Sanja Ivic, “The Third Reich of Dreams: Dreams in Jungian Psychology,” Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, Vol. 19, Issue 2, 2025, pp. 169-180.
This study applies Carl Jung’s analytical psychology to political studies, investigating how totalitarian regimes influenced the collective unconscious. This paper analyzes the dreams presented in Charlotte Beradt’s book The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation 1933–1939, using C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology and his concepts of the shadow (the darker, repressed aspects of the psyche) and the collective shadow (the dark, unconscious aspects of the psyche of a group – usually a nation, culture, or society – that are repressed, denied, or projected onto others). Jung’s insights offer a psychological perspective on mass movements, authoritarianism, and collective projections of fear and aggression.
Jung’s analytical psychology is particularly relevant to today’s global political atmosphere – a world polarized by authoritarian tendencies and widespread shadow projections onto ideological or ethnic “others.”
Jung’s studies reflect deep existential anxiety for the modern individual who has been torn between conflicting ideologies, political systems, and global conflicts. His insights sound amazingly topical nowadays. People are being torn between liberal democracy and rising authoritarianism, capitalism, and socialist movements, globalism and nationalism, the promises and failures of technology, artificial intelligence, and economic systems. Jung believes that while governments and societies boast treaties, ideologies, and economic systems, the individual is still spiritually lost. All political and social structures promise security, but they fail to satisfy the individual’s deeper need for meaning. This creates a collective restlessness – a feeling that, despite progress, something essential is missing. Jung’s solution to the existential crises we face –whether war, technology, or any other global issue – remains in the process of individuation – a journey into self-awareness, personal growth, and the integration of the unconscious mind. He believed that real change cannot be imposed from without through political or technological means, but must come from within the individual who must confront their own unconscious motives, fears, and projections. Jung emphasizes that the spiritual leaders “who are capable of self-reflection” are the true leaders of humanity.
Only in confronting the unconscious – through self-awareness, moral responsibility, and integration of the shadow – will the mistakes of history not be repeated. Only then will liberation from the collective madness that leads to war, social collapse, and technological slavery be possible. This process of inner revolution transforms the individual, enables resistance to ideological extremes, and thus builds a more harmonious, ethical, and responsible society.