Dreaming about a tooth being pulled: what the dream suggests

What it means to dream about a tooth being pulled

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming that a tooth is being pulled does not announce the loss of someone or a disaster. The scene usually shows up when something needs to leave your life, or is already leaving, and it hurts: a job, a relationship, a habit, a home. The difference from a tooth that falls out on its own lies in the force: here someone pulls, or you pull it yourself.

The dream also appears often right before or right after a real extraction, such as a wisdom tooth, and in that case it is just the mouth remembering what it went through. It is not a diagnosis or a prediction. The classic version of the theme, the tooth that falls out, is in dreaming about teeth falling out.

Read also: Dreaming about a broken tooth and Dreaming about a loose tooth.

Why an extraction turns into a dream

According to the continuity hypothesis, tested by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, the dream works with the material of the day. Few experiences leave as strong a mark as the dentist's chair: the drill, the anesthetic, the gauze you bite down on. Someone who recently had a wisdom tooth out, has an extraction scheduled or watched a child lose baby teeth has concrete reasons to dream about the scene.

The body takes part too. In 1958, William Dement and Edward Wolpert showed in the lab that stimuli applied during sleep can enter the plot: drops of water sprayed on the skin appeared as water in some of the reports. A real toothache can take, at night, the shape of an extraction.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Dement and Wolpert, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1958.

Freud, Jung and faith on the pulled tooth

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud summarizes the theory of Karl Scherner, an author who came before him, for whom the dream turns bodily stimuli into images. According to that summary, a dream triggered by a stimulus in the teeth usually ends with the person pulling a tooth out of their own mouth. Freud did not accept that everything could be explained by the body: only the dreamer's associations show what the scene hides.

In Jung's psychology. Jung saw the dream as an attempt to balance conscious life. In that key, the extraction may show something the person avoids facing: what needs to go and what they hold on to out of fear of the pain.

In symbols and faith. In the Catholic tradition, Saint Apollonia, a martyr of Alexandria in the third century, is remembered as the patron saint of dentists and of people suffering from toothache, because, according to tradition, her teeth were pulled out before she died for her faith. Her feast day is February 9. In A Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier and Gheerbrant associate losing teeth with losing strength and defense.

Bringing both readings together. Science looks at the scheduled appointment and at the mouth; faith and symbols ask what is being taken from you, or what you need to let go.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

Extraction scenes and what comes with them

For the scene in the dental office, see dreaming about a dentist. If the bigger shock was the blood, read dreaming about blood; if the dream felt like an operation, dreaming about surgery.

See also: Dreaming about Carnival and Dreaming about Christmas or New Year.

When the scene deserves care

Dreaming about an extraction is not a sign of a problem in your mouth. But if you have a real toothache, swelling, bleeding gums or a tooth that bothers you, the dentist is the one who solves it, not interpretation. The same goes for anyone who wakes up with a sore jaw: it may be bruxism (teeth grinding), and only a professional assessment can tell.

If the dream keeps coming back as a nightmare and you wake up with your heart racing several times a week, talk to a health professional: there is treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares and why the same dream keeps repeating.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

Tooth extraction in dream books

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan has no entry for a pulled tooth. The closest are two: the tooth, read as poverty in life and annoyances in love, and the dentist, read as changes in life and news in love.

Jung was wary of these lists. In Man and His Symbols, he points out that the same symbol changes meaning depending on who dreams it and the moment they are living, and that no dictionary can solve a dream without the person who dreamed it.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

What people say about a pulled tooth

In Brazilian folk reading, dreaming about a pulled tooth is often seen as drifting apart from someone, the end of a friendship or a loss of money. Pulled by the dentist, it would be a problem solved with help; pulled by you, a hard decision made; a decayed tooth pulled, being freed from something that was doing you harm. Some say the upper teeth speak of older relatives and the lower ones of younger relatives. These are beliefs of tradition, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.