Possible intellectual discussion of sexuality ahead. Also, probably reading way too much into this.

Inspired by the kaorin's dreams thread and the question on the psychological signifigance of chiyo no chichi, i've decided to do a jungian/archetypal analysis of all the new years' dreams. I will not be using frued's flawed and unscientific model, but an archetypal one, with a grounding in evolutionary psychology.

One thing i'd like to point out is when I say unconscious I don't usually mean the personal unconscious (memories, reppresed things, etc.) but the collective unconscious common to all humanity, containing our animal survival instincts and a mythical recap of the history of our species.

For explanation of some of the terms, type "jung" or "archetypes" into google, or go here: http://www.coloringtherapy.com/jungian_terms_a.htm

Or for a very quick overview, go here: http://www.rpi.edu/~verwyc/JUNGOH.html

Going in order:

Osaka:
The signifigance of chiyo chan's pigtails are quickly apparent: They are the "Weapon" of ego consciousness.
They allow chiyo to ascend into heaven, above the animal unconscious. Parralels are to be found in hermes' boots and magic items in many cultures.
Osaka is a spacey person, ruled by her unconscious urges. An undeveloped ego makes her distractable and she frequently drifts off into it's embrace (sleep).

In her dream she wishes to posses the magic item, and chiyo chan gladly gives it to her (chiyo is playing the role of the spirit guide here, since osaka obviously looks up to her).
But then she realizes the pigtails are "controlling" chiyo. This signifies fear of ego possesion (a real possibility, it's happened to tomo already). Her fear "kills" chiyo and she flies off, grief stricken. Osaka obviously fears losing something or someone she cares about in her individuation process.

Why the appearance of chiyo's father in food? I haven't figured that out. A theory: He is a representative of the "self" archetype, and thus associated with the food of the soul. The qualities osaka ascribes to the food (sizzlin, pipin hot, crispy) are all masculine elements.
__________________________
Tomo:
The easiest of all the dreams to analyze. Tomo obviously suffers from a controlling ego, or ego possesion. Her ego has expanded to cover all her psychic content. This has made her dangerously megolomaniacal.
She's under a spell, believing that she's better in all things than she really is.

Humbling is drastically needed.

__________________________
Sakaki:
Sakaki's dream is rich with symbolism.

The first thing we shoud note is that Sakaki is a bundle of contradictions. She's tall and cool but she loves small, cute things. She projects a tough image but is actually very sensitive. Her persona and ego are in almost complete opposition. She needs to reconcile these internal contradictions.

Before we can understand sakaki's dream, we need to understand the two major players besides sakaki herself: Chiyo and her "father".

Chiyo is sakaki's own childhood self. It seems that sakaki has an unresolved childhood. Her parents can't handle "cats or things like that", so I think they couldn't handle a child either. She's on a constant quest to discover whatever was lost/taken from her.

Chiyo's father is a representative of the self (the archetype of psychic totality). He is theriomorphic (having both human and animal features). The signifigance of this is obvious when you understand that the goal of the individuation process is to gain the "self" and thus unify the primitive mammalian and reptilian parts of our brain with the more recently evolved human part. Theriomorphic figures appear in legends all over the globe, and they are a representative of our own dual human and ape natures.
He floats and flies. Thus he can soar into the sky (the realm of spirituality) at will.

The dream begins with Sakaki outside of chiyo's house. Chiyo is calling to her. At this stage, chiyo (playing the role of sakaki's childhood self) is small and weak.
They meet at a threshold (chiyo's house), appropriate since it's the start of the dream.

Then they meet chiyo's father. He's been "abandoned" because sakaki neglected her own psychic development. She is instructed to take care of him for a while.
But there is hope. Through simple hanging out, Sakaki develops a bond with her self figure.
He asks if she likes cats and she answers yes. He flashes psychidelically. Then he asks if she answered yes, knowing that he's a cat. He flashes again. I'm not sure of the signifigance of the questions, but his flashing seems to show that some psychic change is going on.
Note that when they hang out in one of the fields, the plants there are phallic looking. I don't know if that's a native japanese plant species or just from her dreams, but a phallic object, in the jungian view, symbolizes power more than sex.

Also note the dragonflies suspended in the air. Dragonflies, like butterflies emerge from a coccoon. The symbolism of that should be obvious. Also their bodies could be called phallic.
They move about as if suspended. The air has become thick and the psychic content of the dream "real".
He then informs her that he will be leaving, because he is not a real cat.

This is puzzling until we remember that sakaki herself is a "fake", projecting an image contrary to her true self. Sakaki asks where she can find a real cat and is informed that it is "impossible for you as you are." Clearly personal change is needed before sakaki can find her true self.

Next chiyo invites sakaki into her house, signifying that the dream has begun in earnest. She has returned to normal size, due to the strengthening influence of sakaki's encounter with her own self figure.

Sakaki comes across a penguin, sorrounded by blocks of ice. Chiyo tells her that the penguin is their maid.
The penguin is triply inadequate. As a penguin, it is incapable of flying. As a maid it is incapable of cleaning. And it's a penguin that gets "brain freezes" too.
The penguin is sakaki's own inadequacy for dealing with her contradictions. However, when sakaki realizes this, the walls of ice (her own psychic structures) begin to shift.

Chiyo's father appears at the stairway (he is now a semi divine figure, descending to sakaki's level) and invites sakaki for dinner. Disregarding sakaki's polite refusal, he tells her not to "stand on ceremony". The mores of civilization will not help her, now that she is in the realm of the unconscious, where more primitive laws prevail.

Chiyo's father tells her there will be "red things" at the table, which I will discuss in a moment.
They sit down to eat, and the red things are tomatoes.
The tomatoes are particularly symbolic. Because they are red, they have several associations.
Red is the color of blood, and is related to earthy brown and leaf green as colors that represent the instinctual unconscious.
Also, blood can mean the onset of menses. Sakaki has probably already begun menstruating, but it's possible she hasn't come to terms with it.
Blood is also present in birth, or in this case, sakaki's own psychic rebirth.
Red is also the color of the second stage of the process of alchemy.

As fruits (yes, they're fruits) tomatoes are the fruit in the garden of eden. The garden of eden myth is common to all mythologies and recapitulates our own evolutionary history, when we acquired ego consciousness and stepped out from the forest.

Chiyo (as inner child) states her love for tomatoes. By acquiring the fruit of knowledge, chiyo can grow up some.
Chiyo's father states that her consent is irrelevant. He is reminding sakaki that psychic change will happen, regardless of her wishes.

The conversation turns to chiyo's father's reality as a cat. Sakaki states that he is not a real cat. He begins to shake violently as if angered. Clearly she has realized the extent of her own fakeness. This is reinforced by chiyo's father asking "Are you saying that there is such a thing as cats that are fake and cats that are real?!".
Psychic change is happening much faster now.

Sakaki has taken the fruit of knowledge, and is now conscious of the difference between good and evil, fake and real. I'd like to note again that the garden of eden story is common to all cultures in history, not just europaean.

Osaka, a psychopomp, then enters. She is here to wake sakaki up, but also to display auspicous new years images.

Obviously a hawk, an eggplant and mount fuji are good luck for the new year, but why is that? The eggplant is a plant rooted in the earth. The hawk is a creature of the sky. Earth always represents the unconscious and sky, ego consciousness. A mountain joins the two.

In this dream, sakaki has made a lot of progress towards psychic health.

Kaorin:

Finally kaorin. Some would dismiss kaorin's dream as a mere sexual fantasy, but I don't believe it's that simple.

The dream begins with Kaorin being tormented by demons (her friends as bosozoku). Demons, intruders, etc. are aspects of the shadow archetype. The shadow is all parts of ourselves that we don't want to accept, like reppressed memories and animal instincts innapropriate for polite society.

They order her to talk to them. Her shadow is demanding attention. They tell her that she'll get "stunk" if she doesn't cooperate. If dialogue isn't initiated with the shadow, then she will be associated with unpleasant, dirty things. The shadow demands to be heard.

Sakaki appears, astride a white steed and occupying a high position. Sakaki is clearly the "hero with a thousand faces", representing emergent ego consciousness. The fact that she's also her crush doesn't take away from this at all.
The steed represents the forces of the instinctual unconscious controlled by the ego. White is the color of purity.

Hero-sakaki then vanquishes the demons (note that even in her dream, kaorin didn't want to see chiyo hurt). Kaori, in hero-sakaki's arms, then tells her her true name, where the dream ends. Transparency is vital in the process of psychic rebirth, but this dream reveals that kaorin has a way too weak ego. Next time she needs to do her own rescuing.

. . .

*dumbfounded*

I don't think they do... I think they crawl up out of the water in their larval stage and then molt into their new bodies. I'd have to look it up, though.

that's some post!!

seconded.

What? No commentary? Nothing?

Aozame: You're right. They crawl up on a stalk of grass. It looked like a coccoon to me. Anyway, the symbolism is the same.

Still finishing reading it. Wasn't expecting something like this on my first look.
But I like what I have read so far.

very thorough dream analysis!~ :D thank you for putting time into analyzing their dreams and to make things more clear for us! i'm like one of those ppl who miss out on noticable things and it's nice to know i can read over the analysis and piece things together ^____^

One other thing about Kaorin's dream: it shows that not only did she have the idea of the Pengi Chiyo-chan costume for a while, but her original idea also includes a beak and a pair of holes for Chiyo-chan's pigtails.

You definitely put a lot of thought into this. It was a very stimulating read.

As far as my opinion on your proposals... you may be right that you're reading too much into it. I have no clue about the psychological knowledge of a manga-ka and anime production staff, but I'm going to guess average. Art (and let's face it, Azumanga Daioh is art) always seems to have more thought from the consumer's end than the artist's end. Yes, there are quite a few cases where artists are genius and consistently place incredible hidden references into their works, but a lot of great art also seems to be "accidental genius." Refer to ... Socrates? I've been out of school way too long. -_- Socrates, in his search for knowledge, went to the poets (artists) and dismissed them after discovering they worked mainly on inspiration. This may be the case here.

But, the more probable explanation is that the dream sequences of episode eight are very strange and open to many interpretations, which is also the case with a lot of art. How many different interpretations can you find on one painting, poem, lyric, etc? Usually quite a few. And that is fine. You intrepret and incorporate the art into your own life experience.

None of this is to take away from your post, hedgehogey. It was an incredible interpretation of the aforementioned dreams, and it is something that I'd never thought about before. And what a first post. :) Hope you stick around!

On that note, you should go post an introduction thread in the Intro forum!

I do agree that it's being read too far into; I doubt Azuma Kiyohiko has the depth of psychological knowledge that would be required for all those references to work. Although I could be underestimating him; there's really no telling. Good post, nonetheless.

I don't get it
it's so complicated
can somebody explain?

I don't think there's a concise version.

Wow. Lovely work, whether it's true to Azumanga or not. Also, supposedly it doesn't matter how much Azuma K. understands of psychology; according to the Jungian school, I understand, archetypes appear in stories simply because we are human.

On a related note, since this is a work of fiction, a story, it should be possible to similarly analyze other parts of the story. I was fascinated in particular by the look into Sakaki's dream, and I wonder if hedgehogey would care to offer opinions on what point in the story it is at which Sakaki can finally be considered fully at terms with her misrepresentation of self to the world. It seems to me that this distress could be related to cats' (and in particular the kamineko's) rejection of her. Could you, hedgehogey, assess these ideas, along with the role of Maya, who accepts Sakaki?

Gah, long post.

Well see the point of jung's theories is that there are universal images (archetypes) which are inherited and common to the whole species.

The garden of eden myth, for instance. Every mythology has a version of it, even in cultures which have NO WAY of contacting each other.

So azuma wouldn't need to have any knowledge of the required symbolism. The images I described are all universal, and come out even in a comedic series like azumanga, where the creator's not trying to make any symbolism at all!

It happens also in haibane renmei, a series that sprang forth from it's creator's unconscious.

I never claimed to know anything of Jungian anything, sorry for the gross idiocy on my part :(

Give this person a congragulatory confectionary cake of some sort...I mean a cookie. Cookie.

Thank you.

I think when she rolls around with maya. Chiyo discovers her and, after an initial attempt to cover, she allows chiyo to see her true personality.

I think it's signifigant that the only cat who will accept her is a WILD cat, one that came out from the forest. The forest is a symbol of the unconscious.

The wild kitten will eventually grow into an adult, as sakaki comes to terms with her own animal side.

It could be that the cats who reject her sense that she's a weak human who couldn't control them the way a strong willed human master could.

A wild cat has no such need, and thus was able to bond with her as an equal.

It could be that maya and kamineko are mirrors of each other.

You and me both, but lets just call it ignorance. -_-

thirded.

(refuses to read that godly amount of text)

*also dumbfounded* You're one of them aren't you? Youre...a psych student!!! AAAaaaagh!!!!!! *runs away*

No seriously, I liked this. Though psychology isnt really my thing (and dragonfly biology is quite a lot closer) I did enjoy your analogy and interpretation, and I do agree with most of it.

Good work

(Feel free to run screaming from the biochem student)

A good post. I always find this sort of stuff interesting, but I know you've always gotta take it with a grain of salt. Looking back at things, many different psychological archetypes can be applied to the same situation to make it fit with what the interpreter wants to see. Certainly doesn't make it anyless interesting, and all of your theories did make alot of sense.

I'm not in college. I'm a high school drop out.

Though I do know a lot more about arthropod zoology and taxonomy than psychology so i'm pretty emberassed by that.

Dragonflies are kinda hard to classify. Nymphs or larvae?

Neg, it's been backed up by the research of many anthropologists.

The general theory is that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. So we've all got a kind of psychic blueprint of our species history.

And as an armchair evolutionary psychologist this fascinates me.



BACK ON TOPIC:

What does everyone think yomi dreamed about?

What WAS the signifigance of the questions chiyonochichi asked?

Interesting that osaka should then buy him. Synchronicity? (just kidding)

What about an analysis of some of sakaki's daydreams? Or some of the other dreams in the series?

I'd bet on larvae, I believe they are endopterygotes, (the adults being the short lived dispersal form, but most of insects life is spent as the juvenile larva)

Sorry, just being boring... ^_^

:lol: :lol: :lol:

So I'm not the only one who corrects people on that kind of thing...

Being thin, what with her weird 'I'm fat' complex.

Nice analysis. Should be posted on the actual Wonderland website as a guide.

All I can say is that that was an interesting interpretation of the dreams. :lol:

"You know, I wonder what life would have been like if I had never met Tomo." :lol:


I have a compilation of Jung's writings sitting on my desk at home, but I just can't get into it. It's too... dense. :wacko:

I would be honored.

Motorola: A for dummies kindof book is honestly just as good.

*reads*

Damn, that is one hell of an analysis! It is excellent!

By Mirrors of Each Other, are they are bit of Ying and Yang, the balance betweeen good and evil, hedgehogey?

Just realized I never answered that.

Neither is "good" or "evil", those are subjective catagories psychologically. Only harmful and beneficial are important categories.

Just that every archetype has a "shadow" version of itself, that comes out when it's overused or abused.

Kamineko is the shadow of Maya's spirit guide archetype.

That part was a depiction of "your dumplings are fried", which is like "your goose is cooked", if I'm not mistaken. You can analyze as to why Chiyo Chi Chi was in there.

Anyway, what about Ayumu-san's dream in episode 25?

That was very fascinating. An awesome insight into the characters. ^^

My mind is gonna explode even more then it did watching End Of Eva...

This is so genius I cannot comprehend it.

doesnt the bird , Mt. Fugi and the eggplant mean good luck in new year's? I thought I read that in the translation notes

indeed it does.

Fuji. For great justice, it's spelled Fuji.

That's an interesting theory. I've never looked into it that deeply.

Way to go.

If the Japanese standardize their romanization system like their government is trying, all the signs in English would start saying Mount Huzi. :wacko:

Japan already has a more-or-less standardized romanization system (the kunrei system, which renders it "Huzi"), but it's not used much outside of Japan. The only people who would benefit from romanized signs are those would cannot read Japanese, and non-natives are more likely to be familiar with the Hepburn romanization system (which renders it "Fuji"). There is a similar sort of confusion where people think that the Japanese title of the Godzilla movies is "Gojira", which is simply the Hepburn reading of what would be rendered "Godzira" by other methods.