DREAM GALAXY

Images · Death & the departed

Dreams about the dead: Jung, traditions and semiotics

This is not a dream dictionary. Each perspective below names where it comes from; traditions are shown side by side, not merged into one meaning.

Also covers: Coffin, Grave

Start with yourself

Who was it, and did they seem to know they had died? Was there something you were able to say, or not able to?

Jung · Objective level first

Jung’s memoir records his own dreams of his late father and treats them with seriousness rather than symbol-hunting: a dream of someone who has died is first about that person and that bond.

What would you want to tell them if the dream continued?

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Traditions, side by side

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis devoted a chapter to dreams of the dead, noting how often the dead appear as if alive and how such dreams can bring comfort.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VIII

Homeric epic Classical text

Achilles dreams of the dead Patroclus, who asks to be buried; Achilles reaches out to embrace him and grasps nothing.

Homer, Iliad XXIII

Chinese poetry Literature

Su Shi wrote his elegy “Ten years, living and dead” after dreaming of his late wife at her window — a dream written as remembrance.

Su Shi, “Jiangchengzi” (1075)

Semiotics: how an image comes to mean

Following C. S. Peirce, an image can work as a sign in three ways:

C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers 2.247–249 (icon, index, symbol)
C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (1921), “Definitions: Symbol” — a sign stands for something known, a symbol for something not yet fully known
Ellis (1911), ch. II, on verbal links between dream images

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

Recorded dreams with the dead