What does it mean to dream about octopus?
An octopus often pictures a situation with many arms at once, something complex, entangling, or hard to hold all at the same time.
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 reaching arms as drives that grip from several directions, or a feeling of being held by something you cannot easily shake. Its ink and hiding can picture concealment. He would ask what the creature suggests to you.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
For Jung the octopus can image the deep unconscious in a many-armed form, intelligent yet alien, able to grasp and to vanish. It often appears when the psyche feels both clever and entangled.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
In continuity terms an octopus may echo a recent sense of being pulled in many directions or tangled in a complicated matter. The dream often mirrors feeling stretched across too many tasks.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Sea myths often picture great many-armed creatures of the deep, dwellers in a realm beyond human reach. Sailors' tales filled the ocean with such grasping monsters.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer).