Diary & poem of record · Cities & buildings
Leading a child along the cliff
Sea cliff, location unstated · 3 November 1877
Having fallen asleep last night while in a state of great perplexity about the care and education of my daughter, I dreamt as follows. I was walking with the child along the border of a high cliff, at the foot of which was the sea. The path was exceedingly narrow, and on the inner side was flanked by a line of rocks and stones. The outer side was so close to the edge of the cliff that she was compelled to walk either before or behind me, or else on the stones. And, as it was unsafe to let go her hand, it was on the stones that she had to walk, much to her distress.
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- Source
- Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition; dreams recorded c. 1876–1887. Part I, X. The Difficult Path
- Record type
- Diary & poem of record
- Place
- Sea cliff, location unstated · British
- Date
- 3 November 1877
- Uncertainty
- Low — Dated first-person diary dream; Kingsford explicitly connects the waking concern to the dream.
- Imagery
- Heights · Sea · Road · Child
- Feelings
- Unease · Tenderness
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Falling
Where were you standing before the fall? Were you reaching for something to hold, or letting go?
Jung · Descent
In his memoir Jung describes deliberately “letting himself drop” into an inner depth in 1913, and treated descent as a way of meeting what lies below everyday awareness — frightening, but not only a disaster.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis explained falling dreams through bodily sensations at the edge of sleep. Sleep researchers today describe the related “hypnic jerk”, a sudden start while falling asleep.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VI
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The same passage of the Lingshu pairs flying with falling: when the lower body is in excess, “one dreams of falling”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.
Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”
Water
Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?
Jung · The unconscious
Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.
C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.
Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”
Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture
Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.
Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I
Road
Were you heading towards somewhere or leaving somewhere? Did you choose this road?
Jung · Individuation as a way
Jung often spoke of individuation as a path one has to walk oneself; no one else’s map fits exactly.
C. G. Jung, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”, Collected Works 9i
Upanishads Classical text
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that in dream “there are no chariots, no harnesses, no roads — but he creates chariots, harnesses and roads”: the dreamer builds the way as they go.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.3.10
Tang tale Literature
In “The World Inside a Pillow”, a young man on the road to Handan lives a whole career in a dream while millet cooks — the source of the idiom “yellow millet dream”.
Shen Jiji, “The World Inside a Pillow” (c. 780)
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- What pain it was to drown London, England · c. 1593 (play)
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)
- Two women yoked to my son’s chariot Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)
- The horse on the cliff path Sea cliff, location unstated · 15 September 1884
- My father sinking into a lake of mire Ayodhya (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- Stairs that end in the abyss Rome, Italy · c. 1750 (visions), retold 1821