In the interpretation of dreams, Drowning is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as being overwhelmed, submerged by emotion, or losing oneself.
Common readings
Drowning is read as being overwhelmed, most often by feeling, or as a fear of losing oneself in a situation that has risen over the dreamer's head.
The reading of dream symbols has a long documented history, from the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus in the second century to Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung. Such meanings are interpretive conventions of those traditions, offered here as ways the image has been understood rather than as fixed or established fact; in practice a symbol takes much of its sense from the individual dreamer and the setting of the dream.
What changes the reading
The dream's hinge is whether breath fails. Struggling on the surface, being pulled under, sinking calmly and breathing underwater after all are four distinct endings, and the last, reported surprisingly often, is generally read as the discovery that the feared element can be survived. Who else is present matters: drowning alone, drowning while others watch unmoved, and being rescued are read as three different statements about help. The water itself, clear, dark, cold or warm, sets the character of what the dreamer is sinking into.