Dreams also point to things that the client has forgotten or might be lost to the personality. In particular, dreams are considered a way to learn more about a client's complexes. In other words, dream analysis would allow the therapist to learn more about how the unconscious is dealing with and what it is doing with the client's complexes. Jung saw dream analysis as being far more beneficial than free association. Dreams are considered a way of pointing therapy in specific directions in such cases.
Dreams can both assist and retard therapy.
Thus the therapist needs to be aware of this possibility and perhaps explore the reasons why a client may use dreams to block the therapeutic experience. Techniques that embrace active imagination aid clients who are trapped in cognitive ruts. Active imagination is an active purposeful creation on the part of the client. In active imagination, images have a life of their own. Symbolic events will develop within their own logic - assuming that the conscious does not interfere.