Dreams where you cannot scream: a Jungian reading

You open your mouth and nothing comes out, or you cannot move at all. It tends to be physiology — as you wake, the body still holds the muscles switched off, and it is harmless. When it keeps coming back, though, it also tends to be an image of a situation where speaking up is not possible.

It depends on how it looked

• you shout and nobody hearsyou speak and nothing changes
• not even a sound comes outsomething is stopping it from being said at all
• you cannot movesleep paralysis — frightening, but harmless
• someone is in the rooma common companion of paralysis, not a sign

A question for you

Where in your life do you speak and nothing changes?

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.