The concept of shadow is illustrated in the relationship between Harry and Voldemort, and the dream is one of the ways to make shadow itself known to Harry’s ego. The connection between Harry and Voldemort has its root since their childhood, but it takes its appearance since Voldemort’s attack on Harry’s parents. As a result of their mysterious connection, Rowling’s books deal mainly with Harry’s battle against Voldemort.
Thus, most of Harry’s dreams convey meanings related to the battle against Voldemort, and, then, they resolve the reason behind Harry’s and Voldemort’s similarities, but sometimes they reflect his everyday concerns, even if the deeper conflicts are never far away. The term of dream is defined generally as a combination of thoughts, images and emotions that occur during sleep. Some theories suggest that dreams involve one’s repressed emotions that are fantasized during the sleep.
There are other theories suggesting that dreams are a side effect of the cleaning-up operations of the brain. Whilst Freud particularly thought that dreams expressed forbidden wishes that had to be disguised, Jung saw dreams as expressing things openly. He wrote: “They (dreams) do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise … They are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand.” [CW 17, para. 189]
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In Rowling’s novels, Harry’s dreams are closely related with his psychology because they are “impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will.” Dreams show Harry’s natural truth when consciousness has stayed too far from its foundations. According to dream psychology, the elements of dreams are closely related to the environment and experiences one is exposed to. Dreams play their roles in the novels as the psyche’s attempt to communicate important things to the individual, and, thus, they are an important part of the development of the personality – a process that Jung called individuation.
Looking closely at the roles played by dreaming across all seven novels, it becomes clear that Rowling uses dreams as a piece of magic, as a mysterious, potentially dangerous, but extremely valuable source of power, meaning, and guidance in life. To solve the ambiguities, Harry finds answers of his questions through dreams and nightmares. Harry’s dreams resolve the reasons behind his similarities with Voldemort because dreams, regarding Jung, intentionally disguise their meanings, arguing that dreams are a natural and direct expression of the dreamer’s current concerns (Jung, 1967). Harry’s recurrent dream, in fact, is not “only” a dream, but rather a meaningful and reassuring reminder of his true origins.
As the story unfolds Harry learns more about his past, the death of his parents, and his strange connection to Voldemort, Paller and Voss hypothesize that the principle function of dreaming is to form new connections between pairs of memory fragments resulting in enrichment of ‘our storehouse of declarative memories’. This process can lead to new insights as a result of novel combinations of memory fragments formed during dreaming. Dreams present a spontaneous self-portrayal of the actual situation in symbolic form. Thus, the language of dream, according to Jung, involves the use of images, metaphors and symbols to comprehend and understand dreams. Of symbols Jung wrote: “A symbol is the best possible formulation of a relatively unknown psychic content”. [CW 8, para. 505].
Harry’s dream link with Voldemort becomes a central factor in the plot. Most of the novel’s symbols — such as flying motorcycle, cups, lockets, long dark corridors, many-legged creatures and mysterious objects — lead Harry to one object, to Voldemort. He occurs several times in Harry’s dreams in different situations and features through symbols. They have meanings and resonances above and beyond these particular situations. As well as most of Harry’s dreams convey meanings related to the battle with Voldemort, they sometimes reflect his everyday concerns. Rowling’s hugely popular stories about the magical education of young Harry Potter abound with dream experiences that weave prophetic visions with psychologically astute insights into adolescent feelings of loss, fear, desire, and hope.
The dream is like a sign of Harry’s current anxieties, reflecting his concerns about letting down his house, losing a competition to a hated rival, appearing weak in front of his school, losing his magical power, losing his ability to fly, and ultimately losing the battle against Slytherin. Harry awakens abruptly with the sensation of falling, another typical dream experience, and he has a moment of waking/dreaming uncertainty. Jung’s claim that dreams may also work to compensate for imbalances in the psyche by expressing content from the unconscious. Jung believed that the unconscious content contained in dreams must be recognized, reflected over and accepted by the individual in order to achieve greater psychological balance.
The ultimate function of dreams, according to Jung, is to unite the conscious and unconscious in a healthy and harmonious state of wholeness, which he termed ‘individuation.’ He believed the need for ‘individuation’ and ‘integration’ of the personality increases as life progresses and is reflected in changes in dream content in the middle years of adult life (Jung, 1967). Dreams usually express content from the unconscious that the reader has actively repressed, ignored or depreciated. It is important that the dreamer accepts and recognizes the unconscious content. Through Harry’s dreams, the shadow is revealed. Shadow in a dream can represent something unknown or unseen, and “to see” in a dream can symbolize personal awareness.
Therefore, a shadow in a dream can symbolize something about you that you can’t see. It’s a blind spot. A shadow is a dark area, and “dark” in a dream can mean bad or wrong. It can symbolize the dark side of people and situations, or dark thoughts and feelings. But dark can simply mean unknown or mysterious, too, so it can symbolize fear. The shadow may represent an intangible fear such as fear of the dark, or fear of something specific such as a person or aspect of your personality. Shadow can symbolize danger. A shadow is cast by an object blocking light, so it can symbolize living in the shadow of another person such as a parent, sibling, or authority figure.
The same dream imagery can also mean that there’s something about you that’s blocking the light of your personal awareness. You are your own obstacle. Shadow manifests in dreams as a dark or shifty character, usually a human character with dark skin and dressed in dark clothing, though it can take the form of an animal, monster, invisible presence, and similar imagery. Voldemort creates a way to defeat Harry in each book, and he seems to be a variety of different types! He usually appears supernaturally as a fearsome figure who threatens or betrays Harry. All these versions are overwhelming with darkness and gloominess.
Its face can be blurred or distinct; however, a blurred face of a dark dream character is a hallmark of Shadow because it’s a great metaphor for something missing in your self-awareness. As you get to know your Shadow it’ll take on more distinct form in your dreams and visions that returns time and again to test and prod and warn and guide you. Cooperation with this shadow reveal some emotional problems to Harry, and dream may resolve his issues. There is some anecdotal evidence and empirical studies using incubation techniques which suggest there may be a problem-solving component to the function of dreaming.
Psychologist and sleep-researcher Rosalind Cartwright (1991) proposes that dreams act as a natural healer by relating new emotional problems with older patterns of problem- solving that have worked for the dreamer in the past. She believes that dreams may diffuse the emotional charge of real life events enabling the sleeper to see things in a more positive light upon waking. She proposes that dreams generally function to regulate mood and that this process can sometimes short-circuit in people suffering from mental illness resulting in disturbed sleep and worsening of symptoms.
In psychology, a number of dream theorists argue that dreams can have problem-solving functions which promote psychological well-being by allowing the individual to adjust to and cope with current intellectual or emotional concerns in waking life (e.g. Barrett, 2007). He proposes that any real-life event that the dreamer considers an emotional concern can lead to problems of emotional or behavioural adjustment. During dreaming these emotional problems can be solved, thus contributing to the psychological well-being of the individual.
References
- Dream Recall Frequency: Impact of Age When Collection Begins, of Length of CollectionPeriod, and of Schooling across High School Years
- The Neural Correlates of Dreaming
- Neurobiology of Dreams by Jelena Mrdalj, Nils Inge Landrø, Jon Johnsen
- Developmental aspects of sleep and dreaming: an overview
- Freud, Jung, and Hall the King-Maker: The Historic Expedition to America (1909)
