Overall, animal figures appeared in 29 percent of the combined girls’ dreams and 29.6 percent of the combined boys’ dreams. The percentage steadily dropped for each subsequent age grouping (six- and seven-year-olds, 35.5 percent eight- and nine-year-olds, 33.6 percent ten- and eleven-year-olds, 29.8 percent twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, 21.9 percent and fourteen- through sixteen-year-olds, 13.7 percent).īoys had higher animal percentage figures at ages four through six (44 percent, versus 34 per- cent for girls), while girls had higher animal dreams at ages nine through eleven (36 percent, versus 26 percent for boys). Animal figures were present in 39.4 percent of dreams from the four- and five-year-old children. The frequency for each animal figure at each age level was tabulated for girls and boys. Dreams of a group of 741 children (383 girls and 358 boys) aged four to six- teen were examined for the presence of animal figures. Van de Castle found a larger number of animal dreams in children than in adults. In ancient Egypt, human-figured deities with animal heads suggest dreams images.Ī study carried out by Robert L. It has been speculated that some of the ancient cave paintings of animals may perhaps be dream images from cave dwellers whose lives were mostly spent chasing, hunting, and taming animals. Humans have been dreaming about animals for ages. If, on the contrary, your loneliness is enclosed by four walls (perhaps with a window looking out on to anonymous people in the street), the dream is probably forcing you to take stock of your unhappy situation and to look for causes and cures. For instance, if you are alone in a landscape of mountains and valleys and far horizons, your aloneness is probably a positive factor that you need to cultivate in order to find (new) direction in your life. Perhaps the physical setting of the dream will give the crucial clue. (2) If the aloneness feels good, the meaning is probably either that you need to ‘go it alone’ or that you need to be alone (from time to time, at least) in order to achieve greater personal equilibrium.
(1) If your aloneness in the dream is painful, your dream is probably expressing your fear of being alone, or resentment at being shut out from warm human relationships or being out on a limb at work. If you are trying to attract your parents’ attention but they cannot hear you, such a dream may be saying that you feel neglected emotionally and you need to express your feelings and be understood by others. On another level it may be pointing to your need to find guidance or help from others many people have dreams of childhood abandonment after the death of a loved one. This may not actually have been the case, but you may feel that way.Īlternatively, such a dream might also suggest that you are searching in waking life for the emotional freedom to be yourself and to be independent. To be abandoned by a parent or carer in a dream-or to be separated from them so you feel lost and vulnerable-may represent a sense of not being wanted when you were young. You may have a dream in which you are a child again and are being left at school, in a shop, in the street or park by your mother and running after her, perhaps not being able to reach her or not being heard. We often feel abandoned while we are trying to become more independent.īeing abandoned in the sense of allowing sexual and emotional liberty: finding a new freedom, dropping usual social codes and unashamedly expressing ourselves.Īlso: it can be an example of one of the functions of dreams, which is to release held back sexuality and emotion. Lorraine’s dream illustrates not only her feelings of being left out of family life, but also the chain on her leg shows her not fully independent. I wave and call and they drive right past me, going over the chain I am wearing on my leg’ (Lorraine). I look down the road and see my mum, dad and my four brothers in the back of a car. It may not be true that we are not wanted, but our feelings are saying it is.Įxample: My mother asked me to go and buy some butter for her.Ī chain on my left leg prevented me from going very far.
This feeling of not being wanted may have become habitual.
A sense of how others, particularly our parents, felt about us while we were a child.