Artificial Intelligence and the Interpretation of Dreams by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

“AI provides powerful tools for dream exploration by instantly analyzing dream journals, tracking recurring symbols, and offering interpretations across multiple psychological traditions. While AI excels at uncovering thematic patterns, genuine insight ultimately relies on your personal associations and felt sense of meaning.” Thus spake AI.

As my clients know, I often use dreams in our work together. The reason is dreams  are, as Freud said, the royal road to a person’s unconscious. While popular books, and it seems, artificial intelligence, suggest common symbolic ideas I think we have to practice a lot more discretion. We do not all share the same cultural background, particularly here in Australia – which is multicultural and the symbols of those with a Germanic background are not going to be the same as those from Iran.  This means we can’t really flip open a dream interpretation dictionary, or even get anything particularly useful from AI.

The quote from Google’s AI in response to the words I used in the title of this piece at least recognizes that “genuine insight ultimately relies on your personal associations and felt sense of meaning.” It does. Using AI to interpret your dreams isn’t ultimately useful. I don’t write this because I’m worried my job will disappear. On the contrary I never just interpret dreams anyway. I am always interested in what associations my client has, and also what they suggest the dreams are referring to.  The old stereotype of analyst interpreting a person’s dreams is not one I’ve ever followed. Work with my clients is collaborative.

The unconscious is a personal space, not a collective one. This means there are few, if any, common keys. Dreaming of a coil of rope might be a snake, or a coil of rope. Understanding its meaning comes from the conversation we have with the client, not some separate resource.

Naturally, the statement “the unconscious is a personal space” is going to bring to mind Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious. What about that? First of all, the personal unconscious just contains personal memories of experiences, while the collective unconscious refers to the so-called deepest layer of the human psyche, a supposed shared reservoir of universal memories, instincts, and symbolic patterns. There is no doubt that we share biology, but do we actually share psychology? I’m less sure about that, at least in this form. What we do have is a rich cultural human fabric that embraces the world. One that is added to as we travel the globe and expand our immediate association with it at a personal level. In other words, unless we are exposed to the imagery at some personal level, the personal unconscious only then embraces further images. To suggest otherwise, as Jung did, is to venture too far into theory, without evidence.

Doing away with Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious as he described it simultaneously does away with dictionaries of dream interpretation and ultimately using AI to interpret dreams. You really can’t pick out images from your dreamscape and find one on one meanings from external sources.

We should remember that Artificial Intelligence isn’t actually intelligent as we are, it merely gathers together our ideas into mostly intelligible forms. It thus cooks up for our consumption what we have put into it. A tradition of dictionaries of dream interpretation doesn’t automatically make the concept real. In the end, we still have to explore our own inner landscapes for these belong only to ourselves and it there that meaning is made.

Now it may be that an image is so deeply associated for us with a particular meaning that we have taken it on board and it has, indeed, become integrally associated with our psychology that its interpretation actually is what might be written down in some dream interpretation dictionary. If this is the case, then go with it. My point is, however, don’t automatically assume  that an external authority actually is in tune with your individual psychology. More often than not, it isn’t.

Starting Here by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

I’m sitting at my computer writing words on the screen. My feet are encased in red socks, my legs in purple slacks, and I have a red-purple jumper on covered by a black vest. I’ve had a late lunch and feel quite full. I’m sitting writing these words because I have to start somewhere. I’d set myself the task of regular writing and I intend to be regular. Mostly I am, sometimes I’m not. I can procrastinate endlessly, I know that, but I know, too, that – at the heart – I am a disciplined person. I think, in this regard, I’m like my  now deceased father. He was  an architect and  during the war, also a naval officer. Disciplined and accustomed to getting things done. So here I am, writing now from where I am.

The sun is setting behind late May clouds. It’s been a mild day. Rain is forecast for tonight. I will swim down at the beach tomorrow morning. I’m told the water is still quite warm, as it was last week. The seaweed is banking up on the seashore and it’s  looking wintery.

I sit here writing these words because this is exactly what I knew I would do. I wanted to say, as many have said before me, that all endeavours start with right now. Miro, the Catalan artist (1893 - 1983), began his surrealist pieces with a single dot and from that dot elaborated all else. Things evolve from right now. The single seed becomes the mighty tree. In the beginning was the word… All that is began thus.

Plans and imaginings begin here. They start as a small bub, nothing more. 

I often hear from my clients that they want to start something new, but because the idea isn’t fully clothed in their mind, they can’t even begin. This is folly. No enterprise begins fully formed. They can’t because everything is open to change. Things are altered in reaction to other events, and shaped accordingly. Things are emergent entities and relational. The acorn receives its ability to grow in relation to moisture, temperature, nutrients – not just the germ of its own self.

Beginning comes with risk. Who know what will become of anything. Beginning enters existence and perhaps comes to nothing. In the end, does it really matter? Beginning can blossom into something extraordinary, or not. It is exciting just allowing something to happen. We learn from whatever happens.

The philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) saw “now” is not merely anchoring yourself in the present but projecting your future possibilities onto the concrete reality of your past. In other words, “now” is not a point in time, but “flow. Starting now is thus a culmination of what was before along with what is to come in relation to whatever you encounter all the way in the doing of a thing. 

Where you are now is human existence (Dasein). You are an integration of past, present and future possibilities and the doing of anything is just this. Everything begins just here. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

I am reminded of Ted Hughes’ (1930- 1998) wonderful poem, “The Thought Fox”. It’s about the essential mysteriousness of beginning any piece, and just letting it happen. Here is the entire poem (included, because it’s incredibly beautiful): 

“I imagine this midnight moment's forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock's loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.”

Putting Feelings into Words by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

When a client comes to work with me one of the first things I ask of them is to write down feelings, thoughts and dreams. The reason is not just to create a text for reflection and discussion, but to develop the process of learning to witness their unconscious processes. It’s a practice I’ve been engage in for practically all of my adult life and I can attest to actual changes in my approach to living.

What happens with such witnessing is that the waves of emotion no longer have a big grip on daily life. I began the process decades ago because I realized that if I allowed those massive deluges of emotions to dominate my life, I probably wouldn’t survive. I understood that it really was critical for me to find a way to live moderately, with awareness. And so, I started writing. This writing has evolved into many variations on the original theme, from self observation to others. It now incorporates my professional and academic insights. The insights have become outsights (if I may call this article one of these).

Writing, as therapeutic tool, is much used by psychodynamic practitioners like myself in various ways. The psychodynamic approach suggests that human behaviour is generated by unconscious processes and that the therapeutic purpose is to bring such unconscious things into conscious awareness for fundamental change in everyday life. 

The process of writing does not include interpretation, though these may be suggested in the psychotherapeutic session itself by both client and therapist. It merely records whatever the clients wants to bring up. The text may be accompanied by drawings, if the client wishes.

Till recently, I  just intuited tangible shifts in awareness in myself and my clients but now I’ve discovered that neurological brain research has found that this has a measurable aspect as well. Brain imaging studies show the writing down one’s feelings changes how the brain works. The emotional circuits of the brain (the amygdala) show reduced activity.  The amygdala lies deep within the temporal lobes, and is an essential part  of the limbic system. It is primarily responsible for processing emotions, particularly fear, anxiety, and aggression and attaches emotional value to memories. It also triggers fight-or-flight responses. What happens when you write your feelings down, instead of being overwhelmed by such feelings – as these brain studies have shown – there is reduced amygdala activity along with an increased engagement of the prefrontal cortex. 

The prefrontal cortext supports planning, reasoning, and self-regulation. Simply put, writing things down reduces the welling up of emotions to being able to manage life more effectively. Your thoughts are structured and externalized into written form and thus they lose much of their grip, thus cutting down feelings of stress. You can step back and observe your interactions and behaviours and thus proceed in emotional safety without being swept up in realms you can’t manage.

There is an added benefit to the process of writing: you end up with a record of your therapeutic journey which, in itself, can be used to develop other possibilities for your own life. Maybe the writings can become a memoir, a novel, a series of poems, theoretical discoveries, whatever.  I’ve had clients utilize their writings in the form of all these things, which delights me. And of course, the very activity of the writing process itself is therapy, and a very valuable  and wonderfully self clarifying one.

Looking for the Self by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

April 2026

I’d just entered the water at South Beach, South Fremantle and saw a man with a metal detector scouring the seabed. I asked him what sort of things he finds and he said, rings and coins. He paused, and then said that  he has  yet to find himself. I said something along the lines of, “Just keep on looking.” Naturally this conversation got me thinking, once again, about life and coming to know oneself. After all, it’s all a bit of a mystery.

Do we ever find ourselves? What are we referring to when we ask the question? Is there a thing called ‘self’ or, maybe, it in the searching that we are a self? 

C. G. Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology,  called the process of discovering the self, individuation. But is that a thing? Let’s examine more closely what he was referring to. For Jung, individuation was the process of becoming a self-actualized person, distinct from the collective psychology of society (family and the broader community), distinct from what he called ‘the collective unconscious’. It was the process of becoming conscious. 

It is interesting that Jung’s concept actually doesn’t refer to the thing called ‘self’ in the way it is often depicted: that is, a thing to be found, as one might find a golden treasure, but a process of growing clarity around the assumptions of community psychology. But this I’m referring to assumptions about gender, race, size, age, social status, money, etc that all communities around the world have about people.

The substance of myths, of which Jungians are very attached to, can lead us up the garden path to misconceptions about the individuation process. And to get caught up in an idea, rather than understand it all as an ongoing process of discovery.  The search for the Holy Grail is a classic example. The Grail is a sacred vessel of legend. It is traditionally thought of as the cup or chalice used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. The image comes from 12th century French literature and is an Arthurian motif symbolizing a, usually unattainable, object of quest, divine grace, or immense power. In other words, it is a symbol of something never to be found, only sought.

The Grail cannot be found because it isn’t a thing; it’s an idea, an image powerful enough to attract us to search for it. All the metal detectors in the world won’t, however, find either the Grail as metal object nor an object called ‘the self’. 

So, what is the purpose of looking? Why bother? Such a question inevitably ties to the purpose of psychotherapy. Yes, for sure, people seek therapy because something in their lives isn’t working, and they are not happy. We can certainly treat symptoms of discontent, but is this enough? The whole school of cognitive behaviour therapy is all about symptom control, and that’s perfectly alright if that’s all a client is interested in. Psychiatry, likewise,   manages symptom control with medication. Most clients, however, in my experience are searching for something much more profound, and I get it. Like the man with the metal detector scouring the sea bed, we want more than a few coins. We search for more. 

Identifying, selecting, deciding, rejecting, sorting, feeling happy about this versus that, and finding comfort and peace within ourselves is part of this process. It’s also sorting through family and cultural expectations about what constitutes a good life versus how I feel about it and why do I search for more? There is something very essential, something very fundamental about the drive for our own authenticity. Hindu philosophy has the phrase neti neti (not this, not that) which is a foundational method of self-inquiry used to uncover one’s true self. The method systematically negates all transient illusions of body, mind, thoughts, and emotions to find an unchanging self. What it boils down to is witnessing awareness: we are not this, nor that, but we are that which witnesses. In other words, here, is consciousness which is process, not a thing.

The Clouds Don’t Need to Cry by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

It’s now practically the end of summer and moving into autumn and the days are still light and full and hot for us in the southern hemisphere, but on the other side of the world the days are short and dark and often miserable with people saying, they’re so glad January is done. As many of you know, I recently went to Norway, right up into the Arctic Circle and there was darkness practically all the time.  Hours and hours and hours of night. It was quite dramatic for the likes of me who was born in January in the middle of summer here in Western Australia. I grew up on the beach, in sea water, practically, in long hot days, and night was something you simply slept through: daylight until 7pm and night until dawn at around 5am.  Back here in the West I’m up with the sun and out the door for my daily swim in the  Indian Ocean.

In Kirkenes, in Norway, right up near the Russian border, in December night was effectively all day. Where was the time for waking, when for sleeping? How do people cope with it all? Don’t they get horribly depressed? What is the incidence of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): that condition associated with lethargy, low mood, irritability and craving carbohydrates  (the symptoms of SAD) up there in the Arctic Circle? These thoughts led to a lot of reading, as thoughts  generally do, and I discovered something very interesting: those northerners generally don’t experience SAD. So something more is happening.

Antidepressants are often prescribed  along with psychotherapies for those suffering SAD, a condition more often experienced by those living in kinder climes than Kirkenes. Why do we suffer and they don’t?  Maybe it is because we don’t know how to manage our perceived difficulties. They get no more than a mere sliver of light hovering above the horizon but they are active, engaged, friendly, warm.  We, on the other hand, are often moody and irritable. How do they do it? Studies have indicated that their moods stay pretty well stable throughout the year.

Mindset, it seems, is the key, at least to a point. The way we think about things affects how much we are affected by them. Those who view stressful events as challenges with an opportunity to learn, adapt  and discover do better than those who focus on the threatening aspects (possibility of accidents or illness or loss).

You can think of winter as dark and miserable, or an opportunity for warm companionship, outdoor sports, and fun. And yet, and yet… We are also our biology. Light manages our circadian rhythm in a cycle of sleep and wakefulness in a 24 hour environment. It is during darkness that melatonin is produced. Melatonin is the hormone that makes you feel sleepy and those with SAD may produce higher than normal levels. 

Light also shifts our moods.   Morning  sunlight advances the clock (making you sleepier earlier), while evening light delays it. This is why light therapy (blue light, particularly) is useful in the treatment of SAD. Sunlight is loaded with the blue light, so when the cells absorb it, our brains’ alertness centres are activated and we feel more lively and awake. If we suffer insomnia, exposure to morning light helps reset our internal clock enabling us to wake earlier and sleep longer. Bright light at night delays our body clock, making it harder to fall asleep. 

So there needs to be a balance between light and darkness,  environmentally and metaphorically, for the human being to function well. We can be martyrs to biology or, as those in the Arctic Circle do, think about our light-environment as a challenge or cave in to dark feelings where even the clouds cry.

Is it any wonder that it is right up there in the Arctic Circle that dog sledding is a much delighted in sport. My friend and I did it and it was fast and furious fun. Six dogs ran with us in the sled full speed across the frozen landscape with just a sliver of golden light edging its way over the horizon.  This is the essence of cocking the snoot at biology.

Connecting Across Species by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

February 2026

I am sometimes accused of anthropomorphism in the way I talk about  and to other animals but this kind of assumption doesn’t sit well with me. I do talk to all kinds of beasties: birds, horses, dogs, cats, quokkas, octopuses, and the like. I did talk to a carpet snake once, as I patted his/her silky body. Connection and communication does take place. And this is the key and this, I think is why the accusation of anthropomorphising my relationship with other animals misses the mark. I’m not assuming other animals share my emotional  nor cognitive response to the world, nor do I attribute my experience to them. They are different in size, perspective, bodily shape, methods of engagement, experiences, bodily equipment (sense of smell, eyesight, muscle sense, etc etc). A cat is not a human, I know this. But….

Before I go on, I’ll define anthropomorphism and give a brief history into why some still think we cannot share the life world of other animals and have a knee reaction to those of us who think otherwise.

Anthropomorphism is defined as the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a animal, or object. The arrogance of philosophers and scientists has, until recently,  dismissed any idea of mind in other animals, going along with the idea that humans are somehow superior in some way. Descartes in the 17th century, as much as the behavioural psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1950s, saw other animals as stimulus-response mechanisms that could be trained, but lacked an inner life. They saw the attribution of minds to animals as a clumsy anthropomorphism. And yet the observation of other animals, as they go around their business of being in the world, seems to point to a whole lot more. There are many minds, and many ways of acting and responding to the world.  What tremendous arrogance assuming that we humans are pinnacle of evolution, after all we all share an evolutionary and interactional heritage and as such minds didn’t just spring into being with human beings. 

What, though, is this thing called “mind”?  It is generally used to refer to a collection of mental faculties like consciousness, thought, perception, emotion, memory, and will, encompassing both conscious and unconscious processes. These are shared by other animals (though it is only now that we are understanding this more), but do they have a theory of mind? And do we all have a theory of mind? Theory of mind is an ability to understand that others have their own unique thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions, which may differ from our own, allowing us to interpret, explain, and predict their behaviour in social situations and to enter into empathic relationships. Interestingly, people with such conditions such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder sometimes have a deficiency in theory of mind, as do those with severe developmental disorders.

Minds give rise to language and behaviour (direct and indirect), to the ability to manipulate, extract, count, navigate, connect with one another. Those of us who observe and study other animals notice these activities are widespread. Birds, for instance, have complex skills, some more than others: navigational, the learning of complex songs, the creation of fancy nests, the engagement in stealing, pretending to steal it (and thus exhibiting a theory of mind, overserved in corvids [ravens, etc]), the capacity to acknowledge the existence of other agents with motives and knowledge different from their own, make and use tools; recognize and work with abstract concepts; show grief, joy, compassion, and even altruism and form relationships with humans.

Octopuses, as explored by that beautiful documentary My Octopus Teacher, with Craig Foster,  and also Peter Godfrey-Smith in his book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, we are starting to realize have rich minds as well as a capacity for relationships with us and other species.

Anthropomorphism may have been used to undesirable ends in the past but the demonization of it in the present day serves equally undesirable ends, severing our intuitive connection with the natural world and we need now, more than ever, to connect with all the creatures of the earth for our continued health and life.

Border Country by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

January 2026

We rode a dog sled driven by seven working dogs, the seventh a young dog in training, and a man  standing on the sled behind us taking us through the icy landscape of Kirkenes, that borders Russia and Finland in Norway’s far north. It was freezing cold, fast and incredibly beautiful: frozen lake, rolling snow covered hills, bare trees, and a sliver of pink sky. The last two dogs seemed to argue a lot and one kept turning around and looking at us, as if to say, “See, I’m right and he is wrong,” or something.

There is nothing sedate about dog sledding, nothing gentle. It’s heart pumpingly scary as one whizzes around tight corners. A couple of times, I thought I’d be flung off into the snow. My face hurt with the pain of cold, but I absolutely loved it and I loved the countryside.  It reminded me of the landscape of my family and I felt at home in this border land. 

As we crossed the solid lake, I remembered the Ukrainian composer, Prokofiev’s opera Alexander Nevsky, the 13th century Prince of Novgorod, about a battle fought and won on the frozen lake between the Teutonic knights (Germans) and the Russians, a lake that borders Estonia and Russia and the lands of my mother’s family.  My mother was Russian, born in Pskov (on the lake’s edge that borders Estonia and Russia, mentioned in the opera), her mother was Russian, her father, Estonian and originally Baltic German. The land they lived was historically disputed as a site for conflicting ideologies and language (just like the war in Ukraine and Russia at the moment). I note here that Prokofiev is claimed by the Russians as a Russian composer! Kirkenes had this quality, of being between  places. It’s  disputed territory, and interestingly, these days, Russians and Norwegians can freely move across the border, at least within the fairly tight parameter of forty kilometres. What are borders anyway, but a human construct, and we are all humans claiming “mine versus yours” stuff, just like the two sled dogs.

I found the whole thing of being here deeply moving, stirring something profound within me. It was against this backdrop of deep remembering that I met a few of the little puppies who begin training to pull sleds at a young age. One little guy and I totally fell in love. We nuzzled each other and held hand in paw and I wanted to take him home to Australia, but, of course, I couldn’t.

Back home, I have much to think about. Our Norwegian journey was only two and half weeks long and most of it was done travelling on a Hurtigruten ship from Bergen to Kirkenes. In some ways, the trip was far too short, but perhaps not. It was quite restful not having to do much at all. The ship stopped often, mostly merely to collect mail, but sometimes we could disembark and wander new streets, but unfortunately never to do anything but scratch the surface of any place. I guess, it was because dog sledding had a dangerous quality to it and that physically engaged us in that experience that this felt the most real of the entire journey. Everything else became much like drifting through time and space as nothing more than a tourist with a camera.

One place that my friend and I stopped at enroute from Oslo to Bergen, where we boarded the ship, was Flam in the fjords. The landscape was magnificent: mountains, cliffs, rock formations that blew our minds, but the hotel we stayed at was a theme park. Their restaurant was set up like a pseudo-Viking feast house, complete with tall blond Viking man with a suspiciously northern English accent (!) who would sell his grandmother at the drop of a hat, animal hides, carved wooden chairs and tables, a booze bar, etc etc. I felt almost sick with the silliness of it; a  museum piece designed for tourists. If this is what travel has become, I’m not sure I want any part of it.

I suppose what I gained most from my journey was connection with my familial history of border countries/cultures, meeting and loving the dogs, and understanding what matters most to me. The rest can be forgotten.