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Dreams set in one’s home often relate to one’s life as a whole but especially to one’s private life—who one currently is or where one is in life; let’s say one’s “overall situation.” If someone tries to enter your home, it may symbolize something within you seeking integration into this wholeness; inviting someone into your home reflects inviting something into your life, and so on. (See also House.)

Childhood Home  

The childhood home can simply represent “oneself” or even “the Self.” It can be seen as one’s original mythical ground, where archetypes dwelled. (See below.) Just as Jung described the mandala as a place of origin (CW 9, par. 234), the childhood home can also be viewed as a mandala.  

Dreaming of one’s parental or childhood home is common because one is shaped by the psychological dynamics tied to that place. Such dreams often concern the influence of parental complexes on one’s current situation.  

As an adult, it is worthwhile to interpret the childhood home in dreams from a broader, more archetypal perspective—as a mythical home where parental figures should be understood as part of archetypal dynamics, not as the actual persons (just as other dream figures are best interpreted subjectively).  

It’s easy to seek confirmation in dreams about childhood settings for the narrative we’ve constructed about ourselves—say, the story of the vulnerable child who eventually breaks free and ventures into the world. However, dreams of the parental home likely tell a more nuanced story. For an adult, the childhood home in dreams is as much “mythical ground” as it is personal.  

If an adult dreams of visiting his parental home and seeing his mother and father, these figures often serve as impersonal symbols, representing a dynamic the dreamer is more or less unconscious of. The dream rarely comments on the actual physical house. In this vein, the parental bedroom in the childhood home, for an adult, might symbolize the primal home or origin, carrying ancestral qualities.

Homesickness

Homesickness and the feeling of not belonging, no matter where one is, indicate a lost connection with the soul and a longing to rediscover it.

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