Not all dreams are interpretable within the framework of a psychoanalytic session, sometimes there is not enough material, not enough associations, and sometimes interpretations can come much later. Freud said that a dream is the fulfillment of a desire, and not just any desire, but an unconscious desire. He also said that dreams are the royal way to access the unconscious.
What we are going to look for in the dream is not the fulfillment of something that the patient can tell us in his waking life (in his conscious speech), but we are going to look for an element that rather contradicts what the patient He is telling us something that breaks that supposed meaning regarding what happens to him and what happens to his life. Therefore, in this Psychology-Online article, we are going to evaluate and explain what does it mean to dream that you kill someone.
The meaning of dreams
Dreams They do not have a universal meaningThat is, what you dream will not have the same meaning for a friend or for an Eskimo in the cold lands of the arctic. Dreams can present very similar scenes, times, characteristics and sensations, but it does not make sense to make an interpretation like a dictionary, since these contain a lot of information about the waking state and the unconscious of each person in particular.
Many of us would like to have an idea fairly close to the truth of the meaning of dreams. The idea handled by culture is the mystical possibility that dreams function as omens because they are based on proven and measured facts.
However, (1899) said that his experience confirmed his assertion that the most frequent content of dreams is linked to our most burning passionsbut he also said that to a greater or lesser degree, the content of dreams will always be determined by the individual personalitythe age, sex, position, degree of culture and usual lifestyle of the subject and by the events of his or her past.
Considering Freud’s approach, dreaming that you kill someone will be more associated with everything we have discussed and not as a linear fact, since dreams do not obey a nexus like any other associative articulation of the subject’s discourse.
It would be much more interesting if the interpretation of this type of dreams were thought of as a network (interwoven) and not as Sigmund Freud proposed with his term “associative chain” because this in turn implies the following problem:
The links of each chain have simple associative links (for example, the chain is composed of 4 links (1, 2, 3 and 4), 1 will be associated with 2 and 2 with the next one, which is 3 and the latter with 4, but 3 will not be associated with 1 nor 2 with 4.
If we think of it as a network or as a type of family tree, the interpretation of this type of dreams will be much more effective and beneficial for the dreamer, since the links will be branched. Following each new experience, two or more dream elements will come into force.
What does it mean to dream that you kill someone you don’t know?
Dreaming about killing someone unknown does not mean that from one moment to the next we are going to take a weapon and murder someone without any premeditation, since, as explained previously, dreams can follow a network of signifiers that in the end will offer us the origin of our dream. genealogical tree of signifiers.
If you are wondering what the meaning of dreaming about killing an unknown person is, then we will show you its main psychological interpretations:
- Concern about death: It is conceived as something tragic, painful and sad, such as the loss of something or the absence of someone important. Before them, we recommend you read this article about .
- Naturalization of grief: to state that death is something inevitable and that this is a part of life.
- Very repressed latent desire: dreaming that you kill someone with a knife, even though it is someone you don’t know, is something distressing, shameful and deplorable. Shame, anguish and disapproval of this type of behavior will be something that will arise as an ego response to impulsive behavior. This ego response is what generates discomfort due to the dream content, but underlying it is a latent and unconscious desire related to the meaning of death or murder.
- Resentment towards something or someone: Even though it is an unknown person whom we kill in our dreams, it can somehow offer us some important characteristics for the associative process, such as whether it was a man or a woman, what it was like, what it was doing while you killed it, and whether it resisted.
What does it mean to dream that you kill someone and run away?
Dreaming that someone is murdered can be disturbing, but sometimes you can be aware that the act was an accident. This rational and non-unconscious intervention It can make you wonder how he knows it was an accident, whether he slipped and you accidentally stabbed him with a knife or he turned and you were behind him and you stabbed him with the knife.
In this sense, dreaming that you kill someone in self-defense or dreaming that you kill someone and run away could refer to the following meanings:
- regret for something: You know that something that happened was an accident because of what you felt in the dream.
- unconscious latent desire of something bad happening to someone.
- Unresolved conflict with someone: You may experience some kind of disagreement with the person you accidentally killed in the dream.
- Lack of responsibility: The act of doing something and running away can mean that you have recently run away from certain situations in your life because you are afraid of assuming the consequences. If you want to be more responsible, don’t miss this article on .
Meaning of killing someone you know
Dreaming that you kill someone you know usually refers to experiences or events conflicts with the person you killed in the dream, for example, the relationship with the father, conflicts with a brother, friend or with your partner. If this is the case, you can inquire about this article.
The answer to what it means to dream that someone you love is killed could also be related to some unresolved event with that specific person. Sometimes these situations manifest in our dreams even though the current circumstances in the waking state are different from those in the dream.
As you see, the meaning of dreaming about killing a person, whoever it is, can vary depending on the context in which it is located in the dream. If you want to understand what this dream event may refer to, below we give you some points that you should take into account when interpreting dreams:
- Evaluate the quality of the relationship with the person you dreamed of.
- Evaluate any anger or frustration you’ve kept quiet. or that you kept silent at some point that it was directed towards the person you dreamed of murdering or that it may represent some link between all the meanings.
- Events that may seem irrelevant For others, they may have been very significant to you, because they may represent an essential element in the unconscious that operates daily in your life.
On the other hand, if you are interested in knowing more about the dream world and the interpretation of dreams, this book that we have selected for you will serve as a guide to start analyzing and interpreting your dreams:
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Sigmund Freud. (1899). The interpretation of dreams. AKAL Publishing House.