What Does Dreaming of the Dead Reveal About Our True Psychology?
What is the true psychology behind dreaming of the dead?
Dreaming of someone you know dying carries a certain meaning; it indicates that this person (or someone they symbolize) is losing vitality and becoming lifeless. Dreaming of your own death reflects a fear of becoming stagnant or lifeless. Such dreams about death may sometimes depict people turning into stone statues. A 25-year-old woman dreamed that she had prepared dinner. She invited people to join her, but no one responded. Only her own voice echoed back, like the sound in a deep cave. She felt a chill, sensing that the entire house was empty. She rushed upstairs and saw her two younger sisters sitting stiffly on their beds, completely ignoring her anxious calls. She approached to wake them, only to suddenly realize they were two stone statues. Terrified, she fled into her mother's bedroom, but her mother had also turned to stone... In despair, she had no choice but to run to her father's room... but her father was also a statue.
Furthermore, when a person feels "alive yet dead," perceives themselves as a "walking corpse," feels that their heart has died, or senses that they are no longer growing, they may dream of their own death.
The symbolic meanings of death and sleep are remarkably similar. When someone dies, we say "rest in peace" or that they "lie in eternal sleep," indicating that death is akin to sleep. The only difference between death and sleep is that the dead do not awaken, while those who sleep do. In fact, in the realm of the spirit, death does not necessarily mean one cannot be revived. The common theme of "resurrection" in various mythologies signifies that the spirit can be revived after death, that it can regain vitality after losing it. "I dreamed that my wife had died, lying in a coffin wrapped in white cloth. I held her hand and cried, and suddenly her hand grew warm, and she gradually came back to life."
This dream has a simple meaning: the dreamer realizes that his wife has lost her vitality. He feels sad, and this emotion awakens the dormant—or dead—love within her, restoring her vitality.
It also symbolizes forgetting, eliminating, and overcoming. A woman who experienced a breakup often dreamed of her ex-boyfriend, and one day she dreamed that he had died. At that time, nothing had happened to make her worry about him. She hadn't heard from him in years. In this context, death signifies forgetting; the girl believes she has moved on. The day before the dream, she met a wonderful man, perhaps the dream signifies that new feelings are replacing old ones.
After undergoing a period of psychological counseling, a person dreamed that they had killed someone. When they bent down to look at the corpse, they discovered it was themselves, but in a very ugly form. I should celebrate this because through counseling, they "killed their past self," eliminating the ugly, pathological "self" within. "I dreamed that I was killed, a dagger piercing my chest. I was extremely angry, but the murderer said it was just a surgery. I fell to the ground, and the murderer began to dissect me. At that moment, I stood aside watching my corpse and suddenly realized that the one who died was not me."
Through psychological treatment, this dream indicates that she perceives the therapist as the murderer because he "killed" her, causing her pain. However, she later realizes that the one who was killed was just her past self, and after a profound transformation, she is living a better life. Therefore, dreaming of death is not necessarily a bad thing. If the deceased is a good person or thing, it is unfortunate. If the deceased is something ugly or outdated, it is undoubtedly a good thing.
In dreams, ugly figures represent bad things, evil, hatred, foolishness, and various vices. Beautiful figures represent good things. Freud pointed out that dreaming of the death of friends or relatives, accompanied by deep sorrow, often reflects a childhood wish for those individuals to die. He noted that children may wish for the death of those they dislike, and when they resent siblings who share their parents' love, they may also wish for their death. In the hearts of children, or in the subconscious of adults, wishing for someone else's death is not considered a grave sin; it is merely "ensuring they can never return." When someone harbors resentment towards another, they may dream of that person's death. If that person is a relative, the dreamer may excessively express sorrow in the dream.