Along the Personality Spectrum, Who Dreams? Who Awakens?
Follow me as I ponder the meaning and wisdom of a provocative quote from Carl Jung.
I was startled last month to see the following quote come up on the screen at the outset of a Spanish telenovela (Medusa) that I was watching on Netflix:
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
I researched this quote and learned that the legendary psychiatrist Carl Jung, who originated the concepts of introvert and extrovert, wrote it as advice in a letter to a particular patient. What did he mean? And does the quote express a useful truth for those of us who are trying to understand ourselves and people around us?
Initially I found the quote confusing, because I think of dreaming as an interior activity, taking place within, whether it’s night-time dreaming or daydreaming. Introverted children and young people may particularly enjoy indulging in the fantasies and imaginings of daydreaming, interacting with self-invented creatures or people, or taking the stories we read in books deeply into ourselves.
For example, Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary believed the romantic notions that animated the books she sneakily read at the provincial convent school she attended as a teen. She bought a map of Paris and pictured herself walking its streets someday.
But after thinking some more, I realized that Jung probably meant a negative aspect of the word “dreaming” for this kind of scenario. Emma Bovary’s dreams involved experiences she wanted to have in her outward life because they would prove she measured up to her fantasies. Had her dreams been realized, she would have been able to sneer “So there!” to those who regarded her as a silly nobody. She didn’t really yearn for Paris in itself, but rather for its symbolic significance. This in turn set her up for feeling hollow, unsatisfied and frantic when her dreams never materialized.
When we express a fond wish, a sweet hope or a wistful fantasy, someone listening may respond, “Keep dreaming!” We also use the expression “chasing a dream” to imply that someone has the illusion that reaching their fervent goal will make them happy. In both those instances, “dreaming” implies being unrealistic and disconnected from the genuine satisfactions of life.
This connotation of “dreaming” makes sense in the light of Jung’s views on personality. Extroverts, he posited, find human interaction energizing and look to the social world for direction and validation. He himself, however, was an introvert, finding meaning and value within, in the world of the self. Consider that he titled his most autobiographical book Memories, Dreams, Reflections – all definitely inward phenomena.
On this interpretation, the quote is warning that taking the world of others as one’s touchstone for goals and values carries the risk of inauthenticity and eternal dissatisfaction. In contrast, turning inward opens one to the possibility of self-knowledge and realizing one’s true nature. It appears that with this quote Jung was advising the patient whom he was counseling to wake up to herself in order to engage in psychological growth and transformation.
I doubt Jung meant that quote as general truth, implying that looking within is superior or more evolved than looking outside. After all, as embodied human beings, we’re born into a society where we have no choice but to interact as we grow up. We need both orientations – inner and outer The outer world imposes pressures, provides roles and sets expectations, but it also creates the landscape in which we earn a living, find friends and enjoy the pleasures of the senses. A healthy person, whatever their personality, both acts out in the world and engages with authentic inner sources of meaning.
And by the way, after finishing watching the whole telenovela where the Jung quote came up, I wasn’t able to grasp any connection between the quote and the characters or themes of that story! Maybe prefacing each episode with a profound-sounding epigrah was just meant to strike a more artsy, high-toned ambience for the story.