ENEMY

Dream Meaning

An enemy in a dream rarely represents the specific person it appears to be — instead, it most often embodies the aspects of yourself, or of a difficult life situation, that you have not yet been willing to approach without the protective coloring of opposition. Carl Jung called this the Shadow: the parts of ourselves we disown, project outward, and then encounter as threat.

Confronting and defeating this enemy in a dream suggests that your psychological resources are equal to the internal or external challenge facing you. Running from the enemy reveals avoidance — and the dream may be gently noting that what you flee does not disappear but simply waits at a later turning.

The bravest thing you can do upon waking is ask: what is this figure in me that I have refused to acknowledge?