Consumption, Eating, Drinking

To consume something is to take it in and digest it within us, so that it becomes a part of us; in psychological language to integrate it (possibly to become conscious of it). The word "consume" illustrates the psychologically or symbolically closely related intake of, for example, ideas and food – that one simply takes in something, or say takes on an identity. To eat can be to process, for example, an experience, an insight. Sometimes the symbol alludes to a therapeutic processing necessary for the experience to be valuable, a part of ourselves. To it is to concretize the content (coagulatio).

Myth and folklore

If the warriors ate the body of the monster they became monsters themselves; if you drink the water of life you become immortal; if you eat squirrel meat you become fast and agile; a woman who eats the apple the wise old man offers becomes pregnant - legends, fairy tales and folk beliefs are filled with such examples. But the theme also recurs in religious practices. In Christianity you eat the body of Christ and in Greek ceremonies you eat the body of Dionysus. In older cultures, it was common to eat the heart or brain of a respected enemy to obtain his strength and courage. It is something you want to integrate, become a part of. The old and widespread expression "you are what you eat" also reflects this idea.

When Persephone was finally released from the underworld, she had eaten a seed from a pomegranate given to her by Hades. As a result, she could never leave him completely, but had to return every year. By eating part of the underworld, she had become a part of it, and the underworld had become a part of her. In the same way, in the Nordic countries you risked being abducted if you tasted ever so little food or drink a stranger, a troll in human form, offered.

Community

It is a universal custom to eat one's god or eat one's totem animal. In addition to the previously mentioned meaning, it is about everyone eating the same thing, which strengthens the tribe, the cult, the group, and so on.

Even without the religious aspect, the eating of the same food is an archetypal expression of togetherness (which may explain why people may become annoyed when some do not want to eat the same food as "everyone else" - perhaps it is unconsciously experienced as a distancing from the community?).

Devouring

Being engulfed or being devoured by a creature has a somewhat different symbolism than ordinary ingestion; we refer to the keyword Devouring.

Biting

Being bitten, having an animal nibble on you, and so on, are not uncommon dream images. These sometimes allude to "eating" - the small represents the whole. One can therefore try the idea that a bite in a dream should be understood as eating or devouring. If you dream that a person bites your hand, for example, it can be a symbolic expression of this person "eating" you.

Being bitten by an animal can be an expression of instincts suddenly and dangerously attacking the psychology of the conscious ego.

Food as psychic content

It can be said that the materialization of psychic content in rites and myths takes the form of food – water, wine, bread, meat. The content is assimilated into the ritual through ingestion. As materialized psychic content, it was offered to the gods for their intake, while the participants in the ritual eats the same content. In dreams, ingestion can mean "introjection" of a conscious content. (See also Tooth.)

Consume

In addition to the above, consuming in dreams can illustrate what you "take in". For example, the media you consume or the external ideas and thoughts you internalize, so to speak. One's inner self is, of course, shaped to no small extent by one consumes.

Food as fuel

In order to keep the inner, transforming processes going, the self must, to a greater or lesser extent, feed the unconscious (with libido), what the alchemists called cibatio; you have to feed the process, so to speak, an image that can appear in dreams as ingestion. This recurs in the sacrifices discussed above – the idea that man must feed or nourish the gods, to an objective process outside of themselves.

Change, transformation

Ingesting and digesting something thus induces change. This is one of the most basic human experiences: to quench one's thirst with water, get new energy with a meal, or becoming ill by eating bad food, and so on. If one ingest something, one is changed by it. We can recall the movie Matrix - do you swallow the red or the blue pill? Once the pill is swallowed, there is no going back, just as there was no possibility for Persephone to remain the same after eating the seed of the underworld.

Company

If one dreams that one is going to dinner with certain people, it can illustrate that it is something one need (or can) integrate, which is related to the symbolic value of the company. (It is worth observing what happened in the dream before the dreamer eats, because it may be that complex or corresponding content that is integrated.)

Eating food

In general, if one is offered food in the dream, it means that an unconscious content is ready to be assimilated by the self. As a general rule, says Edinger (1994, p. 111), one should eat what is offered in a dream, even if it is repulsive to the self - the host can, so to speak, see it from a different angle, the dream ego's reactions tend to be prejudiced.

At the same time, a dream in which one has to eat something one wouldn't eat in the waking state can suggest that something repulsive to the ego needs to be integrated. Similarly, food that is not sufficiently cooked can imply that something needs to be done with "the material" before it is integrated; cold food that one consume it too late, raw food that it is not properly cooked, and so on

Note especially what is eaten in the dream, because this helps one understand what is being consumed – a steak (protein, satiety), a banana (phallic fruit), fast food (junk), etcetera. Food is a concretization (coagulatio) of abstract content – ​​ideas, experiences, emotional states.

If one dreams that one cannot eat something (which one chose oneself), or find oneself with something in one's mouth that is impossible to swallow, or if one vomits (cf.) when one have eaten it, it may be that in one's outer life one is trying integrate something that the Self cannot accept.

Energy

In the physical world, food and drink are energy for the body; in the dream a symbol of psychic energy. If one dream of a lovely dinner at work, it can illustrate that one gets energy from the work and that it is useful for the inner development; but if the employer offers bad food maybe there is reason to contemplate how "healthy" the job really is, and so on.

Instinct

Eating is something very basic and instinctive. Humans have developed many rituals and taboos around food and eating, as around other instincts and universal behaviors. In dreams, food may simply be associated with instinctive needs. For example, if one dreams that one has to buy bread, it may suggest that one has neglected basic needs.

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