“I am in a brightly lit room. A woman in a white coat leans towards me and says something. I spit three or four teeth into the tray. But there is no pain, no blood either. Jungian analyst Stanislav Raevsky deciphers the picture that our reader saw in a dream.
Dream of Margarita, 30 years old
“I am in a brightly lit room. A woman in a white coat leans towards me, shines a lamp in my face, and says something quickly. She has a harsh, unpleasant voice. I can’t make out the words, but I guess she’s telling me to open my mouth.
I spit three or four teeth into the tray. They are too large, and with my tongue I feel for huge holes in the gums. But there is no pain, no blood. I often dream that my teeth are falling out, and the feeling of these dreams is always disturbing, as if I have to do something, but I don’t understand what.
Interpretation
“A dream about teeth falling out causes strong feelings. The interpretation of dream books is well known: this is for the illness or death of loved ones. Where does this interpretation come from? When we lose teeth, we lose part of our body. Loss of a tooth is concrete, palpable, real.
For our distant ancestors, the loss of teeth meant that they would starve and were unlikely to survive. Today, thanks to the achievements of civilization, we do not associate the loss of teeth with death. But the archaic metaphor continues to operate in us. As if the psyche uses the language of our ancestors.
The teeth in the mouth can resemble a large family gathered together. Then the loss of a tooth is the loss of one of the relatives, the loss in our ranks. But in your case, this is not the case.
Your dream is more about psychological losses
In the letter, you write about a father who left the family when you were 10 years old. This is one loss, the other is your divorce. Although the ex-husband continues to communicate with his son, you are worried that the boy grows up in an incomplete family and does not see his father more often.
Three or four teeth that you lost in a dream symbolize significant losses. There is no blood in the mouth, but the teeth and holes are too big. Perhaps your spiritual wounds do not bleed, but continue to feel like empty spaces.
Psychologists pay a lot of attention to coping with losses and the work of grief. If such work is not done, the losses are not accepted and mourned, they continue to disturb, they can interfere with living and developing further.
Aggression is another topic related to teeth.
Showing aggression, animals show their teeth. From your letter, it seemed to me that you were suppressing your aggression, not allowing yourself to be angry with those who abandoned you. You may have had your teeth “taken away” as a child, being told that it’s not good to be angry.
Mom or another woman, as in your dream, inspired that you should not be aggressive. Girls are shamed for aggression much more often than boys, which leads adult women to direct aggression at themselves. This leads to depression and the “I am the victim” attitude.
A dream about teeth, although it does not speak of the imminent death of relatives, recalls the inevitability of death someday. Often we postpone life until later, fantasizing that it is endless.
But death in white clothes shines in our eyes and makes us feel the great value of every moment. Acceptance of one’s death can be a cure for boredom and depression, it can significantly change both a person and his relationship with others.