Animal Dreams

Tony Crisp

The animals we dream of express the wealth of our own feelings and depth of our unconscious understanding of life.

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List of Animals - Animal Situations - Animals as Dream Figures

Depending upon how the animal in our dream is presented, and what it is doing, dream animals represent our fundamental drives such as the fear reaction, flight or fight response, aggression, need for food, urge to breath, sex or procreative drive, parental urges, drive for recognition or dominance in groups; survival drive; love of offspring; spontaneity; home building.

As such the animal can portray your relationship with the fundamental life processes in you. Dreams depict these processes as intelligent and responsive, not just as chemical actions and reactions as modern medicine so often does. Therefore our conscious attitudes influence these fundamental living processes in us - processes that maintain health, digest, beat our heart, rebuild damage and fight infection. Negative feelings or attitudes can cause these 'animals' is us to despair or lose motivation, and thus lead to depression or illness.

Animals are one of the most frequent of symbols that appear in dreams. Because we see them in so many ways, such as the cunning or trickery of the fox or coyote, the strength and mystery of the elephant, the loving fierceness of a lioness with her cubs, and the almost unconditional love dogs give us, the animal in our dream can express a very wide spectrum of meaning or feelings.

Because we project these characteristics onto animals, we may occasionally dream of an animal to represent the feelings we have about a person. An attacking dog for instance may be used to depict how we see someone who is being aggressive toward us.

Thus dream animals are complex symbols, and there are many shades of meaning in animal dreams. Some animal dreams for instance display personal need for affection, desire to be touched, or the need to care for another creature and thus feel needed. Others are about our sexual needs or desires. Some display ways that we enter into or avoid love. Because of these huge variations, the long commentary at the end of the individual description of animals, given as Animals as Dream Figures, has been added to help awareness in looking at such dreams. Each animal is also given an entry, as the character of the various animals suggests different things to us. Pets, for instance, have given to each of us very different experiences. We therefore have very personal associations and feeling responses to pets we might dream about. Also see Animals in Your Dreams.