Dream Symbols

Falling, flying and losing control in dreams

Falling and flying are two answers to the same question: what is the dreamer's relationship to the ground? The falling dream arrives when support has been withdrawn, a job, a certainty, a relationship that held the weight, and the psyche registers it as the body dropping through air. The flying dream arrives when the dreamer has risen above something, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in a way Jung would have called inflation: too high, too far from the earth of ordinary life.

Between those poles sit the dreams of control failing. Brakes that do not respond, an elevator that plunges or will not stop, the body paralyzed while something approaches, water closing overhead. Each one takes a situation the dreamer is supposed to be steering and removes the steering. They tend to appear when waking life is being driven by something other than the dreamer's own will: a schedule, an obligation, a feeling that has taken the wheel.

These dreams ask where the dreamer's agency has gone, and to whom or what it was handed. The answer is usually nearer than the dream's terror suggests.