Anxiety Dreams vs. Warning Dreams

How does one interpret warning dreams from fear-based dreams? Recently I had an uncomfortable dream about an upcoming situation, the person involved was angry at me and threatening. I thought it was just my own anxiety but it turned out that the real life situation ended up feeling similar to the dream. I felt uncomfortable and threatened, but for different reasons.
I'm trying to figure out a way to better distinguish between bad dreams that are generated by own fears vs. dreams that are actual warnings. How do you distinguish between the two?

real/precognitive dreams are easier to remember, more vivid and more memorable than normal fear dreams.
That should be one destintive criteria. The more detail the dream has, the more realistis it seems, the more probable will it predict real situations. That applies to both psi dreams and dreams which are based on subcouscious observations.

I'll definitely keep that in mind. The problem is, almost all of my dreams are really vivid and detailed. In fact, I can think of a lot more detailed dreams than the one I mentioned above that weren't precognitive. I suspect the symbolism changes in some way. Carl Jung was supposedly able to tell the difference, but unfortunately he didn't seem to have a knack for coherently expressing his ideas..

I would consider information from a vivid, lucid dream. Any other dreams I would be unsure. Perhaps if the old woman/old man archetype is in the dream and talking with you, too.

A couple of other ideas might be helpful in trying to interpret warning dreams from anxiety dreams.

For example, a colleague of Jung was analyst Marie-Louise von Franz who professionally analyzed around 60,000 dreams in her career.

Her estimate was that only around 15% or so of dreams are related to actual outer people and our relationships with them. The other approximately 85% are describing relationships with inner psychological figures.

To help decide if the dream is within the 15% group, analyst Mary Ann Mattoon discusses the question of whether a person we see in a dream is “subjective” or “objective” (“Jung and the Human Psyche: An Understandable Introduction”).

For example, if the person’s image in a dream is essentially a photographic reproduction and not “different” in some fairly obvious way, then the dream is more likely about the person in the context of an outer situation.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule because the image of the person can sometimes represent the outer person and an essential part of the dreamer’s personality as well.

Also, if the person in the dream isn’t an important part of one’s everyday life, it’s less likely that any conflict etc. that appears in the dream is about a potential outer situation.

I’m not aware that Carl Jung ever said that he knew how to tell the difference between an anxiety dream and a warning dream.

In fact, even when he was very experienced and able to analyze dreams with incredible accuracy and depth, when listening to someone tell him a dream, he made a point of silently telling himself “I do not know what this dream means”.

This was meant to make sure he allowed the psyche to speak its message without his “stopping” it as it were by some seductive, ready-made interpretation gathered over the years from interpreting the dreams of thousands of other people.

In the case of “Big Dreams” or ones that seem somehow “prophetic”, the best one can do is to remain alert and flexible in case an actual outer event does come along.

Similarly, Marie-Louise von Franz writes in “Dreams on Death” that from long experience, she would never attempt to say for certain that a given dream was predicting an imminent physical death. There are certain motifs and markers that often appear, but the “when” can literally be decades away.

As for Jung not having the “knack for coherently expressing his ideas”, while this is partly true in the context of a lot of us wanting “10 Easy Steps to Happiness”, I think you’d find that the chapter he wrote on dreams and symbols in the book “Man and his Symbols” is very clear and can be gone back to many times to gain further insights that one missed the first time around.

You would probably also like his autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” which contains many of his dreams along with thoughts on the paranormal and death.

Anyway, I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way to help decide the difference between anxiety dreams and those which are predicting something.

Thanks for the insight! To clarify, I'm referring to the collection of The Undiscovered Self with Symbols and Interpretations of Dreams. Jung agreed to write those works after having a dream that he was giving a presentation and everyone finally understood him clearly, as he was frequently misunderstood in his waking life. Yet he insisted on writing those works in English (even though German is his first language) and the translator admitted he had an extremely difficult time 'translating' his abstract ideas from incorrect English without completely changing what Jung was trying to say. These are the things that make Jung difficult read, in my opinion.

Also in that book he does mention that it was common for him to recognize the warning in other people's dreams. He cites a few experiences, one of which was a mountain climber who dreamed of falling. Jung desperately tried to warn this man of his impending death but the man did not take it seriously and ended up dying just as the dream had predicted. He had a few other stories like this.

I have not yet read Man and His Symbols so it's good to know that it has some valuable information for future reading.

Actually the essay on Symbols and Interpretation of Dreams in the book you mentioned is the first chapter in Man and His Symbols, but the rest of the book has many other interesting information from colleagues whom Jung trusted.

As you mention, there are problems with the translation of Jung’s works into English. Some believe that the translator RFC Hull didn’t really do very well, but Jung himself, who was very proficient in English, believed that Hull’s translations were quite good in contrast to some others which were done.

I think part of the problem of understanding Jung comes from the need to actually experience in a practical way what he’s saying.

He had to write his books for an “academic” group as opposed to the general public, just like scientific papers are written today, so the language has to be kind of precise and dry.

Later, others try to simplify what’s behind the complex ideas of the original published books from Jung and others such Einstein or Stephen Hawking etc. in order to clarify in practical terms what they are talking about.

If you haven’t come across them, here are a few books you might like by Jungian analysts who are able to describe in a simple but thorough way various parts of Jung’s ideas so that it’s easier to link what he wrote about to a person’s everyday life: Robert Johnson, “Inner Work”,
Mary Ann Mattoon, “Jung and the Human Psyche: An Understandable Introduction”,
James A. Hall M.D., “Jungian Dream Interpretation”.

Regarding my ideas about “warning dreams”, I was actually thinking specifically of those where the dreamer sees people they know doing something destructive or negative, the idea being that they will do something directly or indirectly harmful to the dreamer themselves.

The dreams you mentioned about the mountain-climbing man are a good example of “warning” or “prospective” dreams in general which are saying something like “If you continue doing (such-and-such), then this will happen”.

Symbolically, as Jung said, the man was trying to escape to the “heights” away from the “ground” of his being totally enmeshed in shady deals instead of working in some kind of very difficult but practical way to face the situation and “come down” voluntarily. Instead, the psyche took over and induced him to commit suicide.

So dream motifs such as flying, falling, drowning, being chased etc. are among those which can show the dreamer that something’s going wrong and therefore such “warnings” should be paid attention to.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying things so that I in turn could make clearer what I was going on about!

Hey, here's some stuff I found in Robert Moss' book "Conscious Dreaming," about the signs a precognitive dream may contain more of:

1. They are very clear, easy to report, and literal.
2. They often have unfamiliar but realistic locales.
3. They often have "communication" themes (a phone, a fax, a letter, etc.).
4. The dream contains characters from your past (especially if they are living). This could be indicating a meeting with an old acquaintance, or a new person who resembles the old friend.
5. The dream centers around events of another person's life (rather than yours).
6. The dream message is repeated the same night (in multiple dreams).
7. You incubated a dream, or asked specific guidance about a situation (I would also include lucidly asking questions as well).
8. The message comes in between dreams. Especially during the falling asleep/waking up timeframe.


He goes into more detail, but I hope this helps. Take care.