“Big” or significant dreams have certain characteristics distinguishing them from other dreams:
“Big” [or significant] dreamsare often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience. How many people I have encountered who at the first meeting could not refrain from saying: “I once had a dream!” Sometimes it was the first dream they could ever remember, and one that occurred between the ages of three and five
CW8 ¶ 554I have examined many such dreams, and often found in them a peculiarity which distinguishes them from other dreams: they contain symbolical images which we also come across in the mental history of mankind. It is worth noting that the dreamer does not need to have any inkling of the existence of such parallels. This peculiarity is characteristic of dreams of the individuation process, where we find mythological motifs or mythologems I have designated as archetypes
The “big” or “meaningful” dreams come from this deeper level [of the psyche]. They reveal their significancequite apart from the subjective impression they makeby their plastic form, which often has a poetic force and beauty
CW8 ¶ 555Such dreams occur mostly during critical phases of life, in early youth, puberty, at the onset of middle age (36-40) and within sight of death
CW8 ¶ 555Their interpretation often involves considerable difficulties, because the material which the dreamer is able to contribute is too meagre
CW8 ¶ 555For these archetypal products are no longer concerned with personal experiences but with general ideas, whose chief significance lies in their intrinsic meaning and not in any personal experience and its associations
CW8 ¶ 555The `big' dreams employ numerous mythological motifs that characterize the life of the hero, of that greater man who is semi-divine by nature
CW8 ¶ 558Here we find the dangerous adventures and ordeals such as occur in initiations. We meet dragons, helpful animals, and demons; also the Wise Old Man, the animal-man, the wishing tree, the hidden treasure, the well, the cave, the walled garden, the transformative processes and substances of alchemy, and so forthall things which in no way touch the banalities of everyday
CW8 ¶ 558The reason for this is that they [the dreams] have to do with the realization of a part of the personality which has not yet come into existence but is still in the process of becoming
CW8 ¶ 558