Animal(s) Dream Interpretation: Insights from 9 Unique Sources

(See entries for particular animals; e.g. Bear, Cat)

(1) Parents may appear in dreams in the guise of animals. The animal will then usually be a focus for the dreamer’s ambivalent - love-hate - feelings towards the parent. For example, a spider or a cat may signify the threatening aspect of a mother from whose influence you need to liberate yourself.

Two of Freud’s most famous patients had animal phobias, as did a patient of Sandor Ferenczi (a member of Freud’s inner circle). One dreamed of white wolves in the branches of a walnut tree outside his bedroom window and the other had strong ambivalent feelings (fear and attraction) towards horses; the third was obsessed with poultry. Freud concluded that in all three cases the animals were father surrogates: in each case the person’s feelings for his father had been displaced on to animals.

(2) Animals may represent other people, besides parents. What you associate with the particular animal - slyness or aggressiveness or whatever — may be a characteristic of the particular person; the way you react to the animal in the dream may express your (perhaps unconscious) feelings towards the person.

(3) Animals in dreams may be symbolic of some primitive - ‘animal’, or even ‘beasdy5 - part of your psyche: some instinctive urge, for example. Thus, if in the dream your emotional response to the animal is one of fear, this would seem to indicate a fear of the instinctive urge (which, because of the fear, has been repressed).

If the animal has a threatening appearance, it may be a symbol of the danger that threatens the peace of the psyche when some part of it is neglected and confined to the ‘cellar’ - the depths of the unconscious - and not allowed proper expression at the conscious level. This situation may also be symbolized by the figure of a caged or wounded animal: we sometimes control our instincts too tightly or even maltreat them, and, just as animals are never more fierce or dangerous than when wounded, so it is with our Svounded’ instincts.

A view well worth considering is that we cannot - without detriment to ourselves - dispense with our animal nature, any more than with our ‘higher’ or ‘spiritual’ nature. The way to achieve peace and happiness is to allow both these sides of our nature to develop and find fulfilment in and through each other, in a symbiosis in which body and spirit, instead of going their separate ways, cooperate with mutual respect, each supplying means for the other’s fulfilment.

(4) A threatening or ferocious animal may represent aggression or anger buried in the unconscious.

If you think this may be so in your case (perhaps because you are prone to irrational, disproportionate outbursts of rage), look for the origins of the aggression. It may go back to early childhood: a child’s desire for a parent and its consequent jealousy and resentment towards the other parent may result in feelings of guilt, which in turn give rise to a desire to punish oneself. This aggressiveness directed against oneself (i.e. masochism) may then spill over into aggressiveness or rancour towards other people (i.e. sadism), especially loved ones or people closely related. Typically, an unresolved Oedipus complex (the ambivalent, love-hate feelings of an infant towards a parent) may display itself in later life in a similar ambivalence towards a spouse - an inability to love someone without simultaneously wanting to punish him or her.

Contradictory feelings towards others are a sign of inner conflict, usually a conflict between desire and conscience. And what we call conscience may be a morbid censoring and prohibiting mechanism set in motion by a childhood fear of punishment. This needs to be distinguished from a healthy conscience, which consists of all those moral guidelines we give ourselves by rational reflection. Some compromise between desires and the need to survive and succeed socially is almost inevitable; but a reasonably negotiated compromise is far preferable to the potentially dangerous inner tension that results from submitting to irrational phobias posing as the moral law.

(5) A tamed animal, or the act of taming an animal, may symbolize (the need for) that kind of controlled expression of instinct that is appropriate for living as a part of civilized society or for feeling that you are ‘king of the castle’ - that is, in control of your own actions.

(6) The wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood story exemplifies another piece of animal symbolism. The wolf here represents for a sexually inexperienced woman the terrifying aspect of the male, the fear of sexual contact. In its earliest versions the story possibly served as a warning to young girls against socially premature sexual relations with men. Animals in dreams may certainly have a sexual meaning and the wolf is an obvious example of this, if only because the word Volf is itself commonly applied to men whose sexual lust is unbounded and purely ‘animal’.

See Frog, Wolf.

(7) If in your dream you arc being chased by an animal, the animal probably represents some (repressed) emotion or instinct. As long as you keep such things buried in your unconscious thev will continue to

plague and disturb you. Face up to whatever it is, and enter into receptive and patient dialogue with it.

(8) The killing of an animal may symbolize cither what has been described in (5) above (but now given exaggerated, dramatic expression) or the actual destruction of some essential, because natural, part of your psyche. The second alternative would indicate some fear of your own instinctive nature, some phobic undervaluing of the body, the senses, or sex. You would have to be very honest to work out which of these alternatives - an irrational slaughter (repression) of the natural self (a symbolic castration), or a rational taming of an instinct diat is threatening the balance of the psyche - is applicable in your own case.

Depends on your feelings for the particular animal (for typical meaning see the specific type).

A helpful animal normally represents the instinctive self. Look at your feelings and beliefs about this animal.

An animal relates to your own natural and inborn instincts. Good omens of a base nature as long as they are not being violent.

If misbehaving, it is an indication of a party where people are lacking good manners and are demonstrating poor judgment. This is all a reflection of the patterns that need to be repatterened within you. Your belief system is drawing you to these situations and people. Animals represent your primitive, physical and sexual mannerisms and expressions.

A heard: prosperity. Animal instincts (or human nature), sex, aggression. Animals may also be healing agents (e.g.An alligator to a timid person) or entities. Black Dog Animals represent the dreamer’s animal instincts (or human nature), sex, aggression, paternal or maternal instincts, social status, etc.

The choice of animal, its color and location indicate how the instinct is regarded.

For example, a black dog in the bedroom means the dreamer’s attitude to sex is dominated by fear. Animals may also be healing agents (e.g.An alligator to a timid person) or entities **Animals: “Carl Jung said that all wild animals indicate latent effects (feelings and emotions that we do not readily deal with). They are also symbolic of dangers (hurtful and negative things) being “swallowed” by the unconscious.

The interpretation of the animal in your dream depends on your relationship with it in daily life. Animals represent the qualities in our character or specific aspects of our personalities. They could symbolize our more intuitive and instinctive parts, or they could serve as messengers for the unconscious. Please look up each animal individually by name. 

The animal, compulsive nature of human beings. Instincts, according to Freud and most other dream interpreters, removed from awareness (animus); or awareness removed from instinct (anima) in human beings.

The image of the suppressed or of the shadow, suggesting a chance for integration.

The type of animal in the dream is important. Jung suggested that we find out more about the innate character of the animal we have dreamed about. According to Freud, small animals always symbolize children and siblings, while wild animals are a symbol for sexually excited or exciting people, evil urges, or passions.

The animal sound will reflect the symbolism of the animal with which it is associated. For example, the crow of a cock is an awakening, alerting us to new challenges; the bark of a dog suggests a loyal companion, the hiss of snake, sexuality and so on. Bear in mind that animals are thought to express the more primitive side of your nature and the raw urges related to sex and aggression— things that polite society often tries to curb.

See ANIMALS; BIRDS.

1. If killing, the desire to eliminate a certain aspect of one’s personality as symbolized by the particular animal (e.G., One might kill a lion to eliminate aggressiveness).

2. Aspects of one’s own or another’s personality as reflected in the characteris­tics of a certain animal.

3. Religious or spiritual representations.

Enjoying sex with an animal, such as being caressed by a bear, is the way that your dreams describe your basic sexual urges at their most basic and uncomplicated level. It doesn’t mean you are weird. In such dreams, you are simply dispensing with social conventions and experiencing lust.

Instinctive part of self attuned to nature and survival, associated with second and third chakras. Also, the characteristics a specific animal represents to you, such as speed, cunning, power or wisdom.

See individual animals.

Domestic animals: Comfort, familiarity, security, gentleness. Astrological parallel: Virgo

Wild animals: The lower nature, the unknown, fear, danger. Astrological parallel: Aries

Dreams of an animal symbolize that you are connecting with your wild side, basic instincts and survival needs. Consider the type of animal.

See Zoo.