Dream Method Guidelines: The Typology of Dreams (The Beebe Method)

Author: Christopher Chayban

Disclaimer: These methods are for testing and for educational or informational purposes. Please keep this material for your use and the group’s use only. Thank you.

Most of the notes are taken from the book, Energies and patterns in psychological type: The reservoir of consciousness, that I have re-organized as what I think best suits our needs.

Step 1-Know the indicators and descriptions of the functions to assign a guiding criterion to help you recognize the figures in relation to the functions in dreams.

Introversion and Extraversion are default attitudes towards something. For example, if something relates to me (Introversion) or to everybody (Extraversion). They have an energetic quality to them, meaning they have a directional dynamic. Introversion is internal and moves inward and extraversion is external and moves outward.

Introversion is an attitude that is idiosyncratic, personal & private. It is about matching to inner objects. Cognition is matching (withdrawing from the outer world) and going into the inner world, towards archetypal structures/ideals by using the four functions.

Extraversion is an attitude that is collective, communal & sharing. It is about merging with outer objects. Cognition is merging (identifying with/investing) in the outer world by using the four functions

Here are the key criteria for interpretation:

1.The color red in dreams indicates a feeling function is present (although not always).

Feeling discriminates emotions (affects) and tells us about our morality (appropriateness) and what we value, and it tells us whether we like (accept it into our life and awareness) something or not (reject it). Merging and Sharing these qualities with or for everybody in the external world becomes “Extraverted Feeling” and Matching/Self-Referencing and keeping these qualities private in the internal world becomes “Introverted Feeling.”

A.Extraverted Feeling (Fe) keywords-giving, validating, supporting, affirming, relating, connecting, keeping the harmony.

B.Introverted Feeling (Fi) keywords-identity, conscience, judging, valuing, appraising, what’s important to me.

2.The color blue in dreams indicates a thinking function is present (although not always).

Thinking discriminates/provides the structure (usually through analysis) and tells us about what something means (gives a reason or explanation) and the logic, order or sequence of a thing. Thinking tells you where or what place (category) it goes and is the use of names (classifications) well. Merging and Sharing these qualities with or for everybody in the external world becomes “Extraverted Thinking” and Matching/Self-Referencing and keeping these qualities private in the internal world becomes “Introverted Thinking.”

C.Extraverted Thinking (Te) keywords-measuring, segmenting or breaking into parts (bullet points/numbering), planning, regulating, enforcing, setting boundaries, effectiveness.

D.Introverted Thinking (Ti) keywords-using models and frameworks for leverage, understanding, principles, naming, defining, analyzing, pursuing accuracy and precision.

3.The color yellow in dreams indicates an intuitive function is present (although not always).

Intuition discriminates wholes (big pictures) and symbols, it tells us where something is going and what the potential is. It is concerned with the future and is a perception of the unknown/unconscious. Merging and Sharing these qualities with or for everybody in the external world becomes “Extraverted Intuition” and Matching/Self-Referencing and keeping these qualities private in the internal world becomes “Introverted Intuition.”

E.Extraverted Intuition (Ne) keywords-paying attention to emerging patterns, interpreting, brainstorming, anticipating, envisioning the future, entertaining, enabling.

F.Introverted Intuition (Ni) keywords-using a metaperspective, flashes of insight, just knowing without any other resources, symbolic/spiritual outlook, divining, imagining and foreseeing.

4.The color green in dreams indicates a sensation function is present (although not always).

Sensation discriminates physical and/or psychic space and is about experiencing. It tells us if something is there or not there, if something is happening, happened or didn’t happen. It is concerned with the present and/or the past, and is the perception of the known/tangible. Merging and Sharing these qualities with or for everybody in the external world becomes “Extraverted Sensation” and Matching/Self-Referencing and keeping these qualities private in the internal world becomes “Introverted Sensation.”

G.Extraverted Sensation (Se) keywords-physically engaging, being in the present moment, experiencing, enjoying, noticing and having excitement or discontent with the surface and sensory experiences, intense stimulation.

H.Introverted Sensation (Si) keywords-being body conscious, historical and photographic outlook, reviewing, recalling and recollecting experiences (as they remember it), traditional/predictable standards to ensure security, comparing and assessing the differences (in experience), verifying, implementing, accounting,

Step 2-Know the indicators of personifications of the archetypes and what they mean. Archetypes are at the core of the complexes. The archetypes in dreams are wedded to the psychological functions, which can also shed light on the complexes. Thus, the mother and witch archetypes are tied to the person’s mother complex. This shows the bipolarity of the archetype, with one showing the positive parts of the complex, the other the negative. Jung told Von Franz that the greatest opposition is not between superior and inferior, but between the same function with a different attitude. This creates a shadow effect for each function (Beebe pg.120).

Here are the key criteria for interpretation:

1.Find the Psychological Cross and Quaternity of Consciousness. These are Objects/Figures compatible with the ego and closer to consciousness-

The Vertical Axis (The Spine)-The Spine (Head/Tail), defines the core of the personality. This is a personification of Edinger’s ego-Self axis (Beebe pg.70). These figures are usually in tandem with each other.

A.Superior Function (most confident) is wedded with the Hero/Heroine Archetype (Same Gender)-Jung interpreting one of the characters in Wolfgang Pauli’s dream says that the “Man with the pointed beard belongs to the ego” and “the most differentiated function is the carrier of the ego (CW12 pg.106). The hero/heroine archetype shows up as the dream Ego and superior positioned figures in the dream who personify the dreamer’s superior function. This can also depict the process of individuation.

B.Inferior Function (least confident) is wedded with the Anima/Animus Archetype (Contrasexual)-Jung clearly states that the anima “also stands for the inferior function” and as the fourth person (CW12 pg.150-151) in a set of dream personae. In other words, the fourth function. The Anima/Animus figures can be inferior, clumsy, ugly, sick, wounded. Often these figures lead you the other side by being a mediator or bridge. They are a gateway to the “Unconscious.”

The Horizontal Axis (The Arms)-The relational or supportive/supported dealings of the personality. These figures are usually in tandem with each other.

C.Auxiliary Function (most mature) is wedded with the Father/Mother Archetype (Same Gender usually)-Jung says that the most differentiated function is the carrier of the ego and regularly, has an auxiliary attached to it.”(CW12 pg.106). The parent archetype is personified by serious or instructive dream figures that take care or guide the hero/heroine in the dream.

 

D.Tertiary Function (most immature) is wedded with the Puer/Puella Archetype (Same Gender usually)-Shown by young boy or girl figures in the dream that are vulnerable. Also, Inflated and deflated states, immaturity, play and vulnerability. Descriptions from (Type in Depth).

2. Find the Psychological Cross and Quaternity of the Shadow. These are shadowy objects/figures incompatible with the ego and further away from consciousness-

The Vertical Axis (Shadow of the Spine)-Personifications of our rejected parts, ego defenses, narcissistic needs, pathology, traumas, unconscious prejudices, emotions, drives, etc. but also creativity, liberation, realization and redemption.

E.Shadow of the Superior–The Opposing Personality Archetype (Usually also Contrasexual)-The light of the superior function creates a shadow effect, producing a dynamically opposite attitude for these figures. If your superior is introverted, the function remains the same, but the shadow attitude will be extraverted. These figures are attractive or repellent, seductive, adversarial, and in conflict with the ego figure in the dream.

F.Shadow of the Inferior–The Demon/Daimon Archetype (Mixed)-Completing the ego-Self axis personifications with the dark side of the Self. Beebe says that this function is the furthest away from consciousness (Beebe pg.65). These figures are introducing a poison or a virus, destroying and undermining, or life-enhancing and offering redemption in the dream. Also, beastly figures tend show up as shadows of the inferior, i.e. a serpent. Where the Anima/Animus are the gateways to the unconscious in the dream, this function is the gateway to the Self, the greater personality.

The Horizontal Axis (Shadow of the Arms)- Personifications of our rejected parts, ego defenses, narcissistic needs, pathology, traumas, unconscious prejudices, emotions, drives, etc but also creativity, liberation, realization and redemption.

G.Shadow of the Auxiliary– The Senex/Witch Archetype (Same Gender usually)-Figures that are limit setting, paralyzing, imprisoning, criticizing, biting or sarcastic. They are usually older figures who have some wisdom in the dream.

H.Shadow of the Tertiary- The Trickster Archetype (Mixed Gender)-Paradoxical, circumventing, transformative (gender/shape shifting), liminal, circumventing, manipulating, humoring or mocking figures in the dream.

Descriptions from (Type in Depth).

Step 3– Layout the and Identify the Archetypal Structure of the Characters first.

Which figures seem to be figures of consciousness (i.e. light, human, outstanding)?

Which figures appear to be shadow figures (i.e. dark, primitive, animal or objects)?

 

Hero/Heroine-

What figure seems like the Hero or Heroine in the Dream?

 

Anima/Animus-

What figure seems like the Anima or the Animus in the Dream?

 

Parent-

What figure seems like the Parent in the Dream?

 

Puer/Puella-

What figure seems like the Puer or the Puella in the Dream?

 

Opposing Personality-

What figure seems like the Opposing Personality in the Dream?

 

Senex/Witch-

What figure seems like the Senex or the Witch in the Dream?

 

Trickster-

What figure seems like the Trickster in the Dream?

 

Demon/Daimon-

What figure seems like the Demonic or Daimonic in the Dream?

 

Step 4– Identify the functions for the Archetypal Characters.

 

Hero/Heroine-

Does the Hero or Heroine figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Hero or Heroine figure displaying in the Dream?

 

Anima/Animus-

Does the Anima or the Animus figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Anima or the Animus figure displaying in the Dream?

 

Parent-

Does the Parent figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Parent figure displaying in the Dream?

 

 

Puer/Puella-

Does the Puer or the Puella figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Puer or the Puella figure displaying in the Dream?

 

 

Opposing Personality-

Does the Opposing Personality figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Opposing Personality figure displaying in the Dream?

 

Senex/Witch-

Does the Senex or the Witch figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Senex or the Witch figure displaying in the Dream?

 

Trickster-

Does the Trickster figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Trickster figure displaying in the Dream?

 

Demon/Daimon-

Does the Demonic or Daimonic figure in the Dream seem to have an Introverted or Extraverted attitude?

What function is the Demonic or Daimonic figure displaying in the Dream?

Beebe’s example of Jung as INTJ:

1.Red Book Objects/Figures compatible to Jung’s Ego and closer to his consciousness- 

Hero (Ni) Figure –Jung himself, who had a heroic Introverted Intuition and a gift for foreseeing and divining. Beebe quotes Jung in a letter to Eliade about the assassination of the Archeduke Ferdinand where he says, “I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious.” (Beebe pg.169) and “Because I carried the murder in me, I foresaw it.” (Beebe pg.170). The whole Red Book stems out of Jung’s imagination.

Parent (Te) Figure-Izdubar, who dons a blue vest and a bladed club weapon representing the extraverted thinking function. A weapon that cuts with extraverted thinking logic that can also regulate and enforce. Jung is often commonly typed as a thinker, but he says that he had dispose of his thinking because he began to conceive of intuition as his new superior (Beebe pg.171).

Puer (Fi) Figure-Is Jung’s spiritual inflation that he needs to come down from, including his midlife crisis where the third function comes to light. This manifests as Jung’s “red” book of feeling. In the book, he is high up in his castle, he sees a red point in the distance which turns out to be a red horseman coming his way. (Beebe pg.174). Jung talks to this red figure and Beebe further illuminates Jung’s puer introverted feeling when he says, “Have you never broken your heart over the holiest mysteries of our Christian religion?” (Beebe pg.174). This heart clearly corresponds to Jung’s introverted feeling and sentiment to Christianity that he values so highly but has left him deflated and vulnerable.

Anima (Se) Figure-Salome, who represents Jung’s inferior hands on and physically engaging sensate energy is his blind Anima, always in the present context taking instinctive action. Jung doesn’t reject her in his inner conversations but tries to listen to her. This establishes the connection to his “psychological spine” (Beebe pg.172). This figure is similar to another one of Jung’s figures that tells him he is doing art, and the images of the Red Book are something that allowed him to bridge these figures of the unconscious into an empirical environment through an extraverted sensation way.

2.Red Book shadowy, darker or sinister objects/figures that are further away from consciousness-

Opposing Personality (Ne) Figure-Magicians are often entertainers and a favorite representative of intuition. The dark cinematic magician, as one who looks outside himself for images is in opposition to what Jung wants, which is to find his own images, original and within himself (Beebe pg.167-8).

Senex (Ti) Figure-Philemon, the wise old man, who nudges Jung to analyze the problems of the dead (unconscious) and solve their unanswered problems. There is a scene where a blue shade (thinking) accompanies Philemon. Philemon sets the limit by giving Jung principles to live by, that being the concepts of sex and spirituality must be of equal importance and that there is a need for not a sky, but earth father (Beebe pg.176-7) to manifest. Philemon shows the new unconscious framework forming in Jung’s mind through the dream.

Trickster (Fe) Figure-The Red “Extraverted Feeling” Devil who is heading towards Jung’s castle to connect with him. This red devil, an image the trickster is often identified with, mocks Jung’s ethics and introverted feeling in a not so offensive way. He points out his unconscious anti-Semitism and his inability to validate or affirm the Jewish people in the time of the war (Beebe pg.175-6).

Demonic/Daimonic (Si) Figure-The Anabaptists, who were unredeemed and brutally suppressed as a community and as a movement. They were not able to set a predictable standard and make their Christian tradition a practicality on the sensate earth. One of the Anabaptists speaks to Jung and undermines him by saying he can’t join them because he has a body, an allusion to introverted sensation, unlike them who are dead. Jung’s redeeming function of his own unconscious when he tells the Anabaptist that he did not live his animal, an accusation he had of Christ and the very thing he found in his soul figure, the extraverted sensate anima, Salome. Through his conversations with the Anabaptists he was able to verify his soul (Beebe pg.176-7).

Sometimes you will see Jung typed as an INFJ on the internet. The type code INFJ is an “NF” temperament in which Kiersey said these types of people tend to be interested in deeper meaning and significance. But in my opinion, Introverted Intuition can also, whether it is INFJ or INTJ, it is about what Vicky Jo mentions as “the Big Picture in the Unconscious.” But INFJ from a personality standpoint only makes sense in his therapist years where one has to use extraverted feeling empathy and quote “feel into” their patients in a feeling way but through extraversion. Another key I should have put up there was that extraversion is about merging with the external object and introversion is about matching to inner object (archetypes). But he doesn’t give off an extraverted feeling vibe off affirming, relating and validating, many of his colleagues say that he was terribly offensive and did not care about disrupting the harmony. If you read the Red Book, that is what his “Red Devil” represents, his unconscious trickster Fe, that was unaware of anti-Semitic remarks.

Sometimes classifying can be a sterile undertaking. There is a lot of resistances to boxing things. I think I use thinking in either a heroic or in a parenting way. I don’t see this as sticking labels on things. Rather the reverse, what Robert Bosnak calls Lunar consciousness, where you let the image come to you and you let it explain to you what it is, not me explaining it in a Solar way with a typology net as he calls it. So when we see in the dream for example, some figure naming stuff all the time, and it keeps repeating, we need to give that figure a name so that we recognize it the next time, and then we use typology and say well this figure likes to name, so a criterion that can help guide me in recognizing what that figure wants to do is Introverted Thinking.

You see the whole point of the classification is not the label but to shine light on it, so that the creator (if that is you) can become conscious of his creation (the function). That figure wants to be liberated and recognized as well. You meet the figure, the same the figure from the other world meets you as Lionel Corbett suggests. The method is not a method, but a guide to make the darkness conscious (Jung).

Lastly, yes the typology is about the problem of one-sidedness, the subtle key in Jung’s book is given in the title. “Psychological Types OR the Psychology of Individuation.”

The alchemy of feeling and intuition together can create this but like I said I think it is also present in the Introverted Intuition cognitive function which John Beebe says tries to solve problems at the “Religious level.” He actually as a different approach. For theorist and people who love theory it is a matter of intuition vs. sensation, as sensates like tangible and not abstract information. But for religious types, it tends to NF temperaments OR the cultural attitude that John Beebe lays out called “the Religious Attitude” which one makes a stretch of their typology from Introverted Intuition to Introverted Sensation and vice versa. So the Introverted Sensation types can very much be religiously oriented too, hence Hitler who was an ISTJ. The difference between religious attitude for Ni and Si types and the NF temperaments might be that the Religious attitude folks are talking about a kind of archetypal information that is matched up to or known only internally because sensation and intuition goes inward. The NF folks are more about the value and ethics it has for them or other people. That’s why with like an INFJ you get the whole gamut and it produces a religious man like Lao Tsu of whom we can recognize and learn from.

Archetypes in this typological sense are like positions on a sports team. There is a set number of archetypes or positions and more variation and uniqueness of the players (the functions) that play those positions. The Heroic Function might be likened to a Quarterback, Or the Opposing Personality is the position that guards the best player (Hero), The Parent archetype is the Catcher position the guides the Pitcher Position in Baseball etc.

So, that is an example of amplifying the type code through the dream. I hope to take one of my dreams or yours in the comments below and apply this method to see what results we get.

 

Resources:

Beebe, J. (2017). Energies and patterns in psychological type: The reservoir of consciousness. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Franz, M. V., & Hillman, J. (1984). Lectures on Jungs typology: The inferior function. Irving, TX: Spring Publications.

Jung, C. G. (2015). Psychology and alchemy. Place of publication not identified: Routledge.

Nardi, D. (2005). 8 keys to self-leadership: From awareness to action. Huntington Beach, CA: Unite Business Press.

The Integrity of Carl Jung. (2018, May 19). Retrieved from http://typeindepth.com/2014/10/the-integrity-of-carl-jung/

Type and Archetype in Dreams. (2018, May 19). Retrieved from http://typeindepth.com/2014/10/type-and-archetype-in-dreams/

Type and Archetype in Dreams. (2018, May 19). Retrieved from http://typeindepth.com/2014/10/type-and-archetype-in-dreams/

Varner, V. J. (n.d.). Can you spot it? Lecture.

 

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