Dreaming about donkey
Donkeys are reported for refusal. The animal that will not move is the characteristic image, and it puts these reports with the effort-without-effect group rather than with the animal ones.
Also searched as: a donkey, an ass, a mule, a stubborn animal
Refusal to move is the dominant report, and dreamers describe pulling, pushing and getting nowhere.
That is the same structure as the legs that will not run and the machine that will not start, and grouping it there is more useful than treating it as an animal dream.
Carrying is the second theme, as with the camel, and load-bearing dreams are calm.
A donkey being mistreated appears in a small group and produces disproportionate distress, in the same way the other animals-in-trouble reports do.
Common associations
- Refusal, which is what the reports are actually about.
- Effort against something that will not move.
- Burden, in the carrying version.
- Mistreatment, in the distressing minority.
Positive readings
The load-bearing reports are calm and unremarkable.
The analytic value is in the grouping: recognising this as an effort dream rather than an animal dream redirects attention usefully.
Difficult readings
The refusal is frustrating rather than distressing.
The mistreatment reports are worth a note with the other empathic-distress ones.
Psychological perspectives
Motor commands are not executed in REM, so effort produces no result. A donkey is a culturally available object to attach that failure to, in the same way a lock or a gun is.
That is the entry's main point and it is why it links outward rather than inward.
The stubbornness association is doing the selection: a dream needing something that will not move reaches for the animal already labelled that way.
Cultural and historical
The donkey appears at several of the most significant moments in the gospels and in the Hebrew Bible, including one that speaks, and it is not a figure of ridicule in those texts.
The modern association with stupidity and stubbornness is largely English idiom and fable, and it is a considerable distance from the older material.
Donkeys remain essential working animals in many places, where none of this applies.
What the sleep science says
Well established: motor commands are not executed during REM, producing effort without result.
Reasonably supported: dreams select culturally available objects to attach a failure to.
Not established: any meaning for a donkey.
Your own context
- Did it move?
- What were you trying to make it do?
- Was it carrying anything?
- Was it being treated badly?
If this recurs
Log with the effort-without-effect reports. The animal is the costume.
Emotions often reported
- frustration
- effort
- fatigue
- tenderness
- anger
- helplessness
Specific donkey dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Did it move at all?
- What was I trying to get it to do?
- Was it carrying something?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream ProcessPeer-reviewed research
J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977) · American Journal of Psychiatry
Cited for: The activation-synthesis model: that dream narrative is partly the forebrain making sense of brainstem-generated activity.
- 2.The dream narratives of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (Genesis 20, 28, 37 and 40 to 41; Daniel 2, 4 and 7; Matthew 1 to 2 and 27; Acts 10 and 16)Religious or philosophical text
Various, compiled
Cited for: What the biblical texts themselves record about dreams: that they are treated as a channel of divine communication, that interpretation is presented as a gift rather than a technique, and which specific dreams and readings appear. Cited for what the text says, never as evidence about dreaming.
- 3.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
- 4.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of donkey have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolFeetFeet and legs are reported almost entirely through failure to move: legs that will not run, feet that stick, and steps that produce no distance. All of it has one explanation, and it is physiological rather than symbolic.
- AnimalHorseThe horse is the animal most consistently read as power under some degree of control, across an unusual number of unrelated traditions. The reports turn on whether the dreamer was riding, watching, or being carried somewhere they did not choose.
- AnimalCamelA camel arrives with a landscape attached. Dreamers report the desert around it more than the animal, which makes this one of the clearer cases of an image bringing its whole context with it.
- SymbolMachineMachines in dreams are reported through two failures that mirror each other: one that will not start, and one that will not stop. The second is considerably more common and more distressing.
- AnimalAn animal that speaksReported calmly and accepted entirely, which is the finding. A talking animal is a large impossibility and produces almost no objection, where a wrong staircase frequently produces some.
- AnimalBatBat reports are dominated by unpredictable movement in an enclosed space, and specifically by the head. The fear of a bat getting into hair is reported often enough to be its own thing, and it is largely a cultural artefact.
Records that mention donkey
These pages link to donkey, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.