Dreaming about ruins
Ruins are reported with curiosity rather than dread, and dreamers describe exploring them. What separates them from the abandoned-building reports is time: a ruin has been empty long enough that nobody is expected.
Also searched as: a ruined building, ruins in a dream, a derelict place, something falling down
Exploration is the characteristic activity, and dreamers describe moving through rather than being in.
Scale is frequently wrong. Ruins are reported as far larger than they should be, with more of them than the dreamer expected, and the impossible-extent material applies.
What was left behind is reported less here than in the abandoned-building material, which is the useful distinction: an abandoned place still has traces of people, a ruin has outlasted them.
Growth through stonework is a recurrent detail and dreamers mention it unprompted.
Common associations
- Time passed, which is what distinguishes a ruin from an abandonment.
- Exploration without threat.
- Impossible extent.
- Growth reclaiming, in the plant detail.
Positive readings
Genuinely absorbing dreams, and dreamers describe them with real interest.
The impossible extent is a workable dream sign.
Difficult readings
Very little. Where something is present in the ruins, the reports change and belong with the Bestiary material.
Psychological perspectives
The absence of dread is the notable part. A dark, unstable, enclosed space would be expected to produce the basement response, and it does not, which suggests that time rather than the physical features is carrying the report.
The extent problem is standard: nothing models the site, so it goes as far as the dreamer walks.
Continuity is weak for most dreamers, which puts the imagery largely on culture and on places people have visited.
Cultural and historical
Ruins as a subject for contemplation is a specific and quite recent European artistic preoccupation, and it shaped how a great many people look at them.
Older traditions treat ruined places quite differently, sometimes as inhabited and to be avoided, which is a serious belief in a number of contexts rather than a superstition.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: dream environments extend without constraint because nothing models them.
Reasonably supported: dreams supply the sense of elapsed time separately from any content showing it.
Not established: any meaning for ruins.
Your own context
- How long had it been empty?
- How did you know?
- Was it bigger than it should have been?
- Was anything living in it?
If this recurs
Log with the abandoned-building reports and note which it was. Dreamers frequently conflate them and they behave differently.
Emotions often reported
- curiosity
- wonder
- melancholy
- calm
- fascination
- unease
Specific ruins dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- How long had it been like that?
- How did I know?
- Was there more of it than there should be?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
3 references. What these labels mean
- 1.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.
- 2.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.
- 3.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 ruins 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
- SymbolWeedsWeeds are the plant version of the multiplication reports that run through the insect, rat and rabbit entries: they increase faster than they can be dealt with, and the dreamer never finishes.
- PlaceCastleCastles are almost entirely supplied by fiction, which makes them a useful case: for most dreamers this is an image with no personal experience behind it at all, and the reports show it.
- PlaceAbandoned buildingAbandoned buildings combine two strong dream elements: an interior to explore and evidence that people have gone. Reports centre on what was left behind rather than on the building.
- PlaceA building of stairsA recurrent and distinctive report: a building whose only content is stairs and levels that do not connect properly. It is the clearest single demonstration that dreams do not hold a floor plan.
- PlaceLibraryLibraries are among the calmest settings people report, and the reports are dominated by two things: an impossible amount of shelving, and the inability to read anything on it.
- PlaceA borderBorder dreams are document dreams, and they run into the finding that makes them almost inevitable: a passport is a piece of text with a photograph in it, and dreams can render neither.
Records that mention ruins
These pages link to ruins, 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.