In the interpretation of dreams, Flood 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 by emotion, a sweeping and unstoppable change.
Common readings
The flood is read as emotion or circumstance rising beyond control, a sweeping change that overwhelms the ordinary structures of the dreamer's life.
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 ask where the water comes from and what it reaches. A river over its banks, a sea that keeps rising, a burst dam and water entering the dreamer's own house are different dreams, the last read most personally, as the overwhelm arriving where the dreamer lives. Whether the dreamer flees, climbs, floats or is carried matters as much as the flood itself, since being borne by the water and being buried by it are opposite fates inside the same image. Water that recedes before the dream ends is usually allowed to soften the whole reading.