Bung in a dream: what does it mean?
The stopper in the side of a cask, which has to seal completely and come out easily, and those are opposite requirements.
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 two demands. It is asked to hold tight and to yield when wanted, and he would ask what the dreamer needs to be both closed and openable.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note the material. Wood swells when wet, so the seal gets tighter the longer it is in, which makes the second requirement harder the better the first is met.
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?
Openings and things being sealed appear in dream reports, and content analysis records such objects among ordinary reported dream content.
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?
Bung is one of very few brewing words that became a general verb, in the sense of throwing something somewhere, which travelled a long way from a barrel.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.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?
The longer it holds well the harder it is to get out. Doing one job properly makes the other job worse.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Two requirements that work against each other.
What are the genre conventions?
A wooden plug driven flush, and a mallet kept nearby for later.
How to subvert it
Write the bung that comes out easily and never leaks.
Try this
Two hundred words about a thing asked to do two opposite jobs.
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.