Ambivalence and Ambiguity

Often a discussion about dreams is staked to the claim on one side “they just don’t make sense.”  While my experience has been otherwise, it does no good to answer such a charge with an equally convinced statement to the contrary. The experiences of ambivalence and ambiguity, both which can be disconcerting for the ego, are at root archetypal factors.

The ambivalence of the archetype is due to it’s bi-polar structure.

“Just as all archetypes have a positive, favourable, bright side that points upwards, so also they have one that points downwards, partly negative and unfavourable, partly chthonic, but for the rest merely neutral.” Carl Jung, The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, CW IX i, par. 413.

Ambiguity can be traced back to a certain contamination that often occurs between different archetypal manifestations.  It’s as though different aspects of the archetypal field are vying for recognition, and the vagueness of the imagery that sometimes emerges from a blending of two or more energies.

The best way answer I have for dealing with ambivalence and ambiguity is to accept them and look onwards.  To place to much emphasis on any single dream image would be the equivalent of stressing only one passage in a play of Shakespeare.

As Keats states in his negative capability letter, the key is remaning “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

Ambivalence and ambiguity are clarified over time and through a dream series.  It is often the subtle adjustments to the most perplexing images, almost as if they are rotating and presenting different facets of themselves, which makes them eventually conscious.