Painful housing problems, lack of “space” in relationships, a reason to sort out your inner world – Jungian analyst Stanislav Raevsky explains what a dream about choosing an apartment can mean.
“I often see dreams in which I choose an apartment or a house for myself: I walk with someone into an empty building, look at the rooms, imagine the future environment, plan where I will put a bed, a sofa, other furniture … I dream about buying a new home at least five or six times a year for 12 years, what could that mean?”
Natalia, 34 years
Recurring dreams should be given special attention. Such dreams speak of some important unresolved problem or issue to which we constantly unconsciously return. We may not think about it during the day, but at night this topic pops up again and again.
Start with simple questions. To what extent is my housing problem solved now? Do I like my current home? Do I want to find a new apartment? Perhaps your dream simply reflects a desire that is not satisfied in reality?
A recurring dream can also indicate an unresolved childhood problem. Think back to where you spent your childhood. Your children’s room, apartment, house. Often psychologists specifically ask the client to remember the room of his childhood, as this memory will help to revive the main early traumas in memory. Someone did not have enough space, someone constantly fought for it, and someone, on the contrary, felt their children’s space as too empty and lonely.
Perhaps we compensate for the desire to own housing for the inability to have personal space in previous generations.
Now ask yourself questions about your current relationship. Do I have enough space in them? Do I want to run away from them to a new place? With whom would I like to share it? Organizing a shared space is the best test of compatibility. Building a new home can be the basis for intimacy, but it can also be the cause of a broken relationship. Any architect will tell you how difficult it is to combine the interests and tastes of the whole family in a project.
Some topics are passed down to us by inheritance. It is no coincidence that Woland said about Muscovites: “The same people, they were simply spoiled by the housing problem.” Years of individualization and the fight against private property, the policy of compaction and the experience of communal apartments and hostels have made our culture homeless. Being the owner of your own apartment in previous generations was a special luxury, even something indecent. Hence the passion in our society for owning one’s own home. If in modern Western society it is natural to rent an apartment, then for Russian reality it is very important that it be owned. And maybe we compensate with our thirst for new housing for the impossibility of having personal space with previous generations.
An apartment or a house in dreams can be understood as a symbol of your “I”
Finish with the most important questions. Who am I? How is my inner world organized? Am I good with myself? Is it time for a major change? An apartment or a house in dreams can be understood as a symbol of your “I”. The psychologist, by offering to imagine a house, can learn a lot about the client’s ideas about himself. The appearance of the house can tell about the image, the image of yourself that you would like to show to others. And the internal structure of the house is about how you imagine your interior space.
There is a good joke. The man was asked how his vacation was, and he replied: “It was a wonderful place, but, unfortunately, I took myself there.” Often the anxiety and desire to change one’s habitat reflects a natural desire for inner change. Until these changes take place, no new housing will become a true home for us. And vice versa, for those who are in harmony with themselves, there is a home everywhere.
At the end of these thoughts about buying an apartment, it is worth thinking about your place in the world. The desire to cling to a place or person often reflects our fear of freedom and open space. It is natural for us to settle in nature, turning chaos into an orderly space at home. But for recreation, we choose the sea or the mountains, those places where the eye does not rest on the wall, where we do not need a hole or shelter. Often behind the phrase “I have no place here” is hidden another meaning: “I have no place for these feelings or for these people.” Our mind is an infinite space in which all the houses of this world can fit.