In the interpretation of dreams, Hair is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as strength, identity, vitality, and self-expression.
Common readings
Hair is commonly tied to identity and vitality; its loss can be read as a fear of losing strength or standing, its styling as a matter of self-presentation.
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 fate of the hair is the fulcrum: losing it, cutting it, having it cut by another, and finding it suddenly long or grey are read as separate dreams. Loss and forced cutting lean toward readings of weakened strength or surrendered identity, while choosing to cut one's own hair is often read as deliberate change. Because hair is public, visible and groomed for others, interpreters weigh how the dream hair would have been seen, and the dreamer's waking investment in their hair, vanity, faith or plain indifference, sets the stakes of the image.