What are raping dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience raping in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about raping in dreams. See how you feel about raping now, in your waking life.

Some of the most powerful and traumatizing dreams involve rape. Females and males have rape dreams. The first possibilities for symbolism to consider revolve around nonsexual definitions of the word. Think of times it’s used to mean something other than physical rape. It’s heard in reference to losing badly in sports or video games, with one side dominated and humiliated by another. It’s used in reference to exploiting the natural resources of the planet, and as an expression of helplessness and anger.

Dreams enact other definitions of rape, such as domination, exploitation, and violation, turning them into scenarios of sexual rape.

Another way that dreams use rape is to express the feeling that you’re being forced to do something you don’t want to do or be someone you don’t want to be. It’s a frequent theme in the dreams of males and females who resist living up to the cultural ideals and expectations of their gender.

Some females resent having to wear makeup and heels, and are discriminated against when they don’t. Some males don’t want to act tough and distant, or spend hours in the gym buffing up. Cultural pressure to live up to gender ideals can be intense, and the consequences of resisting it can be extreme. Even if a person tries to live up to gender ideals, it can still feel like being coerced or forced. It’s not necessarily “consensual.”

A man has recurring dreams about being raped and connects it with being forced to hide his homosexuality. Instead, he tries to force himself to feel and act straight and to be attracted to women. Rape sums up how he feels.

For another man who dreams about being raped by a woman, it’s shows his powerlessness over his sexuality. Sex and sensuality have too much hold on his mind. See: Sex

When rape is used to symbolize the force and coercion of gender ideals and cultural expectations, it’s often shown in dreams as gang rape.

Being gang-raped in a dream can be an exaggerated way of expressing the idea of being ganged up on. It can express the feeling that everything and everyone are out to get you or hurt you.

Rape is “next-level symbolism,” meaning not just humiliated, violated, or hurt, but very humiliated, violated, or hurt. Not just coerced but forced. It captures the dynamics of a situation and your feelings.

Rape in a dream can have roots in your inner life. In a graphic way, it shows how you treat yourself. Your ego uses threat, domination, and humiliation to get what it wants, or some aspect of your psyche overpowers the others. This is especially true of the Shadow aspects of the psyche and sadist/masochist dynamics of the Warrior archetype. If that’s how life is in your head, it’s likely to show outwardly. Some people are best described as rapists just on the basis of their personality and character, and some people live the role of victim.

Rape in a dream can have roots in personal experience. People who have been raped are likely to dream about what happened. It seems cruel to bring up a traumatizing event like that, but it actually helps by creating a psychological cushion between the present moment and what happened in the past. Once the dream is over, it is in the past, and when something can be thought of as in the past it creates personal distance. The same sort of process happens with other traumas, such as combat and abuse. Further, such dreaming gives you opportunities to run through threat simulations and devise strategies for protecting yourself.

On the other hand, rape dreams can show that you’re still chained to the experience even though you have the potential to move on.

For example, a woman dreams about finding her rapist working beneath a car. She coldly pulls out a gun and pumps rounds into him. The dream is an expression of her thoughts of revenge. She didn’t report the rape because her best friend’s brother did it, and it’s eating her up inside. Her thoughts of revenge rip open the scab and keep the wound fresh. In a bipolar way, she’s bouncing back and forth between being a victim and wanting to be the oppressor. See: Revenge

Dreaming about being raped can be a way of saying you feel very disrespected. For example, you decide to sleep with someone you’ve been dating, thinking it will be a special experience, and all your partner wants is sex.

Dreams exaggerate, and rape in dreams can be used to exaggerate a situation related to sexual tension or exploitation, such as when a person is used as a sexual plaything.

Rape may connect with a recent or ongoing situation that’s dangerous, sexually or otherwise. It’s the sort of comparison dreams are known to make because dangerous situations can lead to rape. For example, passing out at a wild party puts you in danger, especially if you’re young and female.

A rape dream can come in response to feeling vulnerable or powerless. For example, after being hit on at a gas station by a creepy guy, a woman dreams that night about being raped at that gas station by a similar guy. It’s an expression of feeling raped in the sense of having her dignity attacked, compounded by recognizing her vulnerability to men who are stronger than she is.

Dreams can act as simulations, and a dream about rape can be a way of acting out an issue related to it. For example, you hear a graphic story about a friend who is raped, then dream it happens to you. It’s a way of really understanding what that friend went through and perhaps fearing it could happen to you—or taking steps to prevent it, which is a possibility if you dream about fending off a rapist.

Dreaming about rape can express a rape fantasy. Something about the idea of domination and humiliation turns you on.

For example, a young man with a rape fantasy has two dreams that when looked at together present a choice. In one, he has normal sex with a girl he is attracted to, an imaginary character, and in the other dream he rapes a random girl and enjoys seeing her fear. The dreams are showing him his choices. On the one hand, sex with someone he is attracted to (normal sex) appeals to him but lacks the stimulation he feels at the thought of raping someone. The rape dream shows that the stimulation of rape comes at the expense of any sort of intimacy. He can have one or the other but not both.

A vivid rape dream is discussed in the entry for Devil.

If you were raped and want help, try dream rescripting for nightmares and PTSD. Look it up online.

See also: Attacking, Crime, Devils, Hats, Nightmares, Revenge, Sex

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.