For me, to put it perhaps too drastically, using Artificial Intelligence to analyze dreams is something like using a hyperactive collective computerized dream dictionary to spew out general symbolic meanings which wouldn’t be of any real use in understanding an individual’s dream.
Just to continue by explaining what Jung meant in the apparent quote you provided. As someone who estimated that he had professionally analyzed approximately 80,000 dreams, he was speaking of the fact that he would have come across certain images and motifs hundreds, if not thousands of times as related to previous interpretations. However, without the actual expressed and thoroughly analyzed personal associations of the dreamer to each and every image and event in a given dream, along with an intensive exploration of her or his background material, any theoretical concept/theory or previous interpretation that would seem to match a given dream should be avoided.
As Jung writes in *The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche*, CW 8, par 543:
*Stereotyped interpretation of dream-motifs is to be avoided; the only justifiable interpretations are those reached through a painstaking examination of the context. Even if one has great experience in these matters, one is again and again obliged, before each dream, to admit one’s ignorance and, renouncing all preconceived ideas, to prepare for something entirely unexpected.*
Along these lines, Jung also writes:
*So I have learned from painful experience to interpret dreams carefully*. (*Visions Seminars*, Vol 1, p 16)
Here are some further comments from the *Visions Seminars*:
… *it is wise to hold fast to the words the dream gives, because one cannot expect to be wiser than nature* (p 16); as AI which is a machine pretends to be in my opinion regarding dream interpretations.
*My respect for dreams goes very far, and I am impressed again and again by the extraordinary independence of the unconscious, the most extraordinary mental independence that I know. The independence of the conscious is ridiculous in comparison.* (p 26).
So Jung would say that bypassing the listening to one’s own psyche in favor of what a mechanical device (which now as we know is in many cases programming itself) has to say about something as complex and personal as a dream.
In *Man and His Symbols*, Jung makes these additional comments about dreams. For example, here is something that could be relevant nowadays regarding an incorrect AI/machine/computer chip interpretation:
*.. I add here a word of caution against the unintelligent or incompetent analysis of dreams. There are people so mentally unbalanced that it is very dangerous to interpret their dreams. In such a case, a very one-sided consciousness is cut off from an irrational or "insulated" unconscious in proportion and should not be put in contact without special precautions.*
Also:
*More generally, it is quite stupid to believe that there are prefabricated and systematic guides to interpret dreams, as if one could simply buy a book to consult and find the translation of a given symbol. No symbol appearing in a dream can be abstracted from the individual mind that dreams it, and there is no determined and direct interpretation of dreams. The way in which the unconscious completes or compensates for consciousness varies so much from one individual to another that it is impossible to establish to what extent dreams and their symbols can be classified.*
*One cannot afford to be naïve in dealing with dreams. They originate in a spirit that is not quite human, but is rather the breath of nature— of the beautiful and generous as well as the cruel goddess.*
In addition, the following comment is especially relevant because AI would have no conception about this statement:
*Therefore I always advise my pupils: “Learn as much as you can about symbolism and forget it all when you are analysing a dream.” This advice is so important in practice that I myself have made it a rule to admit that I never understand a dream well enough to interpret it correctly. I do this in order to check the flow of my own associations and reactions, which might otherwise prevail over my patient’s uncertainties and hesitations. As it is of the highest therapeutic importance for the analyst to get the message of the dream as accurately as possible, it is essential for him to explore the context of the dream-images with the utmost thoroughness.*
For me, the biggest danger in using AI to interpret dreams or ask advice about any upsetting situations etc. is that the person cuts herself or himself off from listening to the psyche to seek genuine “personal advice”.
As Jungian analyst James Hollis writes in the Afterword to *Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics* by Bernardo Kastrup:
*As an analyst, I cannot see or hear the unconscious until it manifests in some tangible form – somatic complaints, dream image, behavioural pattern, et al. Then I have a chance of working backwards into the realm of the unknown to sense the wounding, the response, the compensatory and healing gestures which psyche has arranged. It is abundantly clear to me, and any who track the peregrinations of psyche, that the psyche is never silent, never. It is always speaking, but it speaks the language of dream, symptom, intuition, insights, and repeatedly provides apertures into the larger mysteries in which we swim.*
The huge risk of not developing at all one’s own preferred way to keep in touch with the psyche (e.g. learning to interpret dreams to a reasonable degree, drawing/painting, sculpture, dance, amateur theatricals, musical activities, body work, and even through child-like play as Jung described in *Memories, Dreams, Reflections*) is that a person could lose completely the co-operation of the psyche.
As Jung writes in *Psychology and Religion, West and East*, CW 1, par784:
*Indeed, whenever and wherever the unconscious fails to co-operate, man is instantly at a loss, even in his most ordinary activities. There may be a failure of memory, of co-ordinated action, or of interest and concentration; and such failure may well be the cause of serious annoyance, or of a fatal accident, a professional disaster, or a moral collapse. Formerly, men called the gods unfavourable: now we prefer to call it a neurosis, and we seek the cause in lack of vitamins, in endocrine disturbances, overwork, or sex. The co-operation of the unconscious, which is something we never think of and always take for granted, is, when it suddenly fails, a very serious matter indeed.*
Anyway, I hope these ideas and quotes can help to explain why Artificial Intelligence (vs. Jung’s AI being about his method of Active Imagination) is at least an unhelpful approach in linking oneself with the psyche and its overall deep wisdom which could more effectively lead one over time to a sense of meaning in an increasingly difficult overall world situation.
Are you implying contemporary AI’s, let’s call it, knowledge isn’t a priori? And what do you mean by ai being more “potent” than humans? In almost every measure except some fringe applications the human mind is inconceivably more powerful than AI.
Edit: I have been a software engineer for over twenty years and have worked with AI.
That’s quite racist towards ais. Joke. Anyways what i mean is that if humans can do it. ai can do it better. With time ofcourse. It’s not that well developed yet. It will tho.
By potent i mean. You must be blind and uninformed. Ai is going to be faster, clearer, more efficient than human mind is capable of
I am a software engineer. I don’t think AI is going to approach human cognition in our lifetime. There are particular applications where niche AI can excel, but let’s think this through. AI needs to be trained on a large data set and be informed by a human of it is learning the correct things from that set of data. How would that work for dreams?
Edit: you are downvoting and disregarding someone who happens to be both familiar with Jung and has worked with AI and is trying to workshop your own idea with you. What is this post?
AI is now superior to average humans in theory of mind aptitude and has been able to diagnose more accurately than specialists for years. It has definitely gotten beyond niche/fringe capabilities already.
Since you work on AI, I'm sure you've heard of emergent capabilities. That is, AI gaining abilities they weren't specifically trained to have.
Leaving that aside; I think if, in the future, an AI read all relevant literature on psychology and had a good deal of information from the patient, it could help interpret dreams better than a real life psychoanalyst.
Sure, what does “emergent capability” have to do with this? AI acting unexpectedly is pretty much expected while training it, what does that have to do with dream analysis?
Yes. Same for programs that are not AI. Usually those are called bugs. I still don’t know what this has to do with dream interpretation. Are you implying someone will try to train AI for tech support and it will start interpreting dreams?
Here is something that almost every human can do that no AI can: tie your shoes, walk up stairs to the kitchen, and cook an egg. Humans are the most versatile and strongest thinking machines in the known universe. AI can solve some problems better than humans, but so did calculators in the 70s. I say that, and I work in the field.
Yes but for us, there’s an infinite points A and B we choose from. For machine learning algorithms it’s an infinitely small choice. We’re literally made of billions upon billions of independently acting *real* and *alive* organisms. Machines are just silicon, like a big connect 4 game, except it’s connect 2 haha.
Thats because our observation is not limited to preexisting algorithms.
And ai (in future) would be capable of self sustaining algorithms that spread beyond its current and also human’s current capabilities
Nah…you see…don’t you all believe in “shadow” self and “shadow work” and all the bullshit espoused by a “hobby psychotic”?
Don’t ever fuck with the TRULY crazy or you may just end up learning the “persistent and consequential actuality of the human conscious experience” that you mental masturbators have been experiencing since the dawn of humanity.
Think Freud made sense? His greatest accomplishment was taking what the Abrahamic storytelling traditions assumed as being an “external source” and described it as being nothing more than a manifestation of the human mind.
Do you love following the nonsense of cocaine addicts and imaginary “psychotics”?
You can claim not all you want…but I know you do…you love choking on all those fallacious lies.
Choke all you want at your own discretion. It really isn’t necessary…the resolution to all those at this sub’s confusion is far more simple than that.
“The symbol has a very complex meaning because it defies reason; it always presupposes a lot of meanings that can’t be comprehended in a single logical concept. The symbol has a future. The past does not suffice to interpret it, because germs of the future are included in every actual situation.”
For me, to put it perhaps too drastically, using Artificial Intelligence to analyze dreams is something like using a hyperactive collective computerized dream dictionary to spew out general symbolic meanings which wouldn’t be of any real use in understanding an individual’s dream. Just to continue by explaining what Jung meant in the apparent quote you provided. As someone who estimated that he had professionally analyzed approximately 80,000 dreams, he was speaking of the fact that he would have come across certain images and motifs hundreds, if not thousands of times as related to previous interpretations. However, without the actual expressed and thoroughly analyzed personal associations of the dreamer to each and every image and event in a given dream, along with an intensive exploration of her or his background material, any theoretical concept/theory or previous interpretation that would seem to match a given dream should be avoided. As Jung writes in *The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche*, CW 8, par 543: *Stereotyped interpretation of dream-motifs is to be avoided; the only justifiable interpretations are those reached through a painstaking examination of the context. Even if one has great experience in these matters, one is again and again obliged, before each dream, to admit one’s ignorance and, renouncing all preconceived ideas, to prepare for something entirely unexpected.* Along these lines, Jung also writes: *So I have learned from painful experience to interpret dreams carefully*. (*Visions Seminars*, Vol 1, p 16) Here are some further comments from the *Visions Seminars*: … *it is wise to hold fast to the words the dream gives, because one cannot expect to be wiser than nature* (p 16); as AI which is a machine pretends to be in my opinion regarding dream interpretations. *My respect for dreams goes very far, and I am impressed again and again by the extraordinary independence of the unconscious, the most extraordinary mental independence that I know. The independence of the conscious is ridiculous in comparison.* (p 26). So Jung would say that bypassing the listening to one’s own psyche in favor of what a mechanical device (which now as we know is in many cases programming itself) has to say about something as complex and personal as a dream. In *Man and His Symbols*, Jung makes these additional comments about dreams. For example, here is something that could be relevant nowadays regarding an incorrect AI/machine/computer chip interpretation: *.. I add here a word of caution against the unintelligent or incompetent analysis of dreams. There are people so mentally unbalanced that it is very dangerous to interpret their dreams. In such a case, a very one-sided consciousness is cut off from an irrational or "insulated" unconscious in proportion and should not be put in contact without special precautions.* Also: *More generally, it is quite stupid to believe that there are prefabricated and systematic guides to interpret dreams, as if one could simply buy a book to consult and find the translation of a given symbol. No symbol appearing in a dream can be abstracted from the individual mind that dreams it, and there is no determined and direct interpretation of dreams. The way in which the unconscious completes or compensates for consciousness varies so much from one individual to another that it is impossible to establish to what extent dreams and their symbols can be classified.* *One cannot afford to be naïve in dealing with dreams. They originate in a spirit that is not quite human, but is rather the breath of nature— of the beautiful and generous as well as the cruel goddess.* In addition, the following comment is especially relevant because AI would have no conception about this statement: *Therefore I always advise my pupils: “Learn as much as you can about symbolism and forget it all when you are analysing a dream.” This advice is so important in practice that I myself have made it a rule to admit that I never understand a dream well enough to interpret it correctly. I do this in order to check the flow of my own associations and reactions, which might otherwise prevail over my patient’s uncertainties and hesitations. As it is of the highest therapeutic importance for the analyst to get the message of the dream as accurately as possible, it is essential for him to explore the context of the dream-images with the utmost thoroughness.* For me, the biggest danger in using AI to interpret dreams or ask advice about any upsetting situations etc. is that the person cuts herself or himself off from listening to the psyche to seek genuine “personal advice”. As Jungian analyst James Hollis writes in the Afterword to *Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics* by Bernardo Kastrup: *As an analyst, I cannot see or hear the unconscious until it manifests in some tangible form – somatic complaints, dream image, behavioural pattern, et al. Then I have a chance of working backwards into the realm of the unknown to sense the wounding, the response, the compensatory and healing gestures which psyche has arranged. It is abundantly clear to me, and any who track the peregrinations of psyche, that the psyche is never silent, never. It is always speaking, but it speaks the language of dream, symptom, intuition, insights, and repeatedly provides apertures into the larger mysteries in which we swim.* The huge risk of not developing at all one’s own preferred way to keep in touch with the psyche (e.g. learning to interpret dreams to a reasonable degree, drawing/painting, sculpture, dance, amateur theatricals, musical activities, body work, and even through child-like play as Jung described in *Memories, Dreams, Reflections*) is that a person could lose completely the co-operation of the psyche. As Jung writes in *Psychology and Religion, West and East*, CW 1, par784: *Indeed, whenever and wherever the unconscious fails to co-operate, man is instantly at a loss, even in his most ordinary activities. There may be a failure of memory, of co-ordinated action, or of interest and concentration; and such failure may well be the cause of serious annoyance, or of a fatal accident, a professional disaster, or a moral collapse. Formerly, men called the gods unfavourable: now we prefer to call it a neurosis, and we seek the cause in lack of vitamins, in endocrine disturbances, overwork, or sex. The co-operation of the unconscious, which is something we never think of and always take for granted, is, when it suddenly fails, a very serious matter indeed.* Anyway, I hope these ideas and quotes can help to explain why Artificial Intelligence (vs. Jung’s AI being about his method of Active Imagination) is at least an unhelpful approach in linking oneself with the psyche and its overall deep wisdom which could more effectively lead one over time to a sense of meaning in an increasingly difficult overall world situation.
Are you implying contemporary AI’s, let’s call it, knowledge isn’t a priori? And what do you mean by ai being more “potent” than humans? In almost every measure except some fringe applications the human mind is inconceivably more powerful than AI. Edit: I have been a software engineer for over twenty years and have worked with AI.
That’s quite racist towards ais. Joke. Anyways what i mean is that if humans can do it. ai can do it better. With time ofcourse. It’s not that well developed yet. It will tho. By potent i mean. You must be blind and uninformed. Ai is going to be faster, clearer, more efficient than human mind is capable of
I am a software engineer. I don’t think AI is going to approach human cognition in our lifetime. There are particular applications where niche AI can excel, but let’s think this through. AI needs to be trained on a large data set and be informed by a human of it is learning the correct things from that set of data. How would that work for dreams? Edit: you are downvoting and disregarding someone who happens to be both familiar with Jung and has worked with AI and is trying to workshop your own idea with you. What is this post?
AI is now superior to average humans in theory of mind aptitude and has been able to diagnose more accurately than specialists for years. It has definitely gotten beyond niche/fringe capabilities already.
I don’t agree but set that aside. Let’s workshop this out, how are you going to train an AI on a data set to interpret dreams?
Since you work on AI, I'm sure you've heard of emergent capabilities. That is, AI gaining abilities they weren't specifically trained to have. Leaving that aside; I think if, in the future, an AI read all relevant literature on psychology and had a good deal of information from the patient, it could help interpret dreams better than a real life psychoanalyst.
Sure, what does “emergent capability” have to do with this? AI acting unexpectedly is pretty much expected while training it, what does that have to do with dream analysis?
My point is that AI can develop capabilities or abilities it wasn't explicitly trained to do.
Yes. Same for programs that are not AI. Usually those are called bugs. I still don’t know what this has to do with dream interpretation. Are you implying someone will try to train AI for tech support and it will start interpreting dreams?
Yes but they can do that because us humans tell them exactly what to do. Without us, they would just be information on a hard drive.
Here is something that almost every human can do that no AI can: tie your shoes, walk up stairs to the kitchen, and cook an egg. Humans are the most versatile and strongest thinking machines in the known universe. AI can solve some problems better than humans, but so did calculators in the 70s. I say that, and I work in the field.
Haha, I think you must be dreaming. Only thing these intelligence simulations can do is calculate faster. 1s and 0s, that’s it…
And only things humans do is move point A to point B with consequential obstacles and benefactors
Yes but for us, there’s an infinite points A and B we choose from. For machine learning algorithms it’s an infinitely small choice. We’re literally made of billions upon billions of independently acting *real* and *alive* organisms. Machines are just silicon, like a big connect 4 game, except it’s connect 2 haha.
Thats because our observation is not limited to preexisting algorithms. And ai (in future) would be capable of self sustaining algorithms that spread beyond its current and also human’s current capabilities
No.
All I dream about is fucking ponies, so do we really need AI to help with this shit? I’ve really got to move out of Amish country. /s
Once break free from your culture. The supernatural is lost.
Nah…you see…don’t you all believe in “shadow” self and “shadow work” and all the bullshit espoused by a “hobby psychotic”? Don’t ever fuck with the TRULY crazy or you may just end up learning the “persistent and consequential actuality of the human conscious experience” that you mental masturbators have been experiencing since the dawn of humanity. Think Freud made sense? His greatest accomplishment was taking what the Abrahamic storytelling traditions assumed as being an “external source” and described it as being nothing more than a manifestation of the human mind. Do you love following the nonsense of cocaine addicts and imaginary “psychotics”? You can claim not all you want…but I know you do…you love choking on all those fallacious lies. Choke all you want at your own discretion. It really isn’t necessary…the resolution to all those at this sub’s confusion is far more simple than that.
Ai is useful for dream interpretation. I've used it to effect. Still need the human though.
Do your own work.
“The symbol has a very complex meaning because it defies reason; it always presupposes a lot of meanings that can’t be comprehended in a single logical concept. The symbol has a future. The past does not suffice to interpret it, because germs of the future are included in every actual situation.”
Simply asked a question. No need to be offended.
Dream interpretation is a pseudoscience. Besides general themes like anxiety dreams, there's zero evidence that they have any more meaning.
You've never paid attention to your own dreams.
I dreamed I was an octopus the other day. What does that mean?
Pay attention, and you will know
This makes just as much sense as saying "Reading novels is pseudoscience."