Memoir · People & kin
Where she was, there was I also
Thagaste, North Africa · c. 373
For she saw herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a shining youth coming towards her, cheerful and smiling upon her, herself grieving, and overwhelmed with grief.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The Confessions of St. Augustine (trans. E. B. Pusey) — Augustine of Hippo; trans. E. B. Pusey, c. 400 / 1838 (translation). Confessions III.11
- Record type
- Memoir
- Place
- Thagaste, North Africa · Roman, Christian
- Date
- c. 373
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Augustine’s mother Monica’s dream about her son, told in his Confessions (Pusey translation).
- Imagery
- Mother · Child · A stranger · Light
- Feelings
- Grief · Relief · Tenderness
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
- Father, don’t you see that I am burning? Central Europe · before 1900
- Why is the babe weeping? Russia · 1880 (novel)
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- The moon, then the sun, entered my bosom Wu (Zhejiang), China · c. 175–182
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)
- The white horse at dawn Tokyo, Japan · 1908