Compensation

Carl Jung’s compensation theory suggests that the thoughts that are repressed or simply not fully attended to by the conscious waking mind will be expressed in dreams. He said that dreams do this through symbolic and figurative language, not to disguise the content (as per Freud’s theory), but more simply because this is the archaic language of dreams. There is now experimental work that has shown that dreams do indeed picture suppressed thoughts. The purpose of this is, said Jung, for psychic balance. He further broke from Freud by suggesting that some dreams are not merely about the individual but may be about humanity. A full glossary of Jungian terms can be found here.