The interpretation of Siavash’s dream in Shahnameh from the perspective of traditional dream interpretation and Jung’spsychology

One of common grounds between literature and psychology is the concept of dreaming and its interpretation.  The most significant resemblance lies in their symbolic language.  In numerous literary and historical works of nations one comes across account of dreams that are realized and interpreted by dream interpreters.  Shahnameh as a singular literary work is no exception in this regard to an extent that this recurring feature can be considered as a motif.  Sometimes these dreams are fully realized, at times half come true and other times are totally symbolic.   Jung’s individual and collective unconscious arguments and traditional dream interpretation approach are applied to Siavash’s dream in Shahnameh in order to arrive at an interpretation so that it can be compared with the interpretation provided in the narrative tale.  The method of research in this article is analysis and comparison.  In traditional dream interpretation, every single symbol in the dream is interpreted according to the Persian and Islamic dream interpretation books, but in the Psychological dream analysis section first in view of Siavash’s life, personality and his temperaments and also in view of Jung’s free association method, the symbols in his dream are analyzed, then in the final part the structural similarities of this dream are compared with a certain ancient myth.   The result shows that irrespective of the approaches applied, the perfect juxtaposition of symbols in the dream are well in accordance with the natural trend of the tale in Shahnameh.