Clock

The clock is a modern intrusion in the dream world. Pre-industrial dream traditions have very little about clocks; our ancestors dreamed by the sun and the seasons. Jungian analysis reads dream-clocks as the waking self’s time-anxiety entering sleep: the sense that something is running out, or that something must happen by a certain hour. A clock whose hands move backward is classically the psyche inviting reflection on a past chapter; a clock whose face is blank, an invitation to step out of clock-time entirely. Notice the type of clock — analog, digital, grandfather, pocket watch — each carries a different relation to time and tradition.