Dreaming about robbery or being robbed: meaning and what science says

What this dream usually points to (and what it does not)

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 about robbery or being robbed does not predict that you will be robbed, or that someone close is betraying your trust. It is a dream of threat and loss: it usually appears in phases of insecurity, when something important seems to be slipping out of your hands, such as money, time, space at home or recognition at work. The object taken says a lot. A phone points to contact and information; a house, to intimacy; a car or motorcycle, to autonomy.

Read also: Dreaming about the police and Dreaming about your phone.

Why the dream stages a robbery

For the threat simulation hypothesis, proposed by Antti Revonsuo in 2000, dreaming is a way of rehearsing dangers without taking risks. A mugging gathers everything that training looks for: surprise, threat and quick decision. In the dream, many people try to hide their bag, run or shout and cannot, and wake up feeling they have lived through the scene.

The continuity between waking life and dreaming explains why the theme is so common in Brazil. Conversations about a stolen phone, news from the neighborhood, a neighbor whose house was broken into or the habit of hiding your phone on the bus feed the night. The dream can also take a loss of another kind, such as a job that went to someone else or an idea presented by a coworker, and dress it up as a robbery.

Sources: Revonsuo, The reinterpretation of dreams, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000; Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

The most common versions of this dream

If there were shots or a weapon in the foreground in the dream, see also dreaming about a gunshot or firearm.

See also: Dreaming about a kidnapping and Dreaming about ears.

When dreaming about robbery calls for attention

For most people, dreaming about a robbery is a passing scare. It is different when the dream replays a robbery that really happened, with the same details, night after night, and comes with being startled during the day, fear of going out or of passing the same place. These are possible signs of post-traumatic stress, which has effective treatment. Seeing a health professional is not an overreaction: it is a way of taking care of yourself after something hard. See how to have fewer nightmares.

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

What dream dictionaries record

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan offers surprising readings. Robbery: in life, the defeat of an adversary; in love, hostility. Thief: in life, scarce money; in love, problems. In other words, the same theme can be read as victory or as hardship, depending on the entry.

That variety illustrates the critique in Man and His Symbols: for Jung, dreams are individual phenomena and their symbols cannot be catalogued. Having your phone taken may be, for one person, the echo of a real fear in the neighborhood and, for another, the feeling of always being available to everyone.

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

Freud, Jung and faith on this dream

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In the first chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud gathers authors who discussed whether the moral sense persists in sleep. One of them, Jessen, wrote that in dreams we can commit theft and other crimes with complete indifference, without remorse afterwards. For Freud, the dream gives shape to wishes that waking life censors. In that key, dreaming that you steal may give shape to a wish the person does not allow themselves to admit.

In Jung's psychology. Joseph Henderson, Jung's collaborator, analyzes in Man and His Symbols the story of Beauty and the Beast: the father steals a white rose from the enchanted garden, and the Beast, angered by the theft, demands that he return to be punished. The small theft opens the transformation of the whole story. In the Jungian reading, a dreamed robbery may mark the beginning of a change, not only a loss.

In symbols and faith. In A Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier and Gheerbrant recall that, for the Igbo, the Ijaw and other peoples of the Biafra region, it was the dog who stole fire from the sky to give it to humans; there, the theft brings a gift. In India, Ganesha's mouse is associated with theft, but the true thief would be the Atman, inside the heart. In the Bible, Matthew 6:19-21 speaks of the treasures that thieves steal and concludes: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Bringing both readings together. Research explains the threat rehearsal; tradition asks about the value of what was taken. Writing down what went missing in the dream already reveals a lot.

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

Folk beliefs about this dream

In folk reading, being robbed is usually read as a warning to take better care of what is yours, including your energy and time. A robbery inside the home appears as a sign of family conflict, and the theft of money as fear of expenses. In the spiritual world, some speak of energy being drained by heavy people or environments. These are cultural readings, good for reflection, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.