AGE/AGING You may have a dream in which you or someone close to you appears to age rapidly, sometimes becoming an elderly person or even a skeleton. Such dreams can be frightening, reflecting your anxieties and fears about aging, but some people find such dreams comforting as they can indicate that the aging process is not necessarily a negative experience.

See also ARCHETYPES.

ANGER In a dream scenario, anger may express the tension between your conscious and unconscious urges. The aggressor in the dream will often represent the part of you that is demanding to be acknowledged. Freud spoke of an aggressive drive which he believed revealed itself in all walks of life and in all types of people. He believed that the aggressive drive was just as much present in sex as in war. Alfred Adler, an early disciple of Freud, believed that anger was the most fundamental force of the psyche and, if repressed, it could express itself in dream images of anger and aggression. Whatever may be the trigger, anger is one of the most common emotions to express itself in dreams, either by physical violence or by using symbols of anger such as weapons. Such dreams are likely to continue until the trigger for your anger is discovered and dealt with.

If a person has recurring dreams in which they are assaulting, raping, or attacking someone, this suggests deep-rooted sexual problems that they might want to talk over with a doctor. A single dream in which aggression, sexual or otherwise, occurs is not so worrying and is actually quite common. Such a dream will be expressing negative feelings of anger, hostility, rejection, embarrassment, or envy that have probably been repressed in waking life. Dreams of assassination or murder have the same interpretation. Dreams in which you are evicting someone from their home or your home suggests that there is something in your life you are angry about and of which you desire to be rid. This may be some characteristic within yourself or another person. Dreams that focus on ambushing may have the same theme, but in this case there may be something about the person or thing being ambushed that you want to possess yourself.

Libel dreams in which you are attacking someone verbally may suggest that you are spreading vicious rumors or someone is spreading them about you. Any dream in which you have a feud, dispute, or attack suggests either a disagreement with someone in your waking life or inner conflict with an aspect of your character. Dreams in which you are rebelling against someone or something have the same interpretation. Pay attention to the atmosphere of your dream as it may reveal much about your emotional state at present. The dream may also be describing your feelings of being threatened.

ANIMA/ANIMUS A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people, that gender role is determined by their physical sex. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives in the womb, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually become male or female, under the influence of hormones. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense until society molds us into men or women.

In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, but in our society today we have many remnants of traditional expectations. Women are still expected to be homemakers and nurturers; men are still expected to be strong breadwinners. But Jung felt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential.

The anima is the unconscious female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the unconscious male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. The function of the anima/animus is to help the dreamer establish a good working relationship with their male/female counterpart. This is an important step in the development of the personality.

The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that some researchers believe guides our choice of partner. We are, as suggested by an ancient Greek myth popularized by Plato in the Symposium, always looking for our other half – the half that the gods took from us – in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that ‘fills’ our anima or animus archetype particularly well!

If someone of the opposite sex played a leading role in your dreams or aroused feelings of deep yearning, attraction, and fascination, then your dreaming self has witnessed the appearance of the anima/animus, the opposite of your conscious personality. This is why if you are an indecisive, shy man your anima may take the form of a party-loving woman who is resolute – or if you are a cautious, rational woman, your animus may take the form of a spontaneous, passionate man. The anima/animus may be either positive or negative, and both can be symbolized by people you know or don’t know in waking life, as well as mythical, symbolic, and legendary characters, or by objects that somehow represent the masculine or feminine to you. Typically, the anima is personified as a single-figure image – for example a young girl, a witch, or an earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be a plurality of figures, for example a band of robbers or a council passing judgment, although it is also often personified as a wise old man. It is likely to be presented as logical, rational, and judgmental.

By introducing the anima/animus, your unconscious is urging you to seek balance and compensate for those attitudes or behaviors that dominate your thinking and being in waking life. Heeding the promptings of your anima/animus can help you become a more content and rounded personality, and perhaps strengthen your relationships with the opposite sex.

ANIMALS Animals in dreams represent primitive drives and desires, such as fear, lust, and anger that can only really be understood on an instinctual level. Thus, to dream of a certain animal could suggest an aspect of your personality that is instinctual, hidden, or striving for recognition. It could also represent a part of yourself you find hard to control. And because we often assign characteristics or personality traits to animals, dream animals may also symbolize gut feelings we have about others. An attacking lion, for example, may depict how we see someone who is being aggressive toward us.

Animal dreams rouse special interest because they contain images that are familiar to us, but at the same time we recognize something that is unfamiliar and obscure. Traditionally, the characteristics of the dream animal are applied to the world of humans, often seeing the animal as a harbinger of misfortune or good luck; for example, a wolf is often thought to predict thieves or misfortune. According to Freud animals in dreams are not predictive of future events but a classic expression of repressed or unexpressed sexual and aggressive tendencies. Jung, however, argued that animals in dreams should be analysed individually, depending on the character they portray in the dream and the association the dreamer has to them.

Jung believed that animals are sublime and, in fact, represent the ‘divine’ side of the human psyche. He suggested that animals live much more in contact with a ‘secret’ order in nature itself and – far more than human beings – live in close contact with the ‘absolute knowledge’ of the unconscious. In contrast to humankind, the animal is the living being that follows its own inner laws beyond good and evil – and is, in this sense, superior and a source of inspiration and guidance.

Although animals are one of the most common dream symbols, dreams that feature them can be complex and hard to interpret. Perhaps the simplest way is to first think about how you feel about the specific animal in your waking life. You may, for example, adore cats and think of them as lovely creatures because you have a much-loved pet cat, or you may associate cats with feeling unwell because you are allergic to them. Thinking about how that animal makes you feel within the context of your dream should help you recognize if that feeling is struggling to the fore, or is already expressing itself in daily life.

If, on the other hand, you have no feelings in particular about the animal in your dream, you need to think about the quality you typically associate with it: for example, a fox with cunning and stealth, an elephant with strength and mystery, or a dog with unconditional loyalty and love. Because animals are thought to represent unedited feelings and drives, it’s possible that your unconscious used the symbol of the fox in your dream to alert you to your own or someone else’s cunning. Thinking about that aspect of yourself – again within the context of your dream – should tell you whether you need to nurture and develop it, tame it, or be on your guard against it in someone else.

If you still feel puzzled, it may be that the hidden meaning lies in archetypal, traditional, legendary, mythical, or magical associations. Dream animals may also embody a pun. For example, if you dream of a badger, are you feeling badgered or aggravated in some way? If you dream of a zebra, could this refer to your black-and-white viewpoint?

Dream animals, no matter how problematic, offer us an opportunity to contact and explore both the parts of ourselves that we have shut away and the parts that we have yet to discover. In general, researchers believe that animal dreams mean that the subconscious has woken up and has come to life.

Our dreams will be selective and personal in the choice of animal used to portray our life situation, but as you interpret never forget that animal symbols in dreams typically represent a fundamental push toward life and living it with passion.