Dreams about city: Jung, traditions and semiotics

This is not a dream dictionary. Each perspective below names where it comes from; traditions are shown side by side, not merged into one meaning.

Start with yourself

Do you know this city? Were you looking for a way, hurrying, or lost?

Jung · The centre

In 1927 Jung dreamed of a dark, sooty Liverpool; at its centre was a square with a pool, an island and a single magnolia tree in bloom, lit as if by sunlight. He took it as an image of a centre in the psyche — what he called the Self.

Did your dream city have a centre? If so, what was there?

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Traditions, side by side

Song-dynasty memoir Literature

After Kaifeng fell, Meng Yuanlao wrote down the lost capital street by street and called the book a “dream of splendour”, comparing his memory to the Yellow Emperor waking from his dream of the land of Huaxu.

Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (1147), preface

Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture

The builders of Babel set out to make a city and a tower reaching heaven, and end scattered, no longer speaking one language.

Genesis 11:1–9

Semiotics: how an image comes to mean

Following C. S. Peirce, an image can work as a sign in three ways:

Icon — by resemblance
Does the city look like one you have actually seen? Could it simply be a copy of a memory?
Index — by connection
Could the city point to an actual cause — a bodily sensation, a sound in the room, something that happened that day?
Symbol — by convention
Does the city mean what it means by convention — an idiom, a saying, a family phrase? Would it still mean that in another language or culture?

C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers 2.247–249 (icon, index, symbol)
C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (1921), “Definitions: Symbol” — a sign stands for something known, a symbol for something not yet fully known
Ellis (1911), ch. II, on verbal links between dream images

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Recorded dreams with city

Build a city under the plane-tree Mount Pagus, Smyrna (İzmir) · 334 BCE (as told)
Throwing thunderbolts upon Sparta Sparta, Greece · 272 BCE
The whole city sprouting vegetables Chang’an, China · 383 (as told)
Driving an ox cart that carried the sun Chang’an, China · spring 846
The shoe I lost in the dream Chang’an, China · c. 870
A statue running with blood Rome (setting) · 1599 (play); set 44 BCE
A plague of certainty Siberia, Russia · 1866 (novel)
Stair after stair in endless series Edinburgh, Scotland · c. 1867–1871
Seeing Rome from the train, never entering Vienna, Austria · c. 1897
Rome half veiled in mist Vienna, Austria · c. 1897
Coming up the Thames London, England · before 1911
The governor who spoke English Spain (dreamed) · before 1911
The shop assistant who had moved England · before 1911
A hotel I could see into England · before 1911
Six mirrors in the barber’s shop Tokyo, Japan · 1908
A cannon before the Arch of Constantine Rome (dreamed) · before 1912
A fire in a hotel in a strange city Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1913