Solder in a dream: what does it mean?
An alloy that melts at a lower temperature than the things it joins, so it can flow between them without damaging either.
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 sacrifice of melting point. A material chosen for giving way at a lower temperature is defined by yielding first, and he would ask who in the dreamer's arrangement went soft so the others need not.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that a good joint is thin. Too much solder is weaker than a little, so the connection improves as the amount of connecting material goes down.
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?
Materials and skilled work appear in dream reports according to handling, and continuity research finds craft activity reproduced by those who practise it.
Our summary of the continuity hypothesis, named by Calvin Hall and Vernon Nordby, The Individual and His Dreams (1972). Its correct scope is disputed; see Domhoff (2017) and the replies to him.What do myth and folklore say?
The metal has to wet the surfaces to work, which is why the parts are cleaned and fluxed, and a joint that looks full and rounded is generally a bad one.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.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?
A joint that looks generous is usually a failure. The good one is thin and slightly concave and looks like nothing.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Yielding first so that nothing else has to.
What are the genre conventions?
A bright thin line where two things meet, and no bead at all.
How to subvert it
Write it melting last.
Try this
Two hundred words about a connection that gets stronger the less there is of it.
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.