What does it mean to dream about compassion?
Compassion in a dream usually reflects a movement of care toward someone's suffering, and who you felt for can point to where your tenderness is drawn.
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 compassion as feeling that may rest on an identification, the self recognizing its own hurt in another's. He held that pity for another can carry a softened concern for oneself. The tenderness may reach toward a wound of one's own.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see compassion as the self extending toward what suffers, often toward a figure who carries a hurting part of oneself. He treated such care as a sign of inner integration, the harsh judge giving way to mercy. The feeling can mark a kindness owed within as well as without.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity research ties dream compassion to waking relationships and the people whose suffering we hold in mind. Some accounts suggest dreaming keeps our bonds and concerns in view. The tenderness is worth reading against who you are caring for now.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Myth honored the merciful figure, the goddess who heard the cry of the suffering, the stranger shown kindness on the road. Compassion was treated as near to the divine. Across cultures the one who pitied the fallen was often the one the gods favored in return.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).