Research case · Water
Swimming out with the teacher to a wedding
Switzerland · c. 1910
M. dreamed that she and Lina P. had gone swimming with our teacher. After they had swum out in the lake pretty far, M. said she could not swim any further as her foot hurt her so much.
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- Source
- Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (ed. Constance E. Long) — C. G. Jung, 1916 (English ed.). Ch. III, A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- Switzerland · Swiss
- Date
- c. 1910
- 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
- Lake · Water · Friend · Boat · Crowd
- Feelings
- Helplessness · Wonder
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
- At West Lake, knowing it was a dream Huangzhou (Huanggang), China · c. 1080–1084
- What pain it was to drown London, England · c. 1593 (play)
- A living globe made of drops Russia · 1869 (novel)
- I dreamed of you three times last night Jiangzhou (Jiujiang), China · c. 815
- I dream only of strangers, not of you Tongzhou (Dazhou), China · c. 815
- My friend fell into the river over a gambling debt Zhejiang River, China · 3rd–4th century