The Dreamers

The Dreamers, Unframed (32X48?), Oil

After the resist was removed

Before the resist was removed

"...there must be a thorough going, conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. By "assimilation",  I mean a mutual interpenetration of conscious and unconscious contents , and not---as is too commonly thought---a one-sided valuation interpretation and deformation of unconscious contents by the conscious mind.
...As if all that is good, reasonable, beautiful and worth living for had taken up its abode in consciousness! Have the horrors of the World War really not opened our eyes? Are we still unable to see that man's conscious mind is even more devilish and perverse than the unconscious?
  ...I was recently reproached with the charge that my teaching about the assimilation of the unconscious, were it accepted, would undermine culture and exalt primitivity at the cost of our highest values. Such an opinion can have no foundation other than the erroneous belief that the unconscious is a monster. Such a view arises from fear of nature and of life as it actually is.
...It is always helpful, when we set about to interpret a dream, to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate? Although copensation may take the form of imaginary wish-fulfillment, it generally presents itself as an actuality which becomes the more strikingly actual the more we try to repress it. We know that we do not conquer thirst by repressing it. The dream-content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us; it should be treated as a contributory factor in framing our conscious outlook.
...As may be seen, I thus bring the dream into the closest possible connection with the conscious state. I even maintain that it is impossible to interpret a dream with any degree of certainty unless we know what the conscious situation is.
...The dream is not an isolated psychic event completely cut off from daily life. If it seems so to us, that is only an illusion that arises from our lack of understanding. In reality, the relation between consciousness and the dream is strictly causal, and they interact in the subtlest of ways."
                                                         ---CG Jung (Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application)