What does it mean to dream about cockroach?
A cockroach often points to disgust, a lingering problem that keeps returning, or something you wish you could be rid of for good.
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 might read the roach as a repellent wish or memory that resists every effort to stamp it out. Its return in the dark can picture how the repressed keeps coming back. He would ask what revulsion it stirs in you.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
For Jung the cockroach can image a stubborn shadow content, unloved yet remarkably resilient. Its survival hints that what we despise in ourselves does not simply disappear.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
In continuity terms a cockroach may echo recent disgust, an unclean setting, or a nagging problem that will not stay solved. The dream often mirrors a wish to clear something away.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Folklore tends to cast such hardy vermin as near-impossible to defeat, survivors of every calamity. Their endurance made them a byword for that which simply will not die.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer).