Dreaming of the post office: what can this symbol evoke?

Sending, receiving

At the post office, one does not hand things over in person: one entrusts them, and waits for them to arrive. Dreams use this place for indirect communication: a message one dares not say face to face, a step one takes without controlling what follows, an answer one hopes for. A registered letter, which must be signed for, adds the weight of official news that cannot be ignored.

Waiting one's turn, and a double meaning

The queue and the counter speak of the time it takes before being served: an imposed patience, a turn that will eventually come. In French, the same word, poste, also means a job. A post office dream may play on this double meaning, and speak of a position to take, an awaited job.

Sometimes, in a dream, the post office turns into an artist's studio. The place where one passes on what others have written becomes the place where one creates oneself. The dream then shows a passage: from communication that follows rules and forms to personal expression, from intermediary to creator. What one used to entrust to others, one now shapes with one's own hands.

What the post office shows changes the reading

• Sending a letter or a parcel — passing on something important, without knowing how it will be received.
• Receiving a parcel — something finally arriving, expected or not.
• A registered letter — serious news that cannot be ignored.
• Queuing at the counter — waiting one's turn, accepting a delay.
• A closed post office — a communication that cannot get through for now.
• A lost parcel — a message, or a step, that does not reach its destination.
• A post office turning into an artist's studio — moving from transmission to creation, from intermediary to author.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Analytical psychology often sees in the places of passage of dreams points of contact between the conscious and the unconscious. The post office is a precise image of this: what one entrusts does not vanish; it travels, and eventually reaches someone, sometimes oneself.