There are countless popular myths about why we dream of the dead and what it might mean, from the psychological (it is a subconscious processing of grief) to the mystical (it is our deceased loved one communicating a message); but the actual why and what of dreaming about the deceased is multilayered and nuanced, with no single explanation. Nonetheless, there is evidence that deceased loved ones have been common in the dreams of humans likely for as long as humans have been around—after all, in Greek mythology, the God of Sleep, Hypnos, and the God of Death, Thanatos, are twins. Additionally, in many religions, dreams of the dead are seen as a spiritual message or as a sign of comfort. But what does psychology have to say about the matter? The answer is complicated.
Common Themes
It is important first to understand that these types of dreams tend to fit a thematic pattern. A 2013 study in The American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine noted that common themes include “pleasant past memories or experiences, the deceased free of illness, memories of the deceased’s illness or time of death, the deceased in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace, and the deceased communicating a message.” If you have had a dream in which your loved one is alive and healthy, or in which they are trying to share a message, you are certainly not alone, as these themes have been widely reported among the individuals studied. I have a recurring dream of my mother (who passed away from cancer almost a decade ago) in which she is still alive, but I am the only one who seems to know. I can communicate with her, but no one else can. None of my psychological or therapeutic background equips me to completely understand what this dream signifies; rather, I just know that it is a dream that seems to want to repeat itself, and one that, I believe, allows me to continue to cope with my complicated feelings about her illness and death.
Jungian and Freudian Interpretations
Psychotherapist Carl Jung would likely agree to some extent with my anecdotal interpretation: Jung believed that dreams formed a direct line to the unconscious and provided insight into our psyche. So, for me, this dream might signify that I miss my mom, that I’m still trying to fully make sense of her being gone, and that her death is still something that is relevant to me. All of these are true.
Jung further posits: “Just as the body reacts purposively to injuries or infections or any abnormal conditions, so the psychic functions react to unnatural or dangerous disturbances with purposive defense mechanisms. Among these purposive reactions, we must include the dream, since it furnishes the unconscious material constellated in a given conscious situation and supplies it to consciousness in a symbolical form.”
Simplified: the operative word here is “purposive.” Jung believed that dreams serve a purpose and are not simply meaningless, fragmented images haphazardly thrown together by the subconscious. Further, Jung’s concept implies that dreams are, in fact, adaptive defense mechanisms for coping with “injuries” to the psyche. And there is, perhaps, no greater emotional injury than loss.
Sigmund Freud, author of The Interpretation of Dreams, had a slightly different way of looking at dream meanings.
“It is not uncommon that out of some long, complicated and intricate dream one specially lucid part stands out containing unmistakably the realization of a desire, but bound up with much more unintelligible matter,” he wrote.
So, while the dream was less of a “direct line” to Freud than it was to Jung, the conclusion we might draw is similar: dreams are purposive and functional.
Freud adds that dreams are “concealed realizations of repressed desires. It is interesting to note that they are right who regard the dream as foretelling the future. Although the future that the dream shows us is not that which will occur, but that which we would like to occur.”
So, the recurring dream of my mother, of course, does not predict that she is actually, somehow alive but, rather, that I wish her to be. This repressed desire (repressed because it needs to be so that I can live my life without pathological disruption) comes to the surface when my dream takes on the form of a different reality in which my mother is alive. It is fair to say that both Jung’s and Freud’s thoughts on the meaning of dreams make sense. But what do they mean for the dreamer? What do they have to do with the emotional process of loss and death?
What the Dreamers Say
Studies on the dreamers of these types of dreams provide interesting answers to this question: the results of the study referenced earlier conclude that “specific effects of the dreams on bereavement processes included increased acceptance of the loved one’s death, comfort, spirituality, sadness, and quality of life, among others. These results support the theory that dreams of the deceased are highly prevalent among and often deeply meaningful for the bereaved.”
If, indeed, what we gain from our dreams of the deceased are comfort, acceptance, and meaning, then we cannot argue with the idea that these types of dreams serve an important purpose.
While psychology attempts to make sense of the psyche and its conscious and subconscious functions, we must accept that we simply cannot make sense of everything within the realm of human emotional experience. And, while we will likely never be fully able to scientifically understand dreams, we can take comfort in knowing that just as our bodies are able to recover from physical injury, so too our subconscious is able to recover from psychological injury—and dreams may be an important tool in that recovery process and in healing from loss.
