Dreaming of a pram : what can this symbol evoke?

Pushing before oneself what one answers for

One carries a child against oneself ; one pushes one before oneself. The difference is clear : in the second case it leads the way, arrives everywhere first, and one does not see its face.

Dreams often use this figure for a charge that precedes. What you answer for arrives in places before you do : a child, a project, a reputation, a family situation people know before knowing you. You follow what you push.

The question it poses is concrete : what enters rooms before you? Those who dream of prams often hold a position defined by what they are responsible for.

The empty pram

This is the most disturbing variant, and it is frequent : one pushes and nobody is inside. The gesture continues while its object has disappeared.

Dreams use this image for a charge that no longer has content. A role still held though the child has grown, an anxiety that outlived its cause, a whole life organised around something no longer there. One carries on, and nothing requires it any more.

What to remember is what you did with the empty pram. Still pushing it, abandoning it, or looking for what should be inside tell three different relations to a charge whose end you have not yet observed.

What the pram holds changes the reading

• Pushing a child who arrives everywhere before you — a charge that precedes and defines you.
• An empty pram — a role held though its object has disappeared.
• A pram too heavy to push — a responsibility that outgrew your means without your saying so.
• Letting it go on a slope — the fear of no longer controlling what you answer for.
• Someone else pushing it — a charge entrusted, with the relief and unease that brings.
• An old pram, from another era — what you still push and which comes from a previous generation.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in charges that define a position : what one answers for ends by saying who one is, and dreams figure it by placing it in front. It notes that images of empty containers often accompany the end of a role consciousness has not yet registered. Other readings retain the child itself and recall that in dreams it designates a person as readily as a nascent part of the dreamer.