The Secret Live of a Dreamer: When Physics Met Psychology
University of Oxford
Department of Astrophysics
by Fiorella Lavado and Arthur I. MillerJune 29, 2009
How could a seemingly austere scientist – Wolfgang Pauli - dare to explore the dark and mysterious land of dreams while searching for a common language to communicate effectively with a psychologist - Carl Jung?
Miller will discuss who the famous physicist Pauli and the great psychologist Jung were – their lives and achievements, and Jung’s analysis of Pauli's dreams. Jung’s method of dream analysis involved comparison of a patient’s dream images with images from alchemy. As a result of Jung's psychoanalysis, Pauli came to realise the source of his creative powers as well as a way to alleviate his neurosis.
Scientists I’ve met, Lavado recalls, don’t often dream and when they do dream they don’t record them. In fact, they don’t usually remember them. But Pauli did dream and wrote them down. Pauli’s original dream images are not available and may never be. Using illustrations she has created, Lavado invites us to speculate on what they were. She is an artist who works with dreams and will give her reaction to this towards studying creativity.
The strange friendship that resulted between Pauli and Jung is a wonderful example of how a collaboration across disciplines can work out, ultimately unlocking creative ideas. They passionately expressed the need for communication between psychologists and scientists. We will touch on how to broaden their aims to collaboration between a scientist and an artist.