Dream Dictionary: How to Find What Your Dream Symbols Mean

Dream dictionaries are the most popular way people try to understand a dream, and one of the most misleading. Almost everyone assumes each symbol has one meaning you can look up.

Psychologist Carl Jung read symbols another way. He thought the same snake could mean opposite things in two different people’s dreams.

What’s wrong with a dream dictionary?

Jung said it was foolish to think you could buy a book and look up what a dream symbol means. He believed a symbol can’t be separated from the person who dreamed it.

A dictionary gives everyone the same answer. Your dream was made from your life, your memories and your fears, so the meaning has to come from there too.

Why do dream dictionaries disagree with each other?

Look up the same symbol on three sites and you’ll often get three answers. On one dream forum, four people read the same teeth dream as powerlessness, stress, losing control and low confidence.

Each answer is true for somebody. The trouble is that a list can’t tell you which one is true for you.

Is a dream dictionary ever useful?

Yes, as a list of possibilities. Jung himself gathered the old meanings of symbols from myths, religions and folklore, and he called this amplification.

He just did it second. First came the dreamer’s own memories and feelings about the image, and only then the wider meanings to see which ones fit.

Can a dream dictionary scare you for no reason?

It happens all the time. One dreamer read that a train stands for the road of life and the last station for the end, and booked a doctor’s appointment out of fear.

When they talked it through, the train felt like their grandmother’s cozy home. The dream was about the fear of being sent back to the country they grew up in.

Can Jungian words turn into a dictionary too?

Yes, and it’s worth watching for. Plenty of people online now say a wolf is always the shadow or a house is always the psyche, as if Jung had written the entries.

Jung used those ideas as questions to bring to a dream. The answer still had to come from the dreamer.

How did Jung read a dream symbol?

He started with a question for you: what does this image bring to mind? Your first memory or feeling about it usually points the right way.

Then he asked what was going on in your life, and read the whole dream against it. Jung called the dream’s job compensation, balancing a waking attitude that has leaned too far one way.

What do the most common dream symbols mean?

Every common symbol comes with a question that does more than a definition. Start with the question, then see which meaning fits your life.

• Teeth falling out. Ask where in your life you feel you can’t speak, bite back or show yourself. Read more in teeth falling out dreams.
• Falling. Ask where you were standing before the fall and what you’d been holding on to. Read more in falling dreams.
• Being chased. Ask who the chaser is and what it would do if it caught you. Read more in chase dreams.
• Being naked in public. Ask who was looking and what you were still wearing. Read more in naked in public dreams.

One Symbol, Two Dreamers, Read Step by Step

Two people dream about a snake in their kitchen on the same night. A dictionary would give them both the same entry.

Step one is the first dreamer’s memory. She grew up on a farm where snakes kept the mice away, so to her a snake means something protective.

Step two is her life. She just took in her mother after a fall, and the snake in her kitchen is the part of her quietly guarding the house.

Step three is the second dreamer’s memory. He was bitten by a snake at eight and still can’t look at one.

Step four is his life. His new roommate has started borrowing money, and the snake in his kitchen is a danger he hasn’t named out loud.

Jung’s point is right there in the two kitchens. Same snake, same room, two dreams that mean nearly opposite things.

The Bottom Line

A dream dictionary can hand you a list of meanings, and only your life can tell you which one is yours. To find out what your dream symbols mean for you, tell the whole dream to the DreamDancer app on the web or download it on iPhone, and it will ask you the questions that matter.

Sources

• C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964). Against looking up symbols in a book; symbols belong to the dreamer.
• C. G. Jung, The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis, in The Practice of Psychotherapy, Collected Works vol. 16 (Princeton University Press). Associations first, then amplification.
• C. G. Jung, General Aspects of Dream Psychology, in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works vol. 8. Compensation.