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Dreams about death can really freak some people out, so let’s go ahead address what death dreams typically mean. Most dreams about death are symbolic. They are usually not warnings or premonitions about your own death or the death of someone you love. In opposition to what we talked about in the Dreams of Pregnancy and Dreams About Babies posts, death dreams symbolize the end of of a cycle.
Is it time for this aspect of yourself to die, or, are you killing some crucial aspect of yourself?
As I said in the post on the Symbolism of the Snake, Death, whether we are speaking literally or symbolically, is a part of the life cycle: birth, death, and rebirth. Rejecting death, hating it, and fearing it only causes you to shrink back from life. Accepting it means having a mature perspective on life.
Death dreams are very common during periods of psychological transformation or major transition in your life.
Sometimes psychological transformation is a conscious process, for example, when you are working through deep issues in psychotherapy, or, when you are going through a divorce.
Other times psychological transformation is unconscious; it’s just a natural process happening beneath the surface of consciousness, for example as in maturation or the slow mending of a broken heart.
The aim of dream interpretation is to make your psychological processes as conscious as possible. This helps you in every aspect of your life, but most especially in the face of suffering.
For many, any kind of change is hard to face, especially when it comes to endings. People have an abject aversion to endings, whether we are talking about the end of life or the end of some aspect of life. Because of this aversion to endings, people sometimes desperately cling to anything they don’t want to let go of.
Before I talk about particular dreams about death, I want to say something about the dynamics of the human mind. If you want to do your own dream interpretations, it’s important for you to understand the theory behind it. Don’t blindly trust inadequate dream dictionaries or the many dream websites which regurgitate the same thing about dreams and symbols.
Real dream interpretation is about gaining a deeper knowledge of yourself through open and honest self-reflection. So, don’t let dreams about death scare you. Treat every dream as a guide from beyond, telling you that you are ready to transform something in your life.
In Jungian psychology, when we speak of psychic death, we are referring to the dissolution of a particular psychic factor in you. By psychic factor I mean an observable pattern in your personality. A really extreme example of this pattern would be someone who has a bonafide phobia of spiders. Every time that person sees a spider, he uncontrollably has the same reaction.
When something is unquestionably merged with our identity, it’s unconscious. Take for example our general outlook on life – the lens through which we see the world, such as a tendency to see our experiences only through a negative light. This is something you can change. It is not who you are.
Other examples would be mistrust in the world, fear of change, self-loathing, generalized anxiety, or self-doubt. All of these are psychic patterns that can be transformed. You are not trapped by anything.
Dreams about death can signal that it is time for you to change your outlook or attitude
Reflect on the symbolism of whatever or whoever died in your death dreams.
What are your associations?
How do these associations relate to your current attitude or state of mind?
Is there any connection you can make?
Everything we see, feel, or think is a psychic pattern. Even our relationships with others have an underlying psychic pattern. Some of our psychic patterns are healthy and others are not. Many psychic patterns were seeded in our childhoods and are still blossoming well into in adulthood. Dreams about death involving children can be an indication of an infantile pattern that needs to die.
And still others are archetypal patterns of human existence, such as puberty, birth, and death. Any of these psychic patterns can image themselves in dreams.
What is important to remember about all of your dreams is that they are images of the unconscious aspects of your psychic patterns.
People also like to associate psychic death with ego death in Buddhism. In terms of defining ego, you can’t compare Jungian psychology and Buddhism because their operational definitions of ego are very different.
In Buddhism, ego death is the dissolution of subjective identity into non-being, which amounts to a of revelation of no-self. The death of the ego in Jungian terms would not be a revelation; it would be a psychosis. A psychosis is the dissolution of the ego into the unconscious. When this happens, the person you once were or once knew is gone, lost in a sea of primordial experience. You can also see this death of the ego in Alzheimer’s and dementia.
However, certain aspects of our ego can die without destroying the personality and, when those aspects die, we say that it is a psychic death. And, as I have already said, dreams about death symbolize psychic death.
I like to differentiate between the ego and the limited ego. The limited ego is the one who clings to everything: narrow perspectives, old relationships, bad childhoods, good childhoods, money, power, and whatever else. This kind of gripping attitude triggers a response in the unconscious, a response which often comes in the form of a disturbing dream. Dreams about death signal that something in you needs to change.
In order to find out what that necessary change is, you have to establish the whole context of your death dream: who is dying and under what conditions; what does this person, plant, or animal mean to you; what is your current situation?
We’ll explore how to work with death dreams about particular people in the next part of this article. As a sort of introduction to the next piece, I want to talk a little bit about psychological complexes because it is often the case that your dream about death is about psychologically breaking free from a particular complex. You can read more about psychological complexes here, on my other site, Unfolding the Universe Within.
These unknown psychic factors can make us think things or say things when we don’t want to. They can also induce unwanted moods or flood us with difficult emotions. We call some of these autonomous factors complexes. Complexes are psychic constellations that can act like other personalities. Certain complexes are also behind some states of anxiety or depression. You can read more about this here on my other site, Unfolding the Universe Within.
As long as we are unaware of these autonomous factors in our psyche, we identify with them. We are those anxious thoughts or the depressed moods. We believe all of those negative perceptions and attitudes associated with those moods.
Complexes are also associated with too-positive thoughts and emotions about a person. In particular, I am thinking of adults who are still far too psychologically attached to their parents. In fact, dreams of parents dying are very often related to the need to break this infantile psychological attachment. I’ll go more into that when I talk about dreams of parents dying.
For example, many of these women suffer from extreme feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing. Very often they are attacked by terrible inner dialogues in the middle of the night. Women with a negative mother complex tend to attract destructive women into their lives – women who repeat the abusive patterns of their mother.
All of these recognizable signs and symptoms make up the autonomous negative mother complex.
A terrible mother leaves her destructive imprint in her child. That imprinted negative mother-image links up with all all kinds of associations and psychological triggers.
The negative mother-image is an inner figure in a woman’s psyche, and she will appear in terrorizing dreams as the mother herself or other female images who fit the profile.
A woman with a negative mother complex will come across women in the external world who immediately constellate her mother complex. For example, a boss who reminds you of your horrible mother will trigger that mother complex. This boss may have some of your mother’s qualities, but any hyper-emotional reaction you have to her is your complex.
In order to break free from such a complex and free yourself from autonomous triggers, you have to learn to separate yourself (the ego) from the complex and its effects on you. I speak about separation techniques here in my post on complexes.
the melting witch as an example of the dissolution of a negative mother complex
After a woman has thoroughly worked with this negative mother complex and its associated effects on her personality, she will often have a dream where the mother dies. This is psychic death. When we speak of psychic death, we are often referring to the death of one’s psychological identification with the complex.
Psychic death is a powerful signal that you have psychologically broken free from something with which you were once completely identified. The effect this has on a person’s attitude and personality can be transformative, hence the idea of rebirth after death.
This is just one example of psychic death, but you can get the general drift of the idea.
I’ll follow up this general post on dreams about death with specific examples of death dreams. Until then….
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Last night's dream was not the first time I was preparing to be executed, but this time it was by someone I knew. Right before he pulled the trigger I was telling my cat (was he to be executed as well????) that I'd "meet him on the other side." I was also telling Diego and Ortoloni (two beloved cats I had lost) that I'd "see them soon." I awoke before the trigger was pulled and, of course, was feeling heartbroken. Tears welling up. Am I worried about losing others that I love dearly? The relationship involving the assassin was a recent one that I broke off, but feel it has left me somewhat broken. Am I trying to mend my heart? I did a one-card Tarot reading this morning to get more insights and pulled the King of Pentacles in Reverse. Just trying to make some sense of all this....
I come to the comment section on this page in a somewhat desperate state, after reading through many of the incredible, insightful articles on your site. First I want to thank you for putting Jung’s theories in such clear, beautiful language, which resonates with me deeply. I am an avid reader of Jung, but your particular phrasing of his ideas has taught me so much in a relatively short time.
I’m a young woman, a college grad still living at home with her parents four years after graduating, currently unemployed and with dreams of being a writer. I have struggled with getting paid for freelance work this year, and have dealt with feelings of guilt and shame surrounding my lack of employment, although what I really want to do is write full time. However, I have recently begun sharing some of my writing online for the first time, only to become addicted to keeping up with the amount of likes, comments, and shares I receive. This has taken away much of the joy of writing for me, though I struggle to stop sharing my writing in this way due to the the great, reaffirming feedback I have gotten.
In the past two weeks I have had FOUR dreams involving being shot in the head with a gun. The most jarring dream was of being kidnapped with my grandmother by Russian assassins, one of whom took the form of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and had a very gentle and guiding attitude towards the execution he was about to perform. My grandmother (who is deceased) and I were wrapped up in clear duct tape, and rapidly shot once in the head, first me and then her. I experienced a flash of pain and a brief period of darkness before I saw myself in a dark hallway which became a forest. A black dog was present (I own a black dog.)
Last night’s gunshot dream was the last straw for me. I was sitting in an ER in blue nurse’s scrubs, drinking coffee with another woman in red scrubs beside me (I’ve been watching a lot of Nurse Jackie lately.) A few policemen entered. One, a handsome man with dark hair and olive skin, wordlessly came up to me and put a gun to my head. I calmly sipped my coffee, knowing he wouldn’t do it, but if he did, I would just be ready. He did shoot me, and again I saw a flash of light, a burst of mild pain, and then darkness. The dream then continued with me as a nurse once more, but escaping the hospital this time.
I have done much writing and contemplating about the meaning of these dreams, and have struggled to come up with a solution. I hesitate to ask your advice on this matter, since I assume this is likely how you earn your living and I know what it’s like when people ask you to give your time and energy without pay. However, seeing some of the other responses on your site has emboldened me. Any insight into the meaning of these headshot dreams is very welcome and appreciated.
Hi there, thanks for your comment and dream. It's always good to hear that someone can appreciate the work I have put into this site.
First, I think the initial addiction to feedback about your writing is understandable, but as you can see already, it eventually contaminates the passion.
To dream of being shot in the head is actually common. I see these dreams often. The question of meaning always revolves around what is happening in the dreamer's life at the time of the dream. What stands out for me in your dream is the "gentle nature" of your assassin. Is his blow to your head necessary? Perhaps he is there to eradicate an unhealthy mindset.
The other alternative is that he's a "negative animus" ... but he just doesn't come across that way to me. My guess would be that the negative animus is behind the need for approval or feelings that your life won't ever change.
After he shoots you, you find yourself in a forest with a black dog. That's straight out of fairy tale material, i.e., it's archetypal. It's the place where the adventure begins. You even have the black do (animal helper) as your guide. Anytime we drop an old mindset, we are a bit lost.
I can't help but wonder if your grandmother in the scenario points to a problem in the feminine dimension of psyche. What's your relationship to your mother? would be my question. Feelings of shame are associated with a negative mother complex, something I have written about here on the site.
In the other dream, you appear in scrubs and then make the association with Nurse Jackie. Take that further and explore Jackie's character: "functional addict", but nonetheless "sick". What's wrong there? Compare that to your current mindstate or situation.
My thoughts are that some kind of sacrifice needs to be made. Only you can figure out what that is. It will be painful, but the dreams show that you get through it.
And again, I appreciate the recognition you have the work I am doing. Yes, it's how I earn my living. The number of hours that go into this site is immeasurable.
Hi Jesamine,
Thank you so much for your swift, thoughtful response. My immediate reaction to the association between Nurse Jackie and functional addiction was like an “a-ha” moment. I am going to spend some more time exploring these dreams with your comments in mind. I already feel clearer about which direction to take with my research, thanks to your associations.
It is inspiring to see how you have turned your passion into a wonderful healing resource for others. I wish you all the best with your work. Thank you again for your time!