What does it mean to dream about handcuffs?
Handcuffs usually stand for being restrained, caught, or held against your will, so it helps to ask who put them on you and whether you could break free.
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 would read being bound as an image of restraint placed on desire, the holding back of an impulse, sometimes with its own charge. Being cuffed can carry both guilt and a darker wish.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung might see handcuffs as the binding of a part of yourself, a power or instinct held in check. Who fastens them can show whether the restraint comes from outside or from within.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Being seized and cuffed sets off the brain's rehearsal of capture and helplessness, keeping you primed to escape a hold. The trapped feeling often mirrors a real sense of being caught or unable to act.
Threat-simulation theory (our summary).Mythological
The binding of the powerful runs through myth as the chaining of the monstrous wolf and the fettering of the rebel god, captives held by bonds that even strength could not break. To be bound was to have one's will overruled by a greater force.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).