What does it mean to dream about eel?
An eel often points to something slippery and hard to grasp, a person, a feeling, or a truth that keeps sliding out of your hands.
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 eel as a slippery, elusive drive, often with a charge of bodily desire, that resists being held or named. Its evasions could picture a wish that will not be pinned down. He would ask your own associations.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
For Jung the eel can image a deep, elusive content of the unconscious, at home in dark water and impossible to seize. It often appears when something important keeps escaping the grasp.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
In continuity terms an eel may echo a recent sense that someone or something is slippery and evasive. The dream often mirrors frustration at not getting a firm hold.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
In river and sea lore the eel was a creature of mystery, its origins long unknown and its travels strange. Some traditions read it as uncanny, half hidden in the mud.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer).