We human beings communicate through spoken and written words, but we also frequently use symbols. Symbols are words or images that may be familiar in daily life but also possess other meanings that are more or less hidden. For example, the image of a cross is indeed a representation of a cross but, when placed in a religious context, it is also one of the symbols of Christianity.
Sometimes, symbols have a broader meaning that has never been precisely defined or explained and which, therefore, remains shrouded in mystery, as is the case with some symbols used by ancient civilisations. We very often resort to symbols to represent concepts that we cannot fully define or explain. It is no coincidence that religions use many symbols: this is because, as human beings, we will never be able to fully explain the concept of the "divine".
According to Jung, man produces symbols constantly and unconsciously, and does so in the form of dreams. This stems from the fact that there are many events in the real world that we fail to record consciously: instead, they remain below the threshold of consciousness, and we perceive them only subliminally.
We can become aware of these events through an intuition or through a dream. The dream is therefore the means by which the unconscious aspect of every event reveals itself to us, not as rational thought but as a symbolic image.
It is based on this concept that psychologists assume the existence of an unconscious psyche within the human being. For Jung, dreams constitute the most frequent and accessible source for studying man's capacity for symbolisation.
When a car we are watching turns a corner, it does not disappear entirely: it simply becomes invisible to our sight, but it is possible that it can be seen again. Similarly, it happens that something may leave the field of our consciousness, but this does not mean that it disappears completely: it is only momentarily inaccessible through awareness, but we can somehow retrieve it. This retrieval takes place precisely through dreams.
We can therefore say that our unconscious is composed of thoughts, impressions, and images that we have momentarily "lost" at a conscious level, but which continue to influence our minds at an unconscious level. These may be forgotten memories that resurface when we see or smell something, or melodies we heard in the past that suddenly come back to mind. It can be anything: stimuli, impulses, intuitions, deductions, rational or irrational thoughts that end up in our unconscious part because, for one reason or another, there is no longer room for them in the conscious part.
All these elements work together to create the symbols expressed in our dreams. But dreaming does not only mean bringing back to memory something we had lost: dreams also express new thoughts that had never reached the threshold of consciousness.
