On the Significance of Number-Dreams (Unabridged)

In the essay "On the Significance of Number-Dreams", Carl Jung explains why numbers are not just artifacts of the conscious mind but hold a deeper significance. Through the study of the "number" dreams of his patients, he discovered that the smaller natural numbers are symbols in the same sense that the people and events of our dreams are symbols of behavioral situations and personified collective character traits. Number is tied to synchronicity and has an archetypal foundation, defined by Jung as an "archetype of order". Number also appears in the Mandala symbols of the self with their four-fold structure, or any multiple of four. Jung concludes that the unconscious uses numbers to create order.