Dreams emerge like animals

In his childhood, Carl Gustav Jung lived close to nature. This experience forged his relationship to the world and his respect for animals. Early in life, he became aware that they were often treated cruelly, particularly for the purpose of scientific experimentation. He denounced these practices throughout his life. In his clinical work and his dream analyses, animals are essential. For Jung, their living presence opens our access to our instinctual life and, at the same time, to the life of our soul. In this article, several clinical vignettes reflect the resuscitation of this life. Marguerite Yourcenar, also an ecologist in the early days of the movement, followed the same path of respect or nature and the animal world. Her life and works, like Jung’s, attest to that commitment.