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 TechniquesPotential

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

Comments

-kathy goetzinger 2016-01-05 1:54:39

I dreamed that my former husband was installing 2 huge garage doors for me. I was thrilled about getting these automatic garage doors and was surprised that he would do this for me. One was at my house where I live and the other one was at my sisters house. ( And he hates my sister btw).
What could this mean? I have been divorced from him for 12 years and I don’t “still have baggage ” about him.

-bwalker 2016-01-04 15:00:49

I dreamt of showing off the new front door my husband bought as a surprise for our home, to my sons. Opening it and discovering the details like cherry wood, heavy lacquer, a gold knocker, sunlight shining on it causing a soft glow and the feeling of awe because this door seemed to have costed a fortune. I remember gasping and feeling very undeserving. In waking life, my husband has not purchased a door and I have no want for a new one, our house was totally madeover before we bought it two years ago. Is there a hidden message?

-Abbey 2016-01-03 4:42:20

My friend just told me she’s been having these dreams for a long time now, where she’s in a house she’s comfortable in (usually different houses in each dream, none of which familiar in real weakening life), when suddenly she discovers that a back door, or window is wide open. This frightens her – enough to waken her, I gather. She’s perplexed by this dream & would like very much for it to stop. Could someone shed some light on it please?

-Madison 2015-12-05 8:56:25

I had a dream that I healed an exes wound but while I was searching for an ice pac, I opened a Cabinet and inside was another cabinet door, and then another and another. I was opening doors in my dream for so long I decided to give up and I never found out what was in the cabinet, although I found what I was looking for was somewhere else. I looked up what it meant to heal a wound but I cannot find what the cabinet situation means. If anyone could get back to me that’d be great.

    -Anna - Tony's Assistant 2015-12-10 18:07:15

    Dear Madison – The cabinet with all the doors reminds me of the symbol of the onion in a dream; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/onion/
    “May represent something we find difficult to face. It sometimes represents the layers of your personality. Its symbolism possibly arises from its layer upon layer going into the centre.”
    Perhaps healing the wound was the first step and your dream suggests that there is also another way to proceed.
    So instead of “putting ice on it” you explore entering the long process of peeling away the layers and get to your core, to your essential self?
    http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/core/
    Anna 🙂

-brittany 2015-11-18 8:42:31

My dream went like this:
I was getting ready to fall asleep and I heard a loud bang that freaked me out. I opened my bedroom door to see my backdoor wide open so I went out on the porch to see if I saw anyone and instead I saw the 4 cars in my driveway side by side all with the lights on and open passenger side doors. No one was there. I came back in locking the door behind me – to nervous to go downstairs and lock the cars- and when i got to my bedroom door is was closed. I woke up after that

-Peggy Smith 2015-10-15 20:49:08

I dreamt that I was walking around a nice neighborhooday and came up to an older style house with about 8 steps but the main thing I feel I focused on was the beautiful front door. Older style with glass and pretty curvy designs

-Audrey 2015-04-02 21:10:07

-My dream-
My mom was in the driver seat and me and my sister were in the back seat as little girls. We were driving in a blue ford. We drove to the top of a hill and my mom stopped and turned into a long driveway. It was a big two story blue house. We got out of the car and opened the front door but it was all bright and I woke up. I never saw what was in the house. I’ve been having the same dream for WEEKS now.

    -Anna 2015-04-03 9:56:44

    Audrey – Anything brightly lit suggests that it is an important dream, and one worth trying to understand.
    As I see it, this dream is about your infant relationship with your mother and what she has planted deep into you. I feel the dream is recurring for WEEKS, because your dream creator wants you to become aware. And you DID see what was in the house (It was all bright); you were merely not able yet to recognise “It”.
    If you imagine yourself as the brightness what do you feel?

    Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/mother/#InnerMother
    and
    http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Integrate
    Blue is an important symbol in your dream, for both the car and the house are blue.
    In your dream “blue” expresses both your sense of intuition, and where it is able to “take you” (the blue car) and achieving a wide awareness of life and experience of the holy (the blue house filled with Light) – i.e. an awareness of those things that are universal – such as birth, caring relationship, parenthood – and so recognised as transcending ones own small life. This comes from our feelings about the blue sky.
    I wonder if this is a so called Freudian slip (of the pen; a “miswriting”):
    “It was a big two story blue house”. So ask your intuition “which big story is connected to which store”?
    I trust that it serves a wonderful purpose if you continue to explore your dreams; you certainly have enough inside you:
    http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
    Anna 🙂

-Anna Gotaren 2015-03-25 6:30:34

Last night i had the strangest dream. I walked into a bar during daytime, holding a white wooden door like a suitcase, and I ordered a shot of whiskey. As I dont drink in real life since I’m trying to concieve, this took me by surprise.

    -Anna 2015-03-25 12:22:38

    Anna – Every image and person in your dreams is an expression of your own life process. As such it is alive and intelligent and is something sent to help you. A dream is like a projection from a movie projector, except that you are the projector.
    I wonder if this dream is trying to help you to become aware of a different approach towards trying to conceive; as in approaching it on a different level than the physical level “only”.
    I think you carry the white door in your dream as a sign of having removed the obstacle towards this other level of awareness and your drinking whiskey I see as letting go of control so you can “receive the spirit”.
    Tony wrote many features about this and they are all worthwhile reading.
    You could start with http://dreamhawk.com/pregnancy-childbirth/coming-from-the-light/ and http://dreamhawk.com/pregnancy-childbirth/knowing-baby-before-birt/ and you can see a list of similar articles at the right side of the page.

    Anna 🙂

-Rafael 2015-03-23 12:48:01

I dreamt of a door that was sunken in the ground. It was in a hotel Room 300. To get to it I had to jump into a hole the height of the door which was a perfect rectangle about four feet wide and the length of the door which was about three feet. I opened the door to find two women. One was entranced by the room and only wished for intercourse. The other knew there was something odd about the room she said to me that her clothes continue to change and asked if i approved.

-Mura 2015-02-20 13:58:31

Last night I dreamt that upon coming home my front door had been bashed in and was in complete ruins. I walked through it and also noticed that my bedroom door was in the same condition. My fiancé and I live together and my only concern was getting the doors replaced. He didn’t appear concerned. Our building has just been purchased and we’re all concerned about what our new landlord’s next move will be. Could my dream be in relation to that fact or the fact that we’re purchasing a new home?

    -Anna 2015-02-22 13:54:11

    Mura 🙂

    As I see it, the dream shows that doors are opened through circumstances beyond your control.
    We rather open them ourselves in life.

    I think your (inner) man shows that there is little gain in replacing the doors out of fear of what lies in front of you.
    And so I reckon what is asked for in this situation is to take action using the best in you.

    Good Luck!

    Anna 🙂

-Aaron 2014-12-17 17:30:38

I had a dream all the time as a child of being in a white room playing with toys in a basket with my cousin Melissa and there were other kids in the room too but i don’t remember who they were i also remember Melissas dad my uncle by marriage grant and he was standing by a door pushing people through it and it was a door that lead into a black nothing. I had this dream several times as a child and always never liked my uncle because of this dream. I don’t remember him ever doing anything to me bad to not like him but even now im 32 and still am creeped out by him. So if someone could tell me what this dream may be about it would solve a 20-25 year old mystery thanks

    -Tony Crisp 2014-12-18 10:05:23

    Aaron – Your dream is very simple. As a child you had two views of life, the one where everything is white and fun, and the other view typified by you uncle. In some way he represented death, and was pushing people through deaths door.

    Such views and the creepy feelings are because it is a fearful view of what life means. See – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/near-death-experiences/

    Tony

-Michele Washington 2014-11-13 21:09:41

I didn’t dream this: Last night I opened my front door to go to Burger King™ and there was an empty box in front of the door.I had ordered something so I thought the package had been delivered and someone had stolen the merchandise plus the invoice.Well after talking with the carrier and the vendor,they stated that the tracking number on the box,which was different from the tracking number on my yet to be delivered merchandise was from a delivery dated April 1,2014.I am glad no one has stolen my merchandise but am extremely baffled regarding this old,empty box.No one lives in my place but me,so this is strange.Can you provide some insight please?Thank you.

-denise 2014-09-19 6:00:40

I hear someone having a talk then I hear a doot open and close min later someone or something over the top of me and I can’t catch my breathe

-NN 2014-08-09 13:44:34

I had a deep helpless dream last night…
I rushed into a lift before it closed, searching for the 2nd floor button on the right panel… Surprisingly it only led to selected levels, so not found the 2nd… I simply chose level 4 and 10. Just a second after…i found the 2nd level button on the left panel.. but it seemed the lift has passed that level by then.. Wierd… both left and right sides of panel led to different level in a same lift.

Door opened.. it was no exit but a white brick wall after the opened lift door… felt the pressure in this small lift, oxigen seemed signalling red… and every level’s exit showed the same rough hard unbreakable white wall. And I heard mum’s calling in this Sat morning…

-Sarah Jones 2013-12-08 11:54:51

I dreamt about a black door. I was trying to stop someone from entering, the person/thing was pushing on the door and I was trying to hold it shut with all my strength. Some writing appeared on the door, white writing that appeared to be burnt in. I don’t remember exactly what it said, it seemed to be very mythical perhaps ancient words. The message was that the thing was going to kill me. I remember feeling that it was inevitable. I let go of the door and woke up very frightened.

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