Ranging from sibling rivalry to brotherly love, dreams comment on sibling relationships. Probably the best known such dream is that of Joseph, son of Jacob, in Genesis 37:2-8.
"Joseph being seventeen years old... and when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him. He said unto them, Hear this dream which I have dreamed: 'Behold we were binding sheaves in the field and, lo, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obedience to my sheaf.' And his brethren said to him, 'Shalt thou indeed... have dominion over us?'"
Shortly after this, his older half brothers sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. You know the rest of the story!
As a mother of three sons, I heard some of their dreams. Here is one my youngest had about his relationship to his oldest brother - a four year age difference.
I dreamed I have a snake in a bottle. Brad came in and gave me a push. The venomous snake got out of the bottle and bit me.
Brad, the oldest, tended to push Allen, the youngest, around quite a lot. Allen had some hard feelings bottled up. This anger was poisoning him, not his brother. When he finally let it out, Allen lost; Brad was bigger. After some discussion between the three of us, Brad improved and so did the long-term relationship.
Younger sisters are equally prone to idolize older brothers. When Debbie's brother left home to go to college, she missed him a lot. She felt she wanted to follow him to the college of his choice. She was a highschool senior when she brought this dream to my class.
I dreamed I went to visit my brother at his college in Oregon. A man pointed out his dorm. It was a pine tree. I climbed the wooden steps up to the fifth floor - Room 503. That's his phone area code. His room was in a paper bag. I was really disappointed that his room was so small and junky.
The dream pictures seemed to suggest, I wooden (wouldn't) take his steps. You will be disappointed in "his bag." "His bag" was a current colloquialism for "his thing" or "his choice." It helped her to think about it and see the logic that "his bag" wouldn't be right for her.
In another case of an older sister, now grown and a mother, dreams used her former caretaker role to comment on her motherly caretaking.
My daughter lost her balance and fell off of her bicycle ( the two cycles). Her eyes were rolling. Her father, my husband, started yelling at her. "Don't you know better than to fall!" ( lose your balance). His face became the face of my father and my daughter's face becomes the face of my younger sister. I brought an overfilled ice-pack and put on my daughter's head while we waited for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
Upon awakening, the dreamer remembered an incident when she had been baby-sitting her younger sister. Due to her neglect, the sister had fallen and had to be taken to the hospital. The dreamer saw the dream as showing a resemblance between her daughter's life with a harsh, yelling father and the life she and her sister had been through with a too harsh father. She sensed that she was being too cold about it (overfilled ice-pack) and it was throwing her daughter off balance. So much so that the girl couldn't see straight. Oh, the words behind our dream pictures!
In these columns about relationship dreams, l've been sticky to the real life relationships. This time I've decided to vary that a bit because so many brother and sister dreams are about the dreamer's anima or animus. An opposite sex sibling in a dream can represent the contra sexual part of the dreamer's psyche. So, here are a couple of short examples. First a man's dream about his sister.
My sister is dying because she has taken a fatal drug. She is resigned and being practical about it. I am planning to make all of the arrangements for her funeral and property.
The objective view of the dream did not make sense, but the subjective view did. The dreamer made his life decisions from a logic that valued security. As he told it, he dared not follow his feelings. He said that his creative imagination had died years ago. He agreed he'd give his emotions and intuitions a fatal drug. Men's sisters are a common dream symbol for their feminine qualities such as emotion and intuition.
In this woman's dream her brother represents her masculine qualities, such as logic, assertion, risk-taking. She is developing a close relationship with these qualities, allowing them expression in her life.
I'm driving my car and my brother is in the backseat. He smiles at me and I notice he is naked. Feeling attracted, I drive into a country park where there are trees, (growth). He gets a blanket from the trunk and spreads it on the ground. We lie down together. I get astride him, I am very excited by the idea of my brother coming inside me. I do not have a climax (this is an ongoing process). Back in my car (her life), I come to a railroad track and stop to wait for an Amtrak train to pass.
She am-on-the-track of an exciting growth as her masculine side (her brother) comes to expression/ intercourse within her personality.
Family members are like that, they can represent themselves literally, or a connotation based on their relationship to the dreamer, as well as other people associations.
