Sorrel in a dream: what does it mean?
A sharp lemony leaf whose acidity comes from oxalic acid, so it tastes of citrus in a country that grew none.
How do the four traditions 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. The four often disagree, and that is the point: a symbol rarely means one fixed thing, and the distance between Freud, Jung, modern research and myth tells you more than any single verdict could.
How did Freud read this symbol?
Freud would attend to the substitution. A plant supplying a flavour nobody in the north could otherwise get was doing a job before the thing it imitates arrived, and he would ask what the dreamer had made do with.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that it was there first. Sorrel sauce for fish predates lemons being available, so the lemon replaced a native plant rather than introducing a new idea.
Our summary of a Jungian reading, in our own words, not Jung's. See Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols (1964).What does modern dream research say?
Food and taste appear in dream reports, and content analysis finds taste noted only occasionally and generally when sharp or unexpected.
Our summary of the content-analysis findings. See Hall and Van de Castle, The Content Analysis of Dreams (1966).What do myth and folklore say?
It was the standard sharp green sauce across northern Europe, and it fell out of use as citrus became cheap enough to buy rather than because anything was wrong with it.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Brewer).How can writers use this symbol?
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. Written for novelists, screenwriters and poets who need the symbol to actually work, and it ends with something to try.
Where does this appear in literature?
Lemons replaced it. Northern kitchens had a sharp green sauce for centuries and then simply bought the imported version instead.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
The local answer that an import made redundant.
What are the genre conventions?
A shield-shaped leaf, a sharp taste, and a sauce for fish.
How to subvert it
Write it back on the menu.
Try this
Two hundred words about something perfectly good that stopped being used because something else got cheap.
Only the first of these names a source. What a symbol does in a story, how genres treat it, how to invert it and what to try are our editorial judgement as writers and editors, not findings from a body of research. They are offered as craft opinion and should be argued with.
The books behind these readings
These are the books this entry actually draws on, not a general reading list. 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. Every edition listed has been checked to exist and to be the right one.
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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.
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Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
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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.