Dreaming of a hunt : what can this symbol evoke?

Pursuing changes the pursuer

A hunt imposes the animal's conditions on the hunter : he must go where it goes, at its pace, on its ground. The longer the pursuit, the more he resembles it — that is the price of effectiveness, and hunting tales have always told it.

Dreams often use this figure for what you pursue steadily. A success, a person, an explanation, a revenge : in time the pursuit imposes its conditions and one becomes someone else in order to win.

The question it poses is unpleasant : what have you come to resemble since you began seeking this? It is not the goal that transforms, it is the pursuit.

Being the prey

The other position is the most reported in dreams : something follows you, without your knowing what or why, and flight occupies everything. One generally wakes before having seen the pursuer.

That detail is the subject. In almost all such dreams the pursued does not turn around — and what pursues is almost never identified. Depth psychology regularly sees there a content consciousness avoids : as long as one flees, it stays behind and takes no form.

What to remember is what happens when flight stops. Dreamers who turn around often describe a surprise — what followed them was less frightening than the pursuit itself.

Your place changes the reading

• Pursuing long without reaching — a constancy that may already have changed you more than the goal would.
• Being pursued without seeing by what — an avoided content, keeping its form as long as one turns away.
• Turning around — the rare variant, and generally less frightening than the flight.
• A cornered animal turning to face — the moment prey ceases to be prey.
• Hunting without need — pursuit for its own sake, detached from any need.
• Returning empty-handed — a failure questioning the choice of prey more than the skill.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology treats pursuit dreams as one of the commonest forms of avoidance : what follows is unidentified because the dreamer does not turn around, not because the thing has no face. It notes that such dreams often cease the day one looks. Other readings retain the hunter's position and what pursuit does to the one conducting it.