What Freud Says about Snake Dreams
Want to get expert opinion about what it means to be dreaming about snakes? For Freud, your snake dreams are most likely expressing some unconscious sexual desire. For Jung, dreaming of snakes is a representation of an inner conflict of personal nature or connected to larger universal archetypes, such as symbols of healing or life forces. Look at what these dream interpretation experts say about serpents in dreams.
Two main figures dominate the landscape of dream interpretation, Freud and Jung. Other dream theorists will be presented soon.
Freud and Snake Dreams
Freud and the Interpretation of Dreams
Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis. At the end of the 19th century, he wrote the Interpretation of Dreams and started to work with dreams with his patients. Freud’s interpretation of dreams revolves around the expression of the unconscious through dream imagery and symbols.
For Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, the snake is primarily a phallic symbol representing the penis and sexual drive. A Freudian interpretation of a snake dream emphasizes your relationship to sexuality and male figures in your life.
According to Freud, the snake is symbol for the penis. The meaning of a snake in a dream is associated with sexuality, and as an extension, with male figures in your life, or how you experience your own manhood, relationship with men or your male energy if you are a woman.
If you dream about snakes and would ask Freud or a Freudian analyst for help to interpret your dream, you could be invited to consider the snake as a symbol for repressed sexual desire or inner conflict about how you express or experience your sexuality.
Jung on Dreaming about Snakes
When analyzing a snake dream, it’s important to remember Jung’s perspective about the interpretation of the presence of this wild reptile during our sleep: “ What Nature wants us to do is to move with a snake-like motion. … The snake is the symbol of the great wisdom of Nature, for the too direct way is not the best way; the crooked way, the detour, is the shorter way.”
Jung says about dreaming of snakes: “ Snake dreams always indicate a discrepancy between the attitude of the conscious mind and instinct, the snake being a personification of the threatening aspect of that conflict”.