Door Doors

Freud felt that a door, a keyhole, a handle, a knocker, all depicted sex and sexual organs. The first example shows this clearly. Knocking refers to the sex act, the cul-de-sac is the woman’s legs.

But the image of a door has so many other ways of being expressed in dreams and is used very frequently. In the first example it represents the experience of discovering a new feeling state. For instance if one had always been apologetic and now became affirmative, ‘new doors’ of experience could well open.

Example: Dreamt I run away from police into a cul-de-sac. It is night and I cannot see a thing. I feel my way to a door, and knocked. An old woman of about 60 comes to the door. Although old she is healthy and well preserved. Without a word I grab her in my arms and embrace her sexually. Then she is naked and I feel her cold flesh against mine and I have intercourse with her. As I do so, she moans in apprehension and pleasure. I know that she has had no sexual life for 20 years, and I have now awoken her passions again. She takes me to an upstairs room, and I believe her husband comes back, but she gets rid of him somehow, I think for good. When she’s back upstairs, she notices the window is open, and a strong wind blows the curtains apart. This terrifies her into feelings of guilt and shame, and she makes me hide behind the bed while she tries to close the window. She leans out of the window to push her neighbour’s curtains back also, and falls to her death. I then wander in gardens outside.

This is a description of the whole Oedipus complex as stated by Freud.

General meanings depending on dream: Remember that context is everything in understanding your dream. So depending on context it can indicate a boundary; the difference between one feeling state and another, such as depression and feeling motivated. A barrier to change or growth or the passing from inside oneself to exterior life. The feelings or attitudes, such as aloofness, we use to shut others out of our life to remain independent or private and being open or inviting. See Context Theme

A sense of leaving an environment or relationship – or escape. A door can be an entering into a new work or relationship situation; entrance to a new life style, or a new phase of one’s life. Or conversely, an exit from one situation into another. The door can also show how you are open or inviting, or how you leave or enter an environment or relationship a life style, or a phase of your life. This is usually shown by the place, room or environment the door leads to or from.

In each of our lives there are initiations into new experiences or maturity. These are often shown as doors. So at puberty we are initiated into sexual development and a wider sympathy. At marriage we may face a door to parenthood and an initiation into motherhood. Do you enter those doors, and if so with what feelings? Why not walk beyond the door and see who, what, is on the other side.

An actual example of this is of a woman who wrote telling of a recurring dream in which she discovered a door in her house she had never seen before. Beyond it was a whole apartment she has never known or used. It was obviously an area of her life she had never lived in, but she had no idea what it was. So, the technique of exploring the dream while awake was explained, and she imagined walking into the new apartment and observing what she felt and what memories arose. A soon as she entered the apartment she began to remember and feel again things that had happened in her childhood. Her mother and father had separated when she was very young and her mother had constantly presented her father as weak and of no value. But the feelings that arose were of the love of beauty and art that her father had shared and helped unfold in her. But she had kept that part of her closed because of what her mother had said. Now it was open to her again and she could allow it to unfold further in her life.  An important point here is that the woman did this working alone on her dream, not with professional help or supervision. See Dreams – Practical Techniques – Potential

I see that we have created a great screen of our mind onto which we have projected all these images. Out of our own need, out of our own hopes, out of our own fear we have played all these images onto the screen. What grabs us beyond the door is the power of the suppressed desires and fantasies, our fears, our hopes for love, a longing for beautiful sex. They seem to have a life of their own – which they have – because they have been denied so long that when one allows them they are full of suppressed energy. The more one has suppressed oneself the more power that image has – the more power it has in ones life.

Back door: Our private, family life; our more secret activities; the anus.

Black door: The barrier that ones fears or apprehensions set up; the unknown, but perhaps imagined in a way that does not relate to reality. Going through the black door may therefore lead to a freedom from the limiting fears.

To close a door: To be closed emotionally, or to end or shut something out. Often this requires a decision or strong feeling. Or it might be a response to protect yourself or someone/something else.

Door to strange landscape of world: Finding entrance into unconscious, a way into wonderland – in other words the infinite world of our mind or consciousness.

Doorknob – See: knob.

Front door: Public self; confidence; our relationship with people in general; a vagina.

Leaving door open: this can suggest that you remain ready and sympathetic to new ideas, a relationship, or to move in and out of a situation. It can also mean you are leaving the door open to a new relationship or sexual activity.

Glass doors: Invisible barriers in the way of your goals or possibilities; being able to see through to the possibility of change.

Opening a door: Is a very powerful thing in a dream and it depends what you are opening the door to – is it the unknown; is it a lover; a business opportunity; something frightening; a new experience and a new room; or is it an old room full of memories, associations, things long forgotten that you can reclaim? Is it someone else’s dwelling and you are unsure of a welcome. Whatever it is look it up in the rest of the dictionary, or explore for yourself using Techniques for Working your Dreams

Opening a door for me: If someone opens a door for you in a positive way, it suggests the person has, through meeting you, helped you to find or develop a very new experience, skill or method that is helpful to you.

Room with no doors: This can represent a feeling of being trapped with no way out of a situation. Or if you are outside the room a feeling of being excluded.

Shutting a door: Privacy; trying to find ‘space’ for oneself; the dismissing attitudes or tension we use to shut others out of intimate contact; repressing memories or feelings; decisively ending something.

Side door: Escaping from a situation or being indirect.

Someone at a door: Opportunity; the unexpected; new experience or relationship.

Waiting outside a door: Waiting outside the door – what a wonderful symbol that is. What a beautiful symbol. It represents all that we have as humanity placed behind the door. All of the gods, all of the images, all of the dreams, all opportunity, all of our fears, the devil, the angels. All that we place behind the door within ourselves. And they are only available to us if we walk through the door.

Car doors: Your way of letting other people share you life. The passenger door in particular refers to the people you let near you or push away if you do not let them in your car.

The car door can also suggest allowing something to be seen or as access to things you have ‘within you’. The door is a barrier, a protective shield against people trying to harm you, or against other influences.  The lock on the door links with how confident you feel about your own strength. Not being able to open your car doors shows you feeling a loss, or at a loss. It is a loss of power to be able to go where you want, or to access what you have in the car. This is like being pushed right back onto your very personal resources.

Example: ‘I am being strangled from behind by a faceless man! I had gone down to lock my flat door for the night when I noticed the door was open. I hastily bolted it and ran upstairs, but unknown to me the intruder was already in the flat.’ Miss H.

Here the door represents the censorship the dreamer places between her conscious self and her sexual drives. In ‘strangling’ our own life drive, we ourselves feel cut off from life.

Door never seen before or hidden: Or it can be  an unknown or newly discovered door, and is a common theme. It can mean the recognition or discovery of previously unnoticed aspects, abilities, fears, or traits in oneself. If the discovery is distressing, this may reflect a feeling of a change in ones status quo which is disturbing.

Often it is about the discovery of a huge new area of your mind, or the possibility of a new dimension of your being. See Dimensions of Human Experience

Example: I had no sensation of it other than space, hugeness. Then I lost my left arm, and – my whole body. It was like falling through a trap-door into the stars. I had been taken through the magic doors of sleep into a universe it seldom ever sees – deep dreamless sleep.

Example: I own a house. Its a big old I guess Victorian place and I love it. But there is a place “in” the house that I try to forget exists. You get to it through a hidden door and go down a corridor which takes you under the road outside into another house and a sort of separate studio room, which is light and bright and its a kind of arty place where people (me?) work.  I feel I’ve been there before in reality, and I don’t know why I’m frightened of it.

In this dream the person is constantly forgetting that she has a part of her that is light and bright where she could work at art and creativity.

Wrong door: . This shows you wish to do things in the wrong way – the wrong door.

Example: I own a house. Its a big old I guess Victorian place and I love it. But there is a place “in” the house that I try to forget exists. You get to it through a hidden door and go down a corridor which takes you under the road outside into another house and a sort of separate studio room, which is light and bright and its a kind of arty place where people (me?) work.  I feel I’ve been there before in reality, and I don’t know why I’m frightened of it.

In this dream the person is constantly forgetting that she has a part of her that is light and bright where she could work at art and creativity.

Useful questions:

What does this door stand between – indoors outdoors – me and someone else – a bedroom?

Am I in control of how I let people into my life or let go of them?

What way am I relating to the door?

See Dreams are Like a Computer Game – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions