Dream Symbols

Death and loss in dreams

Death is the dream symbol people most fear and most misread. In the Jungian view it is almost never a prediction; it is the psyche's image for an ending that is already underway, a role, a relationship, a way of being that has run its course and must be let go of so that something else can begin. Dreams of one's own death are often the strangest and the least frightening for exactly this reason.

Dreams of the dead are a different matter, and among the most meaningful people ever have. A parent or grandparent who returns, speaks, embraces or simply sits at the table is, on one level, the continuing inner presence of that person; on another, the dream may be doing the work of grief that waking life has not found time for. These dreams are worth treating gently and recording carefully, because they tend to change over months and years as the loss is absorbed.

Violent endings, murder, being shot, being buried alive, bring the theme into the shadow: a part of the self being silenced, or a feeling of being overwhelmed by something with no room left to move. Losing a child speaks for the most vulnerable new thing in the dreamer's life, and the fear of failing it.