A woman in a woman’s dream: an aspect of herself, but often a facet of herself she is not immediately identifying with.
The above example helps make this plain. Mo explored her feelings about the dream characters. It all fell into place when she asked herself what she had ‘lost’ recently. She had left a lover of some years’ standing. This gave her a lot more freedom and new opportunity, depicted by the baby, but also muddled feelings of loss. Her Australian friend represents her feelings of grieving for the death’ of her relationship. Her muddled feelings arise because she both loves the new life which opens up, but grieves for the death of her romance.
A woman’s sister, female children: particularly used to represent herself.
The character of the dream woman, loving, angry, businesslike, lazy, sexual, gives a clue to what pan of the dreamer it is referring to.
If the dream woman is a person known well, the above can still be the case, but the woman may represent what the dreamer feels about that person.
A woman younger than the dreamer oneself at that age.
An older woman: could be the dreamer’s mother, her feelings about aging, her sense of inherited wisdom. Two women and the dreamer, conflicting feelings or drives. One woman, one man: behaviour patterns arising from parental relationship.
A goddess or holy woman, the dreamer’s highest potential; what she is capable of but may not yet have lived.
Man dreaming of a woman
Example: ‘On a raised mobile platform a goddess stood. I loved her and flew to her, skimming above the heads of the people. I calked to her. She told me the only love I could receive from her was that which I gave to a human woman. Inasmuch as I gave love to a human female, she would love me. She was all women’ (Andrew P).
The example shows Andrew meeting his archetypal conception of a woman, his ideal. But he understands that you cannot love an ideal. His love must find a real woman. Through a real love he would call love from out of himself, out of his unconscious reserve.
In a man’s dream: his present relationship with his own feelings and intuitive self; his sensitivity and contact with his unconscious through receptivity; or how he is relating to his female partner.
The latter is especially so if the woman in the dream is his partner, how capable he is of loving a woman.
An old woman, usually the dreamer’s mother.
The woman, because she is his feelings, is obviously also his sexual desires and how he meets them.
A younger woman: can depict his desires for a woman of that age, or his more vulnerable emotions. Two women and the dreamer: an ‘eternal triangle’; conflicting feelings.
If one woman and one man: pattern of behaviour developed in relationship with parents.
The conditions or situations of the woman, see under appropriate entries, such as illness; murder, swimming; etc.
See anima and the Great Mother under archetypes.