Spear in a dream: what does it mean?
The commonest weapon in human history, because it is a stick with a point and it outreaches everything cheaper.
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 reach. A weapon whose whole advantage is keeping the other person further away is about distance rather than force, and he would ask what the dreamer wanted to deal with without getting close.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that it is the weapon nobody remembers. Swords are what people picture and spears are what almost everybody actually carried, because a sword costs a month's wages and a spear does not.
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?
Threat and pursuit appear among the most frequently reported dream themes across samples, and threat-simulation treats their rehearsal as its central claim, though the theory is contested.
Our summary of threat-simulation theory. See Revonsuo, 'The reinterpretation of dreams: an evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6), 2000, 877-901. The theory is contested.What do myth and folklore say?
A sword needs a great deal of good steel and a spear needs a handful, so for most of history the man in the line had a spear and the sword belonged to somebody who could afford one.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; 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?
Everybody pictures swords. Almost everybody actually carried a spear, because a sword cost what a family lived on for a month.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Advantage that consists entirely of distance.
What are the genre conventions?
A line of points, all at the same height, and nobody closing.
How to subvert it
Write the sword losing to it.
Try this
Two hundred words about the thing everybody used being the thing nobody remembers.
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.
-
The Golden Bough
Cross-cultural context for the myth readings. Public domain and free to read online.
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.