What does it mean to dream about vomiting?
Vomiting in a dream often points to a need to rid yourself of something that no longer agrees with you, a feeling, an influence, or a situation you cannot stomach.
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 body expelling what it cannot keep down as a vivid image of rejection. What is brought up may stand for a memory or feeling you wish to be rid of. He would ask what you are refusing to take in.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung might see a purging, the psyche casting out what it has wrongly absorbed. Vomiting can mark a necessary release before renewal. He would ask what you need to let go of.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
By continuity, vomiting often reflects waking disgust, stress, or a wish to expel something distasteful from your life. It can borrow a bodily image for an emotional rejection. The dream may mirror a situation you literally cannot stomach.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Purging and casting out run through ritual and story, from rites of cleansing to figures who disgorge what they have swallowed. The act marks a return to clean ground. The dream may echo that old link between expulsion and renewal.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Brewer).For writers
The same symbol, read as craft material rather than as a dream. What it does on the page, how genres use it differently, and what happens when you turn it inside out.
In literature
The body refusing something is an old device with a modern reputation problem: it reads as crude unless it is doing work. Sartre's Nausea, referenced rather than quoted, made physical revulsion into a philosophical position, and the older devotional and satirical traditions used the purge as a moral image, expelling what should not have been taken in.
The satirical and devotional purge tradition, public domain; Sartre, La Nausee (1938), referenced only.What it does in a story
Vomiting is the body overruling a character's decision, which makes it the bluntest possible contradiction between what someone has accepted and what they can actually tolerate. It is best used sparingly and never for shock alone.
Genre conventions
Literary fiction uses it for revulsion at a situation rather than a substance. Medical and addiction writing use it plainly and without metaphor, which is usually the more powerful choice. Comedy uses it for humiliation, and it is very hard to do without cheapening the scene.
How to subvert it
Write it as relief rather than distress, and let the character feel better and clearer afterward in a way that unsettles whoever is with them. Reversing the emotional charge stops the reader reading it as mere disgust.
Try this
Write a character who is physically sick after receiving good news, and never explain the connection to the reader.
The books behind these readings
These are the books this entry actually draws on. Where a text is in the public domain we link the free copy first, because you should not have to pay for something you can read for nothing.
-
The Interpretation of Dreams
The source behind every Freud reading in the dictionary. This is the 1913 Brill translation we adapt from, and it is free to read online.
-
Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
-
The Golden Bough
Cross-cultural context for the myth readings. Public domain and free to read online.
Rosmerta Publishing is a member of the Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates affiliate programs. If you buy a book through these links we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. The public-domain texts are always free to read online.