Dream Symbols

Being chased and other fear dreams

Being chased is the most common nightmare in the world, and Jung's reading of it is simple and hard: what pursues us in a dream is usually a part of ourselves we are running from. The pursuer takes the form of whatever the dreamer finds most unacceptable, a stranger, an animal, a faceless shape, and it keeps coming because avoidance is exactly what gives it power.

The intruder in the house, the sense of being watched, the figure with a gun and the open war all belong to the same family. Each stages a breach: something from outside the ordered self is getting in, or is already inside. The house is the psyche, the intruder is the shadow, and the feeling of helplessness is the ego discovering that its walls are not as solid as it believed.

The classic advice in these dreams, to stop and turn around, is not bravado. Dreamers who manage to face the pursuer almost always report that it changes, shrinks, or turns out to want something quite different from harm. The scream that will not come out, and the running that gets nowhere, describe the moment just before that turn.