What Does Dreaming of an Elevator Mean?
What does dreaming of an elevator mean in traditional interpretation?
According to traditional interpretation, seeing an elevator in a dream can indicate a step-by-step rise in work and life, and relief from material burdens and from people who cause distress. Going up in an elevator may symbolize success and rising rank, while going down can signify dissatisfaction with one's position or passing difficulties.
What does dreaming of an elevator mean psychologically?
Psychologically, an elevator can represent the desire to move between levels of consciousness and the balance of ups and downs in one's life; it may point to a sense of progress without effort, of control resting in someone else's hands, or of drifting through an uncertain course. An elevator that keeps going up and down can reflect indecision and the need to strike a balance between reason and emotion.
By Context
What does going up in an elevator mean in a dream?
Can indicate a promotion at work, steady progress toward one's goals, and a period full of success.
What does going down in an elevator mean in a dream?
May signify dissatisfaction with one's current position, wrong decisions, or temporary financial losses.
What does a cramped or dark elevator mean in a dream?
Can point to withdrawal, anxiety, distress of heart and spirit, or tensions within the family.
What does a broken elevator, or falling into the shaft mean in a dream?
May be a warning of setbacks in a partnership or at work, financial loss, and unexpected obstacles.
Where these readings come from
Every symbol in this dictionary carries two readings side by side, and neither replaces the other. The traditional interpretation comes from the classical literature of Ibn Sirin and al-Nabulsi, where a dream is taken as a sign of what is to come and a symbol's meaning is largely fixed. The psychological view follows Jung and Freud: there a dream speaks not about the future but about the dreamer, and a symbol stands for something the person has repressed or cannot yet name. That is why the same symbol can read differently, even oppositely, under the two headings. The context section follows from the same idea: one symbol reads differently depending on who saw it and what happened in the dream.