Dreaming of snakes: what does it mean?

Dreaming of snakes is a relatively frequent experience that usually produces feelings of anguish and discomfort in those who live it.

To the anxiety that these animals tend to produce in most people, the disturbing component of the symbolism is added. Therefore, many people wonder... What does dreaming with snakes mean? Can Sigmund Freud's dream interpretation theory tell us something about this? Let's see.

• Related article: "Why do we dream? 10 theories to explain this phenomenon

Dream Interpretation and the Subconscious

The mysterious nature of dreams is something that has always aroused the interest of humanity, even long before the emergence of psychology as a science. Closing your eyes, disconnecting from the world around us and passing without realizing the dream world is a difficult experience to understand. Among other things, because while we dream, almost anything is possible; even situations that in the real world could only be attributed to magic or the supernatural.

However, although the realm of dreams offers a potentially limitless repertoire of situations, in practice most of These visions, stories or sensations refer to the real and objective world in which we are sleeping in a bed, an armchair or a hammock. And that's why even the most surreal situations with non-human beings are usually made up of animals that really exist; snakes are an example of this.

Now... what does it mean to dream of snakes, creatures that appear relatively frequently both in dreams and in nightmares? Is there an interpretation for this dream experience?

The idea that dreams and nightmares have a meaning is linked above all to the theories of psychoanalysis proposed by Sigmund Freud. According to this neurologist, one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, dreams are forms of expression by which contents of the unconscious part of the human mind come to consciousness disguised as something that does not They are.

That is, in dreams we would find emotional and repressed contents that can only be allowed to appear under the guise of dream elements. whose true meaning is not literal, but must be interpreted just as we would interpret any symbol.

What does dreaming with snakes mean?

Knowing what we have seen so far, it is understood that it is common to ask the question of what it means to dream of snakes, with all its variants: the meaning of dreaming of snakes that attack, that stare at us, that speak to us, that ignore us, etc.

From the orthodox psychoanalytic perspective, these reptiles would be symbolic elements to decipher, that is, symbols that express messages that the body sends to the conscious part with which the subconscious is related indirectly when we dream, moment in which the mechanisms that normally repress the contents far from our consciousness lose power and they relax more.

And since Freud's ideas have been very influential for decades, even among those who have never read the father of the psychoanalysis has permeated the idea that in the experience of dreaming about snakes there is a meaning, a hidden meaning that reveals aspects of our personality or the nature of our traumas, memories, etc.

However, we should discard the idea that dreaming of snakes has a fixed and very concrete meaning, although it may have a more diffuse and abstract one. Let's see why.

The limitations of Freud's work

Freud is widely criticized for reaching contradictory conclusions: on the one hand, he claims to know general principles of the functioning of the mind of the being human, and at the same time, it establishes that all this is determined by the autobiographical history of each person, especially during their years of childhood. That is his ideas apply and at the same time do not apply to all human beings.

Therefore, even for Freud dreaming of snakes would not have a predetermined meaning, but to understand this symbology it would be necessary to explore the particular case of each person, given that one of the characteristics of symbols is that depending on the context we can literally give them any meaning.

Of course, this defect of Freudian psychoanalysis does not imply that we cannot attribute a meaning to dreaming of snakes; it only implies that we cannot link it to a very specific and elaborate message, one that reveals something fascinating about who we are and what our past is, as we will see now.

Snakes and anxiety

If there is a key to understanding what it means to dream about snakes, that is the way evolution has predisposed us to fear these animals.

And it is that the fear of snakes is not something purely learned; biological evolution has made our brains especially adept at detecting these animals, very quickly detecting snake-like shapes and causing an almost automatic emotional impact on us.

It is true that it is possible to enjoy the company of these reptiles, but this is usually the product of a learning process by which we "train" in the task of tolerating their company; The first option we contemplate when we see these creatures close to us is to move away quickly.

Thus, the snakes that appear in our dreams are a way in which anxiety is reflected while we sleep. Although when resting we tend to relax more than we are when we are awake, if there is something in our lives that worries us, that anguish can "seep" into our dreams, and it will easily produce nightmares or experiences such as one of these elongated reptiles visiting us.

Bibliographic references:

• Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Hogarth Press.
• Hoehl, S., Hellmer, K., Johansson, M., Gredebäck, G. (2017). Itsy Bitsy Spider…: Infants React with Increased Arousal to Spiders and Snakes. Frontiers in Psychology, 18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01710.
• Vedfelt, O. (1999). The Dimensions of Dreams. Fromm.