the subjectivity of subjectivity in providing health and education

So I am beginning to think that learning to interpret others' dreams wouldn't be all that useful in a therapeutic situation, since we each form our own interpretations of our dream imagery. Instead what might be useful is trying to determine techniques through which others could interpret their own dreams, and then learning the ways to pass this information on. Of course, this too might be a futile task, because not only do we each form our own interpretations but also we each form our own methods of interpreting. Just because I know the processes by which I substitute symbols for content in my own psyche doesn't mean your own processes may even resemble mine in the slightest. If their is a deeper physiological structure to mental processes these get taken up in radically different ways, and all the work that has been done to a establish a deeper collective mythological or archetypal interpretation of our experiences might as well be thrown out the window. The collective subconscious is still only approached from our own perspectives, and that includes the possibility of building psychic structures that reject it altogether.

The problem with such radical subjectivity however is that it seems to break down the possibility of being able to provide techniques for healing and education to anyone, even on day to day levels. I may think someone's excessive drinking is potentially unhealthy to them (and to othes), but for them drinking may offer a social lifeline without which they might feel stranded and even less able to deal with the contents of their lives. Suggesting to them that they consider not drinking, or find other less destructive social activities might actually be inimical to their well-being on a whole. Where is the line drawn between what a care-provider thinks is good for a person and what the person thinks is good for themselves? As a community interested in promoting collective well-being is sharing any set of techniques only reinforcing our beliefs about what we might think others might need, just as interpreting someone else's dream reinforces your beliefs about what the images might mean to them. Even the subjectively self-empowering presuppositions of neuro-linguistic programming, which attempts to model useful techniques in order to pass them on, has fallen prey to being used as a tool to get other people to do what you want them to do. Mind control doesn't seem such a health-promoting thing.

Even education systems whose primary concern is the proliferation of ideas do so with little regard to the individual learning methods of the students and to the actual validity or value of the information being passed on. You can't just have one teacher per student, because even then the teacher still may be teaching from their own set. And when politics and religion become too involved, and public education becomes little more than a vehicle for reinforcing memetic norms... Where are the individual needs in that?

So then the question is raised, if it is near impossible to deal with individual health on such a radically subjective level, and it is equally as harmful to deal with it purely from the collective level, is there a balance between the two that respects individual concerns and situations within the broader context of the community (and the world)? If all the maps of this desert territory deteriote as quickly as they are drawn up, how can we ever find the oasis, and quench our thirst?