Sunday, March 30, 2003		Dream Theme

Dreaming of prison
Vinaya K. Manhas

DREAMING of a jail, a prisoner or a jailor is not a pleasant dream. As per Indian thought, to see yourself locked up in a prison indicates of bad luck. You could face financial difficulties and could, in all possibility, end up in jail for not meeting deadlines for the repayment of loans. Such a dream also affects your marital life and could foretell discord and tension. Life could be difficult for you and your spouse. But to see a jailer is a good omen. It means that any legal issue that you are involved in could be settled to your satisfaction.

As per western thought, dreaming of a jail foretells misfortunes. To dream of being released from prison means that you will overcome all difficulties and problems in your personal life. Should you see someone else behind bars it indicates that you might have to favour people who you consider unworthy of such favours. To see someone you love behind bars warns you not to have blind faith in that person. He could, in all probability, deceive you. To see a jailer is to be warned of a treacherous person.

Psychoanalytically speaking, dreams of prison stand for self-created snares. We could be blaming external factors for the problems and difficulties in our lives, while these problems are actually self-created. These prisons could be a sense of guilt, our responsibilities, morals, etc., which appear to imprison us. Something we might take as a duty, might, in reality, be a self-imposed liability. To dream of a jailer is to feel restricted by our own emotions or by our or somebody else’s actions.

A woman would often dream of looking out from a barred window of a building which she felt looked like a prison wall. She could see a big key hanging outside on a wall, which she would be unable to reach despite her best efforts. The woman, in all probability, felt trapped in a relationship or a situation and was unable to get out of it. The presence of the key in the dream denoted that the woman was aware of the means by which she could get out of the situation but was not making any efforts to do so.