Dreams of death are usually the ones that produce the greatest anguish in people because, in addition to being associated with cultural concepts of omens, they are also linked and covered by our moral part.
Death frightens us so much that in dreams it can wake us up, and thus end our cycle of rest and can cause us to spend hours or whole days thinking about its meaning, leading to cautious behavior and a excessive protection to prevent what happened in the dream from happening in reality.
Meaning of dreaming that someone dies
Dreaming that someone dies can fill us with anguish not only in our dream life, but also becomes part of the thoughts that operate in our field of consciousness, i.e. dreams where someone dies and , especially, when someone is very close, who makes us ruminate on this dream (thoughts that repeat themselves constantly, without being digested).
Sigmund Freud says that most of the elements in dreams are representations of the deepest and most ardent passions or desires, which is why the interpretation of this type of dream could follow this Freudian line.
This moral part that we all have (our ego) tries to prevent the free expression and/or manifestation of the death wish of the person who dies in our dream, i.e. it produces a lot of anguish for the dreamer, as the ego (which includes morality), seeks different ways to repress this deplorable desire to kill someone and, a special case of this egocentric mechanism, is the distress perceived in the waking state.
Sigmund Freud said that hatred towards a loved one is softened by an excessive tenderness towards him and an exaggerated fear of what happens to him.
Freudian inquiry reveals that often when an aggressive impulse is repressed, the defense not only prevents it from manifesting, but exaggerates the contrary feeling, tenderness or concern.
He called this “reactive training,” a defense mechanism closely related to the phenomenon of overprotection. But the repressed feeling returns - as usual - in the fantasy, in the fear that something bad will happen to the loved one. Hostile intent is attributed to fate.
What does it mean when a person dies in a dream? To conclude, the meaning of a person's death in a dream can subjectively express repressed feelings towards them, the meaning of death will always vary from person to person.
In some cases, someone's death in a dream is related to feelings of hostility towards that person, but it is necessary to assess the depth of the dream content.
Below we will see some specifications of this dream: to dream that someone dies drowning, in an accident or burnt. What is the meaning of each of these variants of someone's death dream?
Dream about someone drowning
What does it mean when someone is drowning in a dream? There are many references to this type of dream where a person dies by drowning, and which are associated with emotional suffocation or problems that overcome or go beyond coping mechanisms (the way we deal with dangers or threats of life), whether they come from the dreamer or from the person he saw in the dream. But we will maintain a line of analysis on dreams in which they do not acquire a universal or linear meaning of the “associative chain” type proposed by Freud, but rather a form of network of meaning, which is a more Lacanian term.
For example, an associative channel would search for the traumatic scene associated with the manifestation of this distressing dream (it is possible that the person drowned in childhood or was at risk of drowning, or even a single meaning, such as dreaming of a brother drowning and this person must actually emigrate or go on a mission with the army in a place surrounded by many beaches).
Dreams may not be associated with significant traumatic events or events that may be distressing to someone else.
Dream about someone dying in an accident
As mentioned earlier, dreams are not always associated with traumatic events concerning the dreamer himself or others, nor with unconscious manifestations of the most latent desires, but above all and again, dreams do not have a universal meaning. However, we will try to help you associate these elements of the dream world.
You can ask yourself some of the following questions or ask the dreamer:
- Have you ever had a similar or other accident that put your life or that of a loved one in danger?
- Was there a feeling, even if it seems insignificant or silly at the moment, that arose and caused discomfort with the person you were dreaming of and who died in an accident?
- During the day, have you seen or heard any representation of an accident, for example on television, on a mobile phone, in books, in class?
- Have you been abandoned at some point in your life? For example, when you were little, you were alone at home, you got lost in a supermarket, or even one of your parents left without saying anything or giving any explanation.
Accidental deaths are unexpected and therefore much more difficult to accept. People who have lost someone in an accident show denial of the loss longer, such as minutes, hours, or seconds before they have spoken to that person and have not had the opportunity to associate the dead.
Dreams where someone dies by accident can, and we repeat again, "can/possibly" be associated with the ephemeral and the fear it evokes in itself: the fear of loss, of emptiness and sudden abandonment.
Thus, let's not forget that in a network, this meaning (just like a genealogical tree of meanings) can open up as many others or come from as many others as from just one. For example, if mortality is so feared, one must explore if there is any sense of guilt in the person who dies, if he believes he owes him something (emotional or material), and the latent desire produces the death of that Sens. of guilt and debts, but in turn, a conscious fact - linked to the ego - drags him into anguish and fear.
To dream that someone burned to death
What does it mean to dream that someone is burning to death? Fire, like so many dreamlike and unconscious elements, has various meanings, that is to say that for some fire can express anger, suffering, evil (often linking it to their relationship to hell), sins, pleasure, adventure, risk, related to a trauma event or not, latent desires and others.
We must establish the network of meanings with the elements that the dreamer describes, his relationship with the dying subject and his involvement with the significant element present in the dream. It would also be interesting to know if the dreamer tried to save him, if he liked the fact or what the behavior was presented in the dream, because this can have an important association in the interpretation of it.
For the interpretation of the dream it would also be relevant to take into account who the protagonist is, since it is possible that the interpretation changes a lot when dreaming that strangers die and when dreaming about the death of a loved one, when dreaming that your loved one dies (your) boyfriend or even dream that a deceased person (dead in the waking state or in the subject's reality) dies again.
