Research case · People & kin
A mouth full of broken glass
England · before 1911
I then found that my mouth was full of fragments of broken colourless glass, which I carefully removed.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Case report
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- England · British
- Date
- before 1911
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Reported in Havelock Ellis’s study of dreams.
- Imagery
- Teeth · Faces · A stranger
- Feelings
- Horror · Confusion
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.
Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)
Mythological
Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
Confucius lamented that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou; in Chinese letters, dreaming of someone is a measure of how much they are on one’s mind.
Analects 7.5
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- A stranger asked to swap heads Langya, China · 4th century (Jin)
- The scene I had to write England · before 1911
- Cut in two down the middle United States · before 1911
- Irma’s injection Bellevue, near Vienna · 23–24 July 1895
- The scene at the window Bournemouth, England · 1885
- The shoe I lost in the dream Chang’an, China · c. 870