Dreaming about letter
Letters in dreams are almost never read. The characteristic report is an envelope that is not opened, or is opened and cannot be made out, and the dreamer usually knows who it is from without evidence.
Also searched as: a letter, post, mail, an envelope, a message
The unopened envelope is the commonest image, and dreamers often describe waking before opening it.
Where it is opened, the text problem applies exactly as it does to books: the words do not resolve, or change, or are in the wrong script.
The sender is usually known without being stated, and very often is somebody who has died. That version is a distinct and well-populated group and belongs with the grief material.
Undelivered or misdirected post appears in a smaller group and produces a specific frustration.
Common associations
- A message that does not arrive, which is the structure of nearly every report.
- Knowing the sender without evidence, the unearned-certainty pattern again.
- Contact with the dead, in a substantial subgroup.
- Something pending, in the unopened reports.
Positive readings
Letters from people who have died are frequently reported as comforting rather than eerie, and they are one of the recognised forms of grief dream.
Dreamers occasionally report the content being clear and meaningful, and those reports are remembered for a long time, which is worth noting given how rarely text resolves.
Difficult readings
The unopened letter produces a specific suspended anxiety, and dreamers often describe it as the whole dream.
Where the letter carries bad news that is known but unread, the reports are distressing and dreamers usually connect them to something actually pending.
Psychological perspectives
The text problem does most of the work here, as it does for books. A dream cannot generate a page of stable prose, so it generates the situation of a message instead.
That may be exactly why the sender is known without evidence: the dream supplies the relationship, which it can do easily, rather than the content, which it cannot.
The grief version fits the wider literature on bereavement dreams, which are common and are usually reported as comforting.
Cultural and historical
Written messages from the dead, and the idea of a message that arrives by an unexpected route, appear across a great deal of folklore and fiction.
The letter as an object is also fading from daily life, and it will be worth watching whether these reports move to other media over time. As things stand the envelope is still what dreamers describe.
What the sleep science says
Well documented: the instability of text in dreams.
Reasonably supported: the frequency of bereavement dreams and their generally comforting character.
Not established: any meaning for the letter as an object.
Your own context
- Did you open it?
- Could you read it?
- Who was it from, and how did you know?
- Is something actually pending?
If this recurs
A recurring letter from somebody who has died belongs with the grief reports rather than here, and those are worth logging with care because they are usually meaningful to the dreamer.
Emotions often reported
- anticipation
- anxiety
- longing
- grief
- curiosity
- tenderness
Specific letter dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Did I open it?
- Who was it from and how did I know?
- Could I read a single word?
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.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 2.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.
- 3.Gender Differences in Dream Recall: A Meta-AnalysisPeer-reviewed research
Michael Schredl and Iris Reinhard (2008) · Journal of Sleep Research
Cited for: Dream-recall frequency as a measurable, individually stable trait, and the factors that move it.
- 4.Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical ResearchAcademic book
Jennifer M. Windt (2015) · MIT Press
Cited for: A modern philosophical treatment of what dreams are, including the immersive-spatiotemporal-hallucination account and the status of dream reports as evidence.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of letter 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
- SymbolPhoneThe phone that will not work is one of the most reported modern dream frustrations: wrong numbers, no signal, keys that will not press, and calls that do not connect. It belongs squarely with the effort-without-effect family.
- SymbolBookBooks are reported almost entirely through the failure to read them, and that failure is one of the few dream phenomena with a solid explanation behind it: text in dreams is genuinely unstable.
- PersonDead relativeDreams of the dead are extremely common in bereavement, are frequently reported as comforting rather than distressing, and are taken seriously by grief researchers as part of how mourning proceeds. What they are not is evidence of contact.
- EmotionGriefGrief dreams are a normal and well-studied part of bereavement, and a large proportion of people who have them describe them as comforting rather than painful.
- SymbolMapA map is the worst possible object to hand a dreamer. It is text, it is fine detail, and it claims to describe a space that has no underlying model, so it fails on three counts at once.
- SymbolMaskMasks are reported for one reason: they remove a face that the dreamer needs to read. The unease they produce is the same unease the faceless-person reports describe, and the two belong together.
Records that mention letter
These pages link to letter, 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.