Meeting Mary - Meeting Your Self

The Functions of Dreams in the Mary Poppins Books

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore dreams in the Mary Poppins books and propose that they are the location of another reality, the manifestation of wish fulfilment and punishment, that they assist in the individuation process as well as being a tool for the recollection of ancient knowledge. It is suggested that one of Poppins’s tasks, as a magical nanny, is to lead Jane and Michael on a journey of personal development and offer them a glimpse of the world of the collective unconscious and self-understanding. To this end, this paper, on the one hand, approaches Sigmund Freud’s and Carl G. Jung’s concepts of dream, (collective) unconscious and archetypes; and on the other, deals with Joseph Campbell’s comments on the hero’s journey of self-discovery.