The Jungian technique of amplification gives dreams a meaning that they do not necessarily have. The method is therefore dubious.
In The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious (CW 7) Jung uses amplification to interpret the dream if a young woman. The dream is described as follows:
Her father (who in reality was of small stature) was standing with her on a hill that was covered with wheat-fields. She was quite tiny beside him, and he seemed to her like a giant. He lifted her up from the ground and held her in his arms like a little child. The wind swept over the wheat-fields, and as the wheat swayed in the wind, he rocked her in his arms. (CW 6, par. 211)
Although the interpretation of this dream could have relied on the mundane relation of the woman to his father and/or therapist, Jung amplificated the symbols to show that she was dreaming about the archetypal God-image.
The dream swelled the human person of the doctor to superhuman proportions, making him a gigantic primordial father who is at the same time the wind, and in whose protecting arms the dreamer rests like an infant. If we try to make the patient’s conscious, and traditionally Christian, idea of God responsible for the divine image in the dreams, we would still have to lay stress on the distortion. In religious matters the patient had a critical and agnostic attitude, and her idea of a possible deity had long since passed into the realm of the inconceivable, i.e., had dwindled into a complete abstraction. In contrast to this, the god-image of the dreams corresponded to the archaic conception of a naturedaemon, something like Wotan. , ‘God is spirit,’ is here translated back into its original form where πνεμα (pneuma) means ‘wind’: God is the wind, stronger and mightier than man, an invisible breath-spirit. (Par. 217)
Here, Jung shows the central problem of the method of amplification. It gives the dream, a meaning that it does not have. Jung cuts through all the arguments in favour of an autosymbolic interpretation to prove his hypothesis of the archetype. We could say that his interpretation flirts with dishonesty because he amplifies the symbols father, giant and wind to something that goes beyond the meaning of those symbols for the dreamer. He adds
There is nothing about this image that could be called personal: it is a wholly collective image, the ethnic origin of which has long been known to us. Here is an historical image of world-wide distribution that has come into existence again through a natural psychic function. This is not so very surprising, since my patient was born into the world with a human brain which presumably still functions today much as it did of old. We are dealing with a reactivated archetype, as I have elsewhere called these primordial images.These ancient images are restored to life by the primitive, analogical mode of thinking peculiar to dreams. It is not a question of inherited ideas, but of inherited thought-patterns. (Par. 219)
In fact, this dream is wholly personal. The symbols of the dream show a father complex that is unresolved where the woman is still in the grips of a father figure seen as a giant. The dream depicts her state as being rocked in the arms of her father, a state of complete abandonment to the complex. Is the wind really a symbol of the pneuma, the god-image? A realistic approach would give the wind a more sensible meaning. The wind, in that dream, supports the autosymbolic meaning of being lulled by the wind. That symbol is available to everyone and does not need the recourse of an hypothetical archetype. The dream is so clear that one wonders why Jung did not stick with common sense in that case. The most probable reason is that he was looking for proofs to substantiate his archetypal hypothesis.
Archetypes and the collective unconscious are unfalsifiable hypotheses that have not yet been proven with empirical data. Unfalsifiability is a concept in the philosophy of science that refers to the inability of a hypothesis, theory, or statement to be tested, proven wrong, or refuted through empirical evidence or experimentation. In other words, if a proposition or claim is unfalsifiable, it means there is no conceivable observation or experiment that could demonstrate it to be false.
When you determine, without proof, that myths and legends have an archetypal origin and you use those very myths to prove the archetypal origin of some dreams, you have stepped out of science into the Enchanted world of magic, visions and prophecies. Jungians who still promote archetypes and amplification have put beliefs over science. Sadly, they have chosen to be non-scientific by advocating pseudoscientific ideas.