What does it mean to dream about bear?
A bear often stands for raw strength and the need to withdraw, a power that can protect or overwhelm depending on whether it is calm or roused.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the bear's force as a stand-in for a powerful figure or drive, often a parent or an authority felt as overbearing. The dreamer's fear or affection toward it points to the real association.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung linked the bear to the instinctual mother and to an unconscious power that hibernates and returns. Meeting it can mean facing a strength, or an anger, that has been sleeping.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
As a large predator the bear fits the threat-simulation idea when felt as danger. In calmer dreams, continuity readings tie it to a need for solitude, rest, or standing one's ground.
Threat-simulation theory (our summary).Mythological
Across the north the bear was kin to humans and a guardian spirit, honoured in Finnish, Sami, and many Native traditions, and tied to the goddess Artemis in Greece. It marks the boundary between the wild and the human.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Bulfinch).