A Jungian analyst opened ChatGPT mid-session to look up an archetype.
Right instinct. Wrong tool.
Tarn does that lookup in your method, before the session, then stops before the verdict. The meaning stays yours and the dreamer's.
Straining to be recognized
Ask: When have you worked hard to be recognized by someone, then held back the moment they turned toward you?
The workbench · every line traces to something you chose
The mirror, never the oracle.
The Taoist writer Zhuangzi noticed, long ago, that we do not see ourselves in running water, only in still water. A tarn is that still water: a small mountain lake that gives back what reaches its shore, adds nothing of its own, and holds a depth you cannot see the bottom of. Tarn is named for it.
Four principles.
Each one shapes what Tarn will and will not do.
Offered, never imposed.
Nothing cultural, mythic, or interpretive is applied to a dream unless the practitioner grants it. Every line traces to something a human chose.
It unites, never isolates.
Parallels come from widely-shared human stories first, set beside a dream as company, never as a claim about who the dreamer is.
The dreamer holds authority.
Tarn never hands a verdict. It surfaces and asks. The meaning stays the dreamer's.
Prep, not replacement.
Tarn prepares the practitioner up to the threshold: the images, the feeling, the questions to ask, the amplifications. Then it stops. It never does the associations, the active imagination, or the final meaning. Those are the living work.
Practitioners, and the dreamers they serve.
Tarn is for dreamwork practitioners, the Jungian-oriented coaches, analysts, and dreamworkers who already run a real interpretive method and want AI as a production partner, not an authority. For them, Tarn is a front door and a workbench shaped by their own method.
It is also for the dreamers they serve. A dreamer leaves a dream at the door and receives a free reflection. The full interpretation lives with the practitioner they sit with.
A dream arrives. You prepare. You sit.
Three steps, from door to session.
A dream arrives at your front door.
A dreamer leaves a dream. It appears in your queue, with the dreamer's recurring motifs at hand.
You prepare it in a workbench shaped by your own method.
Tarn surfaces the images, the feeling, the amplifications, and the questions to ask. Nothing is applied unless you grant it. You work to the threshold.
You walk into the session ready.
Prepped, not replaced. You bring the associations, the active imagination, and the meaning. Tarn stays at the threshold.
The mirror is ready. The oracle is not.
A prototype, not yet live. If you run a real interpretive method and want AI as a partner at the threshold, the door is open.
Enter Tarn