in the dream, but it looks nothing like the real Appleby Castle; rather, it is more like a mix of a Restoration period mansion and an older manor house, with the chapel a distinct, separate building down the drive.
I visit with three people who are friends, contacts, or advisers or some such: maybe a lawyer, a tax adviser, and a partner. Visitors are in the chapel while I recollect living here once and pointing out that it’s not the entire chapel I’ve been gifted (with two others) but a large room of it. It’s complex. I enjoy the attachment I now have to the estate, having lived on it for nearly twenty years while my father was alive, but it can’t realistically be accessed or monetised in any way. Anything I would wish to do is incumbent on the present owner.
On reflection, on waking, there could be a cost in relation to maintenance – like paying for a new roof, and the most sensible thing to do is to gift it to the current owners
Jungian Dream Analysis using his ‘spiralling’ method of prompts
What follows is not primarily an interpretation of a dream, but an account of a process. The dream itself can be taken as given. The more interesting question is how we approached it, what emerged through that approach, and why such a method may be valuable to anyone seeking to understand their dreams, memories, or inner life. What took place was a collaborative exploration between dreamer and analyst, with artificial intelligence serving not as an oracle or interpreter but as a questioning companion operating within a specifically Jungian framework.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of Jungian dream work is that it is not fundamentally concerned with interpretation. Jung was deeply sceptical of the notion that dreams could be decoded using a fixed symbolic vocabulary, as though one could simply look up a castle, a chapel, or a cave in a dictionary and arrive at the dream’s meaning. Dreams are not cryptograms. For Jung, they are living communications from the unconscious, and the symbols they employ belong first and foremost to the dreamer. The significance of an image lies not in some universal definition but in the web of associations, memories, emotions, and experiences that surround it in the life of the individual.
This is where the “spiralling” method, so beautifully described by John Freeman in his introduction to Man and His Symbols, becomes especially important. Rather than proceeding in a straight line from symbol to interpretation, one circles repeatedly around the dream image, approaching it from different directions each time. The process resembles walking around a great tree. At first one sees only bark, branches and leaves. As one continues to circle, patterns begin to emerge. The shape of the trunk becomes clearer. The relationship between the tree and its surroundings comes into view. Eventually, without ever forcing a conclusion, the whole structure begins to reveal itself. Meaning is not imposed upon the image; it gradually discloses itself through sustained attention.
In practical terms, this meant resisting the temptation to explain the dream and instead asking questions. What did the castle feel like? Why was there a chapel? Why did the dream insist that only a room within the chapel was owned? Why was that room separate, hidden and apparently worthless? Who gave the gift? Why were advisers present but not involved? What did the room smell like? What lay in the shadows and what lay in the light? Each answer generated further questions, and each new question brought another layer into view. The purpose was never to arrive quickly at a conclusion but to encourage the unconscious to continue speaking through the dreamer’s own associations.
What makes artificial intelligence particularly useful in this context is not that it knows what dreams mean. It does not. Rather, it can serve as an endlessly patient interlocutor, capable of remembering every previous answer, noticing recurring motifs, and returning to them from fresh angles without becoming emotionally invested in any particular interpretation. The danger in dream work often lies in premature certainty. The value of the spiralling method is that it postpones certainty. Again and again during this exercise, what appeared to be the obvious meaning dissolved as fresh associations emerged. This is very much in keeping with Jung’s own practice.
The journey we undertook began with what seemed a relatively straightforward dream about inheritance. There was a castle associated with a father, a chapel, questions of ownership, legal complexities, and a vague sense of responsibility. The obvious temptation would have been to conclude that the dream concerned unresolved issues surrounding family inheritance or feelings about a deceased parent. Yet almost immediately the dream resisted such simplification. The place was called Appleby Castle, but it looked nothing like Appleby Castle. This proved significant. The dream was invoking the psychological and emotional territory associated with Appleby rather than reproducing the actual location. The father, meanwhile, was entirely absent. Everything in the dream appeared to originate from him, yet he never appeared in person. That absence became every bit as meaningful as any presence might have been.
Attention then shifted to the chapel. At first glance, a chapel seems an obvious religious symbol, but your own associations took us elsewhere. The chapel was remembered not primarily as a sacred space but as a quiet room, a place for reading, reflection, storage and occasional domestic use. It was not so much a sanctuary as a repository. This distinction became increasingly important as the dream unfolded. Matters became more intriguing when it emerged that you did not inherit the chapel itself. Instead, you inherited only a room within it. Not a grand chamber, not a treasure room, but a dark, damp, grotto-like space hidden away from view. Gradually this room became the centre of gravity around which the entire dream revolved.
As we continued circling, the room underwent a remarkable transformation. What initially appeared worthless became mysterious. What seemed merely neglected began to feel ancient. Associations emerged with forgotten corners of Appleby Castle, hidden spaces discovered in childhood, underground chambers, Roman remains, wells, dungeons, and structures that predated the visible castle itself. The dream’s movement was consistently downward. It led away from the visible and familiar and towards foundations, origins and buried layers. One could almost map the progression as a descent: from castle, to chapel, to room, to grotto, to cave, to hidden foundations beneath the foundations. Psychologically, the dream appeared to be moving in exactly the same direction, away from surface narratives and towards deeper strata of memory and meaning.
Alongside this descent emerged another theme: the question of what should remain hidden. Again and again your associations touched upon stories that are difficult to tell, memories involving living people, family histories, sexual experiences, fantasies, private truths, and the ethical complexities of writing about the past. The room increasingly resembled a psychic archive. It was not a treasure chamber nor a prison. It was a place where things were stored rather than displayed. As a historian, you described feeling tethered to facts. As a storyteller, you were drawn towards myth, possibility and meaning. As a diarist and memoirist, you occupied an ambiguous position somewhere between witness, custodian and interpreter. The dream’s language of deeds, ownership, inheritance and legal obligations began to feel less like a literal property dispute and more like a symbolic exploration of the rights and responsibilities attached to memory itself.
The most revealing moment may have come near the end of the process. When asked what the room wanted from you, you did not say that it wanted protection, restoration, secrecy or public exposure. Instead, you described it as a catalyst. That answer changed the nature of the dream. The room was not demanding action so much as attention. It was not asking to be preserved. It was asking to be entered. It functioned as a doorway into forgotten territory, a point of access to neglected memories, overlooked stories and unexplored meanings. The room itself was not the treasure. It was the entrance to the treasure.
If one attempts a conclusion, it is perhaps this. The dream appears less concerned with inheritance than with stewardship, less concerned with ownership than with relationship, and less concerned with the visible castle than with what lies beneath it. It presents a forgotten chamber connected to family history, personal memory, imagination, place and story. The chamber has little conventional value. Yet it exerts a powerful pull because it contains something psychologically alive. The dream never instructs you to expose its contents, nor does it demand that they remain hidden. Instead, it simply reveals the chamber’s existence and invites you to acknowledge it.
The deeper significance, however, lies not in the dream itself but in the method by which it was explored. Dreams are often dismissed because they appear trivial, absurd or disconnected from waking life. Jung took precisely the opposite view. He recognised that dreams place the profound and the mundane on the same level. A leaking roof may be as important as a dead parent. A forgotten room may matter more than a castle. The meaning emerges not from the dream alone but from the dialogue between dream and dreamer. The dream provides the image. The dreamer provides the associations. The analysis provides the questions. Together they create a conversation.
For anyone engaged in memoir writing, journalling, psychotherapy, historical research, creative writing or simply the attempt to understand themselves more deeply, this process offers something of immense value. It does not tell us what to think. It teaches us how to listen. In a culture that prizes conclusions, certainty and quick answers, there is something profoundly refreshing about a method that values curiosity over certainty and exploration over explanation.
The dream began with a castle and a chapel. It ended in a forgotten chamber beneath them. The analysis followed exactly the same path. We began with an apparent story and arrived in a hidden room. Yet the most important discovery was that the room itself was never the destination. It was the entrance.
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