In the interpretation of dreams, Flying is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as freedom, transcendence, ambition, or escape from limits.
Common readings
Flight is usually read as a wish for freedom or release, an exhilarating rising above circumstances, though it can also mark a flight from something the dreamer would rather not face.
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 texture of dream flight varies enormously and the readings vary with it. Effortless soaring, laboured flapping, flight that fails at altitude and flight used to escape something below are treated as distinct dreams; joy, strain and fear mark different relations to the freedom the image offers. Interpreters also ask what the flight is for, since rising above a scene to see it whole points one way and fleeing upward from a pursuer points another, and the exhilaration many dreamers report is itself part of the dream's meaning rather than decoration.