In the interpretation of dreams, Father is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as authority, structure, protection, guidance, and order.
Common readings
The father figure is read as an image of authority and structure, of protection and guidance, and as one of the primary archetypal figures of the psyche.
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 father's bearing in the dream sets the reading: approving, absent, stern, diminished, dead or alive again. Dreams of a dead father returned belong to the visitation pattern and are often strikingly matter of fact, the conversation itself being the point. Interpreters separate the personal father from fatherhood as such, asking whether the dream concerns the man himself or authority, protection, judgment and permission wherever they now operate in the dreamer's life, an employer, a mentor, an institution, or the dreamer's own conduct toward dependants.