Dreams about teeth falling out: a Jungian reading

It is one of the most common dreams in the world and it is almost never about teeth. Teeth hold the face, they bite and they show when you smile — so they tend to stand for how you come across and whether you are still holding it together.

It depends on how it looked

• they fall out and it is awfulthe fear that something will show
• they crumble slowlysomething has been wearing down for a long time
• you take them out yourselfyou are letting go of something that held you, and you know it
• nobody noticesonly you know about it and you carry it without witnesses

A question for you

What are you holding together about yourself so that nobody notices what it costs you?

And yours is read symbol by symbol

This is what a dream dictionary cannot do: it reads the dream you actually had. You write it in your own words — a house you had never lived in, a small door under the stairs, a key that did not fit — and each of those images is taken separately, with what it may be carrying for you.

Then comes the archetype the dream is standing in — the Threshold, say — a reflection that ties it to your own chart, and at the end a question to sit with. Not an answer. A question.

A dream reading needs an account, because the dream is stored — that is the point: the meaning shows up when the same image comes back a third time. The account is free and the first readings are free too.