Religious narrative · People & kin
The illness became two little boys
Jin (Shanxi), China · 581 BCE
公夢疾為二豎子曰。彼良醫也。懼傷我。焉逃之。其一曰。居肓之上。膏之下。若我何。
The duke dreamed that his illness turned into two little boys. One said, “He is a good doctor; I fear he will hurt us. Where shall we run?” The other said, “If we stay above the diaphragm and below the heart, what can he do to us?”
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- Source
- Zuo Zhuan, Duke Cheng — Zuo Qiuming (attributed), c. 4th century BCE
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Jin (Shanxi), China · Chinese
- Date
- 581 BCE
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Origin of the idiom 病入膏肓, “the illness has entered beyond reach.”
- Imagery
- Child · Ruler
- Feelings
- Unease
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
- Two boys said: move your bed Jiankang (Nanjing), China · c. 480 (Southern Qi)
- My son would be killed by an iron spear Sardis, Lydia · c. 550 BCE (as told)
- The child on my back grew heavy as stone Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- No proper dog at all Scottish moorland (dreamed) · before 1888
- A cannon before the Arch of Constantine Rome (dreamed) · before 1912
- A plague of certainty Siberia, Russia · 1866 (novel)