Dreams of a Lifetime

Abstract

In this posthumously published article, written by first-generation Jungian analyst Jane Hollister Wheelwright at the age of eighty, Wheelwright reflects on her inner life and summarizes the important dreams of her lifetime. Wheelwright believes that her dreams reflect the primitive and modern split that C. G. Jung observed in the American psyche. Wheelwright grew up in the coastal wilderness of the Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara County, California. Within the boundaries of the Hollister Ranch were some of the ancestral lands of the Chumash Indians. In childhood, Wheelwright lived a life that brought her close to the animal world, the forces of the natural world, and the world of the ancestral Chumash. In early adulthood, Wheelwright was plunged into sophisticated European culture. Her inner task was to travel via the archetypal content of her dreams from the world of Cro-Magnon woman to that of a modern twentieth-century woman, a journey that was reflected in her “dreams of a lifetime.”