All kinds of strange things show up in dreams: aliens, ninjas, gorgeous men on white horses. Though we all interpret these dream elements differently, and though Freud himself wrote that the manifest content of dreams (what we see) corresponds to their latent content (what we feel) in ways that only the dreamer herself can understand (with help from her psychoanalyst, of course), there are some symbolic connections that many dreamers share. Animals, for example, occur commonly in dreams and usually represent situations and emotions present in waking life.
Nocturnal Creatures
Tony Crisp, a dream-interpretation and inner-life guru and author of the online Dream Dictionary at DreamHawk.com, writes that animals in dreams give insight into “the instinctive, spontaneous, and natural in you.”
If the animal in a dream is struggling to survive, Crisp urges dreamers to assess how well they are “surviving” in their own lives. He writes that our everyday environments force all of us to confront threats and challenges to our well-being; “every cell” in us strives to survive and achieve balance amid technological stressors, a too-hasty pace of life, and self-destructive personal habits. Understanding what upsets our own balance, Crisp believes, will help us to regain it and succeed in the modern world.
Another question Crisp encourages dreamers to ask themselves is, “Is the animal domesticated or wild?” Tame animals represent internal urges that we socialize or sublimate, whereas feral beasts denote urges that conflict with our conscious actions and what society expects from us. Crisp believes it’s important to recognize which particular desires our dream animals embody and to question whether our untamed impulses are healthy or not.
Dream Symbols Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Though Crisp and many other dream experts don’t see specific types of animals as significant to dream interpretation, others view the creatures that appear in our nocturnal imaginings as universally representative of feelings and situations in waking life. DreamMoods.com lists all of these symbolic animals alphabetically, the most common (according to Crisp) being dogs, cats, snakes, and horses.
