What does it mean if you’re naked in a dream?

According to Freud, it may not be what you think

We’ve always been fascinated with dreams — especially the ones that surprise and confuse us. And probably none are as striking as dreams about nakedness: whether it’s showing up to work in our underwear, or standing in front of our class butt-naked.

What does a dream like that mean? In the fifth chapter of Sigmund Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams, he claims to know the answer. It has nothing to do, surprisingly enough, with vulnerability — the common ‘folk psychology’ meaning — in fact, just the opposite.

In this article, we’ll review Freud’s interpretation of dreams involving nakedness. Whether you agree with him or not, with any luck, he’ll provide you some good starting-points to arrive at your own understanding of the dream.

Interpreting a genre?

Those familiar with Freud’s method of dream interpretation will no doubt object to this article. Isn’t the point of Freud’s theory that the meaning of a dream can only be found through the personal associations of the dreamer? How, then, can we speak of the meaning of a whole genre of dreams?

Freud himself anticipates this criticism in his book. He reaffirms that the primary method of…