Research case · Animals
The first animal he dreams of
Upper Missouri · c. 1832
During this period of peril and abstinence, when he falls asleep, the first animal, bird, or reptile, of which he dreams (or pretends to have dreamed, perhaps), he considers the Great Spirit has designated for his mysterious protector through life.
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- Source
- Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 — George Catlin, 1841. Letter No. 6
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- Upper Missouri · Native American, Plains peoples
- Date
- c. 1832
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — George Catlin, a white painter-traveller, describing the vision fast among Plains peoples (1841); his asides reflect an outsider’s scepticism.
- Imagery
- Animals · Bird · Child
- Feelings
- Awe · Longing
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Animals
What was the animal like — wild or tame, chasing you or keeping you company? Have you known an animal like it?
Jung · Instinct
In the Jungian book Man and His Symbols, animals in dreams are often read as instinct given a body — a part of us that is older than words.
Aniela Jaffé, “Symbolism in the Visual Arts”, in Man and His Symbols (1964)
Book of Songs Classical text
A Zhou-dynasty song records a dream reading: bears foretell sons, snakes foretell daughters. It shows how early animal dreams were read as signs about family.
Book of Songs, “Si Gan”
Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture
Pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows eaten by seven lean ones; Joseph reads them as years of plenty and famine — and says interpretation “belongs to God”, not to him.
Genesis 41; 40:8
Bird
What was the bird doing — flying off, landing near you, singing? Did it seem to bring something?
Ancient Greece Classical text
Penelope dreams that an eagle kills her twenty geese, then speaks: it is Odysseus, come home to the suitors. The dream explains itself inside the dream.
Homer, Odyssey XIX
Japanese custom Folk saying
The hawk is the second of the three lucky images of the New Year’s first dream (“first Fuji, second a hawk…”).
Edo-period saying on hatsuyume
Child
Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?
Jung · The child archetype
Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.
C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i
Psychoanalysis Depth psychology
Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III
East Asian custom Folk saying
In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.
East Asian folk custom
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)
- The animals fell out of Noah’s ark Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- Pigs on the edge of a cliff Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- A long green dog from the south Liangzhou (Wuwei), China · 376 (as told)
- I gave birth to a lion Athens, Greece · c. 495 BCE
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)