There are certain nightmares that almost everyone shares, so much so that most people experience these scenes at some point in their lives. When a friend tells you about their nightmare, you often find a similar memory within yourself and feel stunned. Dreams where you are terrified and want to scream, but your voice does not come out; where you are trapped in rooms with no door handles; where your body locks up and leaves you stranded just as you are about to defend yourself; or when your steps become heavy as you try to run with all your might—yet the path does not shorten but instead stretches on… Have you ever found yourself in such a nightmare?
These scenes reappear in different languages, cultures, and life stories. Why, then, do so many people see similar images? Cultures and belief systems have imbued dreams with various layers of meaning. In some societies, dreams are trivialized with the saying that they “come out the other way,” while in others they are seen as harbingers of the future. It is not only a question of whether a dream will come true; the meanings of its symbols also shift from culture to culture.
For example, in Turkish culture, seeing a snake in a dream is often associated with hidden enemies or impending danger. In European tradition, the snake evokes betrayal and demonic figures; in Latin America—especially in Amazonian indigenous cultures—it becomes a symbol of supernatural protective spirits and the transmission of wisdom. It wears a different face everywhere, but it always leaves us with a chill.
Among these diverse interpretations, which one to believe is a personal choice. Yet my purpose in this piece is not to dwell on the individual meanings of symbols, but to address the question of why so many of us share common nightmares.
The Psychology of Dreams
In psychology, dreams occupy a vast universe; nevertheless, a brief description of this universe can illuminate our path. According to analytic theorists, dreams are the stage of the unconscious; the play where repressed desires are secretly realized dates back to Freud (Freud, 1900/1953). In Lacan’s famous words, the unconscious is structured like a language; dreams are among the clearest manifestations of this structure (Lacan, 1954–1955/1988; 1966/2006). For him, a dream is a riddle, a rebus awaiting its solution (Lacan, 1964/1977).
Recurring nightmare themes mark the points where universal conflicts emerge. Freud argued that this repetition signals the restaging of traumatic experiences in the unconscious (Freud, 1920/1955). For Lacan, a nightmare is a scene in which desire erupts with unbearable intensity, forcing the subject to awaken (Lacan, 1964/1977). Hartmann, by contrast, interprets a nightmare as the raw intrusion of unprocessed emotion into the dream (Hartmann, 1998).
The dynamic perspective, shaped by the analytic tradition, views dreams as reflections not only of repressed desires but also of the individual’s relational world and inner conflicts. A nightmare thus reveals not only the echoes of the past but also the anxieties of the present (Fosshage, 1983; Hill, 1996; Blechner, 2001).
Though expressed differently, all these definitions point to the same pattern: dreams are where tensions carried, hidden desires, and unprocessed emotions take the stage. In the midst of a dark theater, the subject encounters what belongs to them—perhaps something they never wished to face in waking life.
The Meaning Behind Recurrent Nightmare Symbols
One of the most striking nightmare themes is being frozen, unable to move. Freud interpreted this paralysis as a scene of repressed desires and traumatic repetition (Freud, 1920/1955). Nielsen and Levin (2007) saw the immobilized body as a sign of escape anxiety and the recurrence of trauma in the mind. Sometimes, in a crowded room with every gaze fixed on you, your body turns to stone; that same sensation becomes a frightening freeze in your dream at night.
Wanting to scream but being unable to make a sound is another recurring nightmare. Dynamic interpretations see this as a symbol of the anxiety of not being heard and of unexpressed anger. As Hill (1996) points out in therapy, such dreams often reveal the surfacing of emotions the client has been unable to articulate. The voice caught in the throat during sleep is the shadow of the scream left unspoken during the day; the truth of not being heard is whispered in the silence of night.
Being unable to run—straining forward with all your might, yet standing still—is another universal theme. Hartmann (1998) described this paralysis as a bodily metaphor for unprocessed anxiety. It is also the stage for moments when we cannot escape what we long to flee. You try to force your steps forward in a dark corridor, but your body is chained to the ground; when you wake, you still feel the coldness of that chain around your knees.
Being trapped in doorless rooms is yet another powerful scene. Jungian readings associate these images with fantasies of blockage and inescapability within the unconscious (Jung, 1964). A psychodynamic view, however, sees them as reflections of relational deadlock. A space where walls rise and doors dissolve… in truth, a space of unfinished business, unresolved ties, and knots left untied. The dream leaves you alone in this labyrinth with your own inextricability.
The Universal Nature of Dreams
All these nightmare scenes are, in fact, different narratives nourished by the same source. The body freezing, the voice catching in the throat, doors vanishing, steps faltering… each a way of confronting helplessness, anxiety, and repressed feeling. Nightmares present this confrontation through symbols; fears silenced in daylight erupt again at night.
And perhaps most uncanny of all, these scenes do not arise solely from individual experience. They recur across cultures and eras, often with the very same images. The silence in a Turk’s dream might become betrayal in a European’s nightmare, or the whispers of spirits in an Amazonian’s. Interpretations change, meanings shift, but at the core the same tension, the same stuckness, the same fear persists.
This is why nightmares should be seen not merely as private experiences, but as a universal language that exposes the common thread of human existence. Every night our minds rewrite identity, fear, and desire through the metaphors of this shared tongue.
The reason we experience similar nightmares, though we live different lives, lies in the shared structures of being human. On a biological level, the systems that regulate threat perception in the brain—especially the amygdala—work the same in us all. The fight, flight, or freeze responses are evolutionarily shared. Thus, the paralysis or inability to run in dreams is another face of the same defense mechanism, manifested in sleep.
A similar commonality exists on the psychological level. Our ways of coping with repression and anxiety are shaped by personal stories but repeat the same patterns. Anger left unspoken, helplessness silenced, decisions postponed—these reappear at night as symbolic forms. Sometimes as a voice stuck in the throat, sometimes as doorless rooms, sometimes as steps that cannot move forward—all metaphors of the same fear.
Cultures alter symbols but leave emotions untouched. A snake may symbolize betrayal in one culture and protection in another, but in every case it conveys an intense charge of feeling. Interpretations shift, scenes wear different masks, but the tension underneath remains universal.
Ultimately, what we call a nightmare is not simply fear bleeding into the night. It is a gateway into humanity’s shared fate. The body’s evolutionary memory, the mind’s repressed conflicts, and the symbols of culture converge on the same stage. That is why, though our lives diverge, we encounter one another in the same nightmares.
Perhaps the most consoling aspect of this truth is that it shows we are not alone in the darkness. To know that others wander through the same shadows even as we face our own fears gives us a strange sense of closeness. Yet the uncanny presence of dreams remains, for this shared language never fully resolves what belongs to us; it always keeps a secret in the dark.
References
Blechner, M. J. (2001). The dream frontier. Analytic Press.
Fosshage, J. L. (1983). The psychological function of dreams: A revised psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 6(4), 641–669.
Freud, S. (1953). The interpretation of dreams (J. Strachey, Ed. & Trans.; Vols. 4–5). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1900)
Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle (J. Strachey, Ed. & Trans.; Vol. 18). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1920)
Hartmann, E. (1998). Dreams and nightmares: The new theory on the origin and meaning of dreams. Plenum Press.
Hill, C. E. (1996). Working with dreams in psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols. Doubleday.
Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. The ego in Freud’s theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis, 1954–1955 (J.-A. Miller, Ed.; S. Tomaselli, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1954–1955)
Lacan, J. (1977). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis (J.-A. Miller, Ed.; A. Sheridan, Trans.). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1964)
Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The first complete edition in English (B. Fink, Trans.). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1966)
Nielsen, T., & Levin, R. (2007). Nightmares: A new neurocognitive model. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 11(4), 295–310.