Dreaming about wardrobe
Two dreams share this object and they are not related. A wardrobe full of clothes that are not yours, and a wardrobe with something in it, which is a childhood fear that persists into adult reports more than people expect.
Also searched as: a cupboard, a closet, clothes in a wardrobe, something in the wardrobe, a wardrobe door
Clothes that are not the dreamer's is the commoner report and is described with puzzlement rather than alarm. Dreamers often describe knowing whose they are without evidence.
Something in the wardrobe is the childhood version and it persists. Adults report it, and report the specific structure of a door slightly open and not being able to look.
A wardrobe leading somewhere is reported by a noticeable number of dreamers and is almost entirely supplied by one very famous book, which is worth being honest about.
An empty wardrobe is a small and quite bleak report and belongs with the moving-house material.
Common associations
- Clothes that are not yours, with certainty about whose.
- A door not quite shut, in the childhood version.
- A route elsewhere, supplied by fiction.
- Emptiness, in the moving reports.
Positive readings
The route-elsewhere version is reported with delight and is one of the clearer cases of a cultural image producing a pleasant dream.
Being honest about where it comes from does not diminish it.
Difficult readings
The something-in-it version produces genuine unease and shares its mechanism with the under-the-bed and dark-space reports: a threat that cannot be resolved because it is never seen.
It is worth saying that its persistence into adulthood is ordinary rather than odd.
Psychological perspectives
A partly open door onto an unlit enclosed space is close to an ideal unresolvable-threat setup: something could be there, nothing can be checked, and the vigilance does not settle.
That is the same structure the darkness, basement and cave entries describe, in a much smaller container.
The not-mine clothes are the usual unearned certainty about ownership, which the house entry describes from the other direction.
Cultural and historical
The wardrobe as a passage is one of the most successful single images in twentieth-century children's fiction and it is unusually traceable, which makes it a good case study in cultural supply.
The monster in the cupboard is transmitted to children deliberately and repeatedly and then persists, which is worth noticing about how dream content is inherited.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: unresolvable threat cues sustain unease with nothing present.
Reasonably supported: dreams supply ownership and identity without evidence.
Not established: any meaning for a wardrobe.
Your own context
- Whose clothes were they?
- How did you know?
- Was the door shut?
- Did you look?
If this recurs
Log by version. The clothes and the something-in-it are two dreams that share furniture, and they recur independently.
Emotions often reported
- unease
- confusion
- dread
- curiosity
- wonder
- alarm
Specific wardrobe dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Where it happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Whose clothes were in it?
- Was the door open?
- Did I look inside?
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 Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of DreamingPeer-reviewed research
Antti Revonsuo (2000) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Cited for: The threat-simulation hypothesis. That the over-representation of threatening content in dreams may be functional rather than incidental.
- 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.Sleep Paralysis and the Structure of Waking-Nightmare HallucinationsPeer-reviewed research
J. Allan Cheyne (2003) · Dreaming
Cited for: The three-factor structure of sleep-paralysis hallucinations (intruder, incubus and vestibular-motor experiences) which accounts for the recurring "presence in the room" and "pressure on the chest" reports.
- 4.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.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of wardrobe 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
- PlaceBedroomThe bedroom is the one setting where a dream can be mistaken for the room you are actually in, and that makes it different from every other entry here. A large share of frightening bedroom dreams are sleep paralysis rather than dreams about a bedroom.
- SymbolClothesClothes in dreams are reported through inappropriateness rather than through the garments. The recurring situation is being dressed wrongly for where you are, and discovering it in front of people.
- SymbolDarknessDarkness in dreams is not the absence of an image. Dreamers describe an active inability to see, frequently with light sources that do not work, and that failure is one of the most reliable features of dream perception.
- SymbolA crackCracks are one of the few things dreams reliably show growing, which is unusual: dreams produce states far more readily than transitions, and a spreading crack is a transition being watched.
- SymbolA holeA hole is an absence with edges, and dreams handle it the way they handle every absence: the edges are generated and what is beyond them is not. Dreamers report being unable to see in, and being certain about what is there.
- SymbolA language you do not speakDreamers report understanding and speaking languages they do not know, fluently and without effort. What is happening is not translation: the dream is supplying comprehension the way it supplies every other kind of knowing.
Figures people report during these dreams
From the archives, and held to their own evidence standard rather than to the one on this page. Reported alongside wardrobe often enough to be worth naming.
