DREAM GALAXY

Research case · People & kin

The forty-euro pretzels

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

I was dreaming that my girlfriend and my friends had come to visit me for a weekend, as had recently happened in waking life. We decided to eat at a delicatessen that served giant pretzels filled with speck. My girlfriend and I each took one, but when we went to the register, the man working there told us that the two pretzels cost 40 euros. At that moment, I realized that I was in a dream and performed a reality check. When the check confirmed that I was actually dreaming, I woke up.

Original text — Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials, Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia

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Source
Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials — Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia, 2026. Supplementary Materials, Reports of Lucid Dreams, Report L1
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · Italian
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified lucid-dream report. The English text is the study authors’ translation from Italian; the calendar dream date is unknown. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified.
Imagery
Partner · Child · Friend · Food

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Partner

Was it your partner now, someone from the past, or someone you have never met? Was the distance between you the same as when you are awake?

Jung · Anima and animus — after the real person

Jung would first read a dreamed partner as your actual partner and relationship. Only then might the figure carry what he called the anima or animus — an inner image of the other — a framing that reflects his era’s ideas about gender.

C. G. Jung, “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, “Anima and Animus””, Collected Works 7

Homeric epic Classical text

After twenty years apart, Penelope tells how a likeness of Odysseus lay beside her that night, “such as he was when he went with the host”, and how she took it for real.

Homer, Odyssey XX

Han-dynasty poetry Literature

In one of the Nineteen Old Poems, a wife sleeping alone through the long nights dreams she sees her husband’s face, and he comes for her in a carriage — then is gone.

Nineteen Old Poems, “Cold, cold, the year draws to its end”

All perspectives on partner →

Child

Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?

Jung · The child archetype

Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.

C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III

East Asian custom Folk saying

In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.

East Asian folk custom

All perspectives on child →

Friend

How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?

Dream research Dream research

The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.

G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)

Tang poetry Literature

Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.

Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)

All perspectives on friend →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images