Corpse

Feelings or actions you have denied. For instance you might kill your love for someone if they hurt you. This could be shown as a dead body in your dreams. Some feeling, such as sympathy, forgiveness, that we have deadened. We may say, Why should I forgive them, they don’t deserve it, and this attitude can prevent parts of our inner feelings living or expressing consciously. Fear of death; desire to see someone dead, or out of the way.

Usually in these dream you, the dreamer, have killed or murdered the corpse you see in the dream. Often it is a part we do not want to know about because of traumatic pain associated with it, or because it is because of the pain we felt about that part of us. See murder

In a few dreams the corpse represents feelings about disease, human vulnerability and mortality.

Example: It was something like a semi detached and sited on a slope. I was outdoors and I think felt or knew that we had just taken over this house. But I felt uneasy as if something from the past was linked with it.

Then I was at the back of the house, on the part sloping down from the back wall of the house. I noticed things covering what turned out to be a big hole dug against the back wall, deep into the soil. This was where I felt most ill at ease about the place.  The hole had been covered with bits of board and other odd pieces of junk. I lifted these at the left of the hole and looked in. Sticking out from the side of the hole, about three feet down was the dead body of a young man. I could see the back of his skull had been smashed in. But although he had obviously been under the soil for some time, and had now been uncovered, the body was still in good condition, being slightly dried out or mummified.

I felt really guilty and connected with the body, as if I had been part of his murder, and was wondering frantically what I could do to hide or get rid of the body. Part of the problem was that pulling it out risked being seen with it.

In ‘being’ the body in the dream the man said, “But it wasn’t until I got into the role of the dead body that any depth of feelings emerged.  Almost as soon as I was in the role of the dead body I began to think about and feel things connected with the way I had killed my sexuality as a teenager.  Gradually these feelings deepened and I was describing my feeling hatred in regard to sexuality and how the masses were pulled along by their genitals into some sort of conformity and performance.  I felt anger and loathing for what I felt at the time were the cattle human beings were. At the time I despised and hated them.  I also felt repugnance at the way people talked about sex or appeared to enjoy it.  It has to be understood that in that period in history in the UK, most of sex was depicted in terms of smut, dirt, animal desire, hidden pornography, or loveless fucking.   I wept deeply, at times hardly able to breathe, with the pain of seeing what I had done to myself.  I said sorry over and over.  I saw that I need not have killed my love and sexuality, but could have expressed it in a tender and loving way.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I killed this body – if so what am I killing or denying in myself?

If I imagine myself as this body what do I feel or connect with in myself?

Do I know the person who is dead – if so what is my relationship with them – have I removed them from my love?

See: Being the Person or Thing – death – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Dead Body