Dream Galaxy

Research case · Water

A crab hidden in the ford

Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1916

I am on the point of crossing a broad and rapid stream. There is no bridge, but I find a ford where I can cross. As I am just on the point of doing so, a big crab that lay hidden in the water seizes my foot and does not let it go.

Original text — Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (ed. Constance E. Long), C. G. Jung

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Source
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (ed. Constance E. Long) — C. G. Jung, 1916 (English ed.). Ch. XV, The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
Zurich, Switzerland · Swiss
Date
c. 1916
Uncertainty
Moderate — Case reported by C. G. Jung (Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, 1916 English ed.). Public domain in the US; in life+70 countries Jung’s works remain protected until the end of 2031.
Imagery
River · Water · Animals
Feelings
Fear

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images