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Bear in dreams: what it can mean

  • Animals
  • Fear and danger
  • Nature

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The short answer

A bear is powerful, protective and dangerous all at once. Many dreamers connect it with a strong person in their life, or with a force they fear might turn on them.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Researchers who code dream content find that wild animals often appear in threatening roles, and being chased or attacked is among the most commonly reported typical themes. Threat simulation theory, one contested account, reads such dreams as rehearsal for danger. The continuity view asks a more personal question: who or what in your life is big, unpredictable and hard to reason with?

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus read a bear as a woman, drawing on the Greek myth of Callisto, who was turned into a bear. It shows how his readings worked: through the stories and associations of his own culture rather than a universal code.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read a bear as a sign of overwhelming competition, and killing one as getting free of difficulties. It is one old tradition, reported as history, not as a prediction.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. Who in your life is powerful enough to protect you or to hurt you?
  2. Did you run, freeze, fight or try to calm the bear?
  3. What strength of your own might the bear stand for?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Calvin S. Hall, Robert L. Van de Castle (1966). The Content Analysis of Dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: coding categories: animals and aggression (reference not yet checked)

    The standard coding system for dream content (characters, social interactions, misfortunes, emotions, settings, objects) and its normative sample.

  2. Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio L. Zadra, Valérie Simard, Sébastien Saucier, Philippe Stenstrom, Carlyle Smith, Don Kuiken (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students. Dreaming 13(4): 211-235.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: typical dreams questionnaire, results (reference not yet checked)

    Survey of how many people report having had common dream themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, exams, nakedness and others) at least once.

  3. Antti Revonsuo (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6): 877-901.

    cited, not reproducedcontested theory

    • Cited at: pp. 877-901 (threat simulation theory) (reference not yet checked)

    Threat simulation theory: dreams as rehearsal for danger. Influential but contested; presented as one theory among several.

  4. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on wild animals (the bear) (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.

  5. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Bear (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.