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Bridge in dreams: what it can mean

  • Change
  • Journeys
  • Places

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The short answer

A bridge joins two places, so many dreamers connect it with a transition they are in the middle of. Whether it felt solid, swaying or broken often says more than the bridge itself.

Your dream is not everyone's

Tell it the way you remember it. You get a reading about your dream and your life, not a dictionary entry.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Dream researchers find that dreams tend to stage the concerns we carry while awake, not a fixed dictionary of images. A bridge is an easy picture for a move from one situation to another: a new job, a relationship changing shape, a decision you have not finished making. The feeling on the bridge is the useful part. Calm crossing, fear of heights and a gap in the planks point to very different waking moods.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary, a popular American book of its time, read a bridge by its condition. A sound bridge crossed safely was taken as a good sign about overcoming difficulties, while a decayed or falling bridge was read as a sign of sorrow and loss. We report this as how people once read the image, not as a forecast.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What are you in the middle of crossing from, and toward what?
  2. Did the bridge feel like it would hold you? Where in your life do you feel that same trust or doubt?
  3. What was waiting on the other side, and did you want to reach it?

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. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  2. Calvin S. Hall, Vernon J. Nordby (1972). The Individual and His Dreams. New York: New American Library.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: continuity of dreams and waking concerns (reference not yet checked)

    Early statement of the continuity idea: dreams carry over the concerns of waking life.

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

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Bridge (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.