Waving in a dream: what does it mean?
Moving a hand to be seen at a distance, which is the only gesture designed for people too far away to hear you.
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 two versions. Hello and goodbye use the same movement, and he would ask which one the dreamer's was.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note the worst outcome. Waving at somebody who was waving at the person behind you is a small disaster with no recovery, and everybody has done it.
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?
Greetings, partings and distance appear in dream reports, and content analysis records social interaction as the dominant dream activity.
Our summary of the content-analysis findings. See Hall and Van de Castle, The Content Analysis of Dreams (1966).What do myth and folklore say?
A white handkerchief was waved from trains and quaysides because a hand alone does not carry, which is why the object outlived the practice in stories.
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?
Hello and goodbye are the same movement, and waving at somebody who meant the person behind you has no recovery.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
A gesture built for people too far off to hear.
What are the genre conventions?
An arm above a crowd, at a barrier.
How to subvert it
Write the wave that reaches nobody.
Try this
Two hundred words about being seen across a distance.
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.