Cower in a dream: what does it mean?
Making yourself small in front of somebody, which is a whole-body admission that the other person is in charge.
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 what it concedes. The posture settles the question of who is stronger before anything happens, and he would ask what the dreamer had given up in advance.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that it can invite what it fears. Making yourself small is meant to end a threat and can be read as confirmation that it will work, which is a hard thing to know and harder to act on.
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?
Threat and helplessness recur throughout dream reports, and the typical-dreams literature lists being attacked or pursued among the most common themes.
Our summary of the typical-dreams literature. See Nielsen et al., Dreaming 13(4), 2003, 211-235.What do myth and folklore say?
The word is from an old northern verb for crouching or shrinking, and it has always meant the shape rather than the feeling.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after 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?
It is meant to end the threat, and it can be read as proof that threatening works.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Conceding the question of who is stronger, with a shape.
What are the genre conventions?
Shoulders up, head down, back against something.
How to subvert it
Write cowering as a tactic that works.
Try this
Two hundred words about settling an argument by getting smaller.
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.
-
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.
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.