Sawing in a dream: what does it mean?
Cutting by removing a line of material rather than splitting it, which is why the width of the blade matters and why sawdust exists.
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 rhythm, since sawing is one of the few tasks where two people can work a single tool and must match each other exactly or it binds.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might take a cut that consumes part of what it divides as worth noticing, since nothing is ever quite the same length after it as before.
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?
The kerf is the width the blade removes, and a joiner has to account for it on every cut, which is why measuring twice matters. Somebody who cuts on the wrong side of a pencil line is out by the thickness of the blade.
Our summary of the continuity position. See Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities (2003).What do myth and folklore say?
The two-man pit saw had one man above and one in a pit below, and the man underneath got the sawdust in his eyes for his whole working life. The lower position was the junior one and the phrase about being the underdog is sometimes traced to it. The etymology is disputed and the working conditions are not.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer).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 pitman standing in a hole all day with dust falling on him is the underwritten half of a job everybody has seen illustrated from above.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
The cut that consumes part of what it divides.
What are the genre conventions?
Two men and a log, in a montage about work.
How to subvert it
Write the pit, and the man in it.
Try this
Two hundred words about two people who must match each other exactly.
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.