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Lice in dreams: what it can mean

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The short answer

Lice are small, hard to get rid of and embarrassing. Many dreamers connect them with a nagging worry, feeling unclean, or something close to them that drains their energy.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Insects and small crawling creatures appear among the typical themes people report in dream surveys, often with disgust or itchiness. The continuity view points back to waking concerns: petty problems that keep multiplying, fear of what others will notice, or a relationship that takes more than it gives. Parents of school age children also dream of lice for the obvious reason.

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus linked lice to worries and hardship, and treated getting free of them as relief from those troubles. His readings changed with the dreamer's circumstances, so he would have asked who you are and what you are carrying before saying more.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read lice as a sign of disagreeable company and worry. This is one old popular reading, given here as history and not as a prediction about your health.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What small problem in your life keeps coming back no matter what you do?
  2. Were you worried someone would notice?
  3. Is someone or something close to you draining more than you notice?

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. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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 III, on lice (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.

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

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Lice (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.