What does it mean to dream about elbow?
An elbow often points to flexibility and effort, the room you make for yourself, or the small ways you push and lean through daily work.
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 elbow as a joint of action, tied to reaching, pushing, and making space. A stiff or injured elbow can mark a sense of being blocked in some effort the dreamer wishes to make.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see the elbow as a sign of the bend and give in how one moves through life, the capacity to adapt under pressure. A locked elbow may mark a rigidity the self is being asked to soften.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties the elbow to waking concerns about effort and elbow room, the need to push through or to find space among others. It often surfaces when a person feels crowded or strained at work.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Proverb made the elbow a measure of striving, the joint one uses to grease a way forward by sheer effort. To elbow through a crowd became an old image of pressing one's own claim in a tight world.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer; Bulfinch).