DREAM GALAXY

Research case · People & kin

When the dead return in dreams, the wailing begins again

Lower Columbia River, Pacific Northwest · traditional (recorded c. 1880)

“Ah chief!” “My child dead, alas!” When in dreams they see any of their deceased friends this lamentation is renewed.

Original text — First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1879–80, J. W. Powell (dir.), H. C. Yarrow et al.

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1879–80 — J. W. Powell (dir.), H. C. Yarrow et al., 1881. Yarrow, Mortuary Customs: Chinook (after George Gibbs)
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
Lower Columbia River, Pacific Northwest · Native American, Chinook
Date
traditional (recorded c. 1880)
Uncertainty
Moderate — From the First Annual Report of the US Bureau of Ethnology (1881); recorded by government ethnographers, with their own framing.
Imagery
Child · Friend · Grave
Feelings
Grief · 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.

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

All perspectives on child →

Friend

How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?

Dream research Dream research

The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.

G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)

Tang poetry Literature

Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.

Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)

All perspectives on friend →

The dead

Who was it, and did they seem to know they had died? Was there something you were able to say, or not able to?

Jung · Objective level first

Jung’s memoir records his own dreams of his late father and treats them with seriousness rather than symbol-hunting: a dream of someone who has died is first about that person and that bond.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis devoted a chapter to dreams of the dead, noting how often the dead appear as if alive and how such dreams can bring comfort.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VIII

Homeric epic Classical text

Achilles dreams of the dead Patroclus, who asks to be buried; Achilles reaches out to embrace him and grasps nothing.

Homer, Iliad XXIII

All perspectives on the dead →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images