A dream about meeting with deceased relatives or friends
The death of a close person is always a traumatic experience and it often makes our normal existence impossible for a long time. Even if we get used to the consequences of passing away, it happens that in hard moments, our dead relatives and friends appear in our dream.
This dream may have a lot of versions. Usually, the deceased person comes to visit us and arouse various feelings – as from happiness, through sadness, to sense of loss. We may be talking about personal topics or general, we may listen to the monologue of the deceased person, or spend time in silence.
Such dreams usually appear when we are entering a new stage of our life, when we are going through changes which we can not accept or which are difficult for us – it can be the change of job, sending children to study, or – what seem unimportant – retirement.
How to interpret a dream about meeting with deceased relatives or friends?
Often, a dream about meeting with deceased relatives or friends appear when we have lost somebody and we want to bring him back to life and have beside us. It has a therapeutic meaning – it allows us to get used to passing away and crossing to the other world, to finish the mourning and to get our emotions in order.
It also happens that the dead relative or a friend appears symbolizes some neglected aspect of our personality, which has been suppressed by us for some time, and which returns now. It is the time for changes and transformations in our life – it depends only on us whether we will make the right decisions.
How would Freud interpret a dream about meeting with deceased relatives or friends?
For Freud, a dream about somebody’s death was the expression of our hidden wish to get rid of this person in real life, the wish which we are not always aware of. According to the psychiatrist, the sadness we feel in our dream is not sincere – it is the effect of the censorship of dreams, which drowns our sense of guilt caused by the disgraceful desire.
The modern researchers of Freud’s school believe that a dream about the death of a close person is the expression of enmity towards him/her – we give full rein to our emotions and that is why we feel better.
How would Jung interpret a dream about meeting with deceased relatives or friends?
In Jung’s opinion, dreams about death should never be interpreted literally. He – and his followers – believed that the death appearing in our dreams symbolizes deep changes in our life, or the way of thinking and behaving. The characteristic of the death in the dream metaphorically expresses how hard those changes are for us, and what emotions they are connected with.
I had a dream that either my nan or grandads grave was being tilted by a JCB and I was shouting. Then I see myself behind these ppl marching so I started marching up this winding road like it was leading to a storey car park