The Dream Book of Self-Knowledge
- a healthy impulse for further development only if it leads to a change in wrongful behavior, feeling or thinking, when the dreamer tries to eliminate his acts that are criticized; if, however, the self-criticism strengthens the guilt within a dreamer, this destructive emotion yields a feeling of doubt of oneself, a feeling of worthlessness, which leads to a vicious cycle of hopelessness and desperation.
- once the dreamer realizes through self-criticism his own mistakes and the self-criticism ends, then he will continue toward peace and tranquility in his soul since this image brings attention from the external phenomenal world to within himself in focusing on his dependencies and other negative traits that he will be able to eliminate by understanding their essence.
- the most ideal self-criticism can be the dreamer's inner voice, which is one of the most useful gifts of the Wise Old Man archetype; such dreams are the result of previous internalization and a prerequisite for the adventurous path through the archetypes of the inner circles of the unconscious (see the chapter of the Map of the Unconscious) all the way to realization*68; but every inner voice must be verified through logical reason (see Voice).
