In the interpretation of dreams, Falling is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as loss of control, insecurity, or a situation overwhelming one.
Common readings
One of the most commonly reported dreams; it is generally read as a sense of losing one's footing in waking life, of insecurity or of a fear of failing.
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
Interpreters attend to how the fall begins and how it ends. A slip, a push and a ledge that crumbles suggest three different relations to the loss of control, and a fall that ends in waking, in landing softly or in the jolt of the whole body carries a different tone from one that simply continues. The hypnic jerk, the muscular start common at sleep onset, means many falling dreams are brief and physiological in origin, which is worth ruling in before any symbolic reading is ruled out.