The Korean wife of Oliver, a well-known YouTuber known by the nickname 'Oliver-ssaem', dreamed of luscious cherries about six weeks before she became pregnant. The couple named their daughter Cherry. Hearing this, one might ask whether she had a taemong — a conception dream believed to foretell a birth — simply because she is Korean.
But there are cases in which a foreign husband had the dream himself. Daniel Lindemann, a German-born television personality, married a Korean woman in 2023. Three years into the marriage, his wife became pregnant. The day before she told him the news, Lindemann had a conception dream of his own. In the dream, he was walking down a road cradling an adorable hamster. People asked him to hand it over, but he refused and brought the animal home.
Lindemann says Germany has no tradition of conception dreams comparable to Korea's. Does that mean Westerners living outside Korean culture do not have such dreams? They do.
Under the guidance of Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Carl Jung, doctors and psychological counselors collected the dreams of pregnant women admitted to a Swiss hospital. The book they published in 1996 is titled "Dreams and Pregnancy: A Study of the Dreams of Pregnant Women Experiencing Trauma." A substantial share of the 180 dreams presented in the book are conception dreams. Judging from the fact that the book was written in German, the research appears to have been conducted at a hospital in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
Consider a few of the conception dreams of Western pregnant women recorded in the book. Christina, a pseudonym, was 30 and about two months pregnant when she had the following dream. "There was a beautiful peach tree. I was just about to pick a peach hanging from it and eat it." At first she did not want a child. But once the baby was born healthy, her boyfriend came back to her.
Elena, a pseudonym, was 37 and suffering from severe depression. She had the following dream at about seven months of pregnancy. "I was sitting alone quietly, lost in thought. My head felt blank and I felt exhausted. I tried to open the window and go outside, but I simply could not. Then a large horse came toward me. It was a horse with large, beautiful eyes. I asked the horse for help. The horse nodded." Elena woke up unable to hold back her tears. They ran down her cheeks.
From the perspective of analytical psychology, the animals and plants that appear in these conception dreams symbolize the unborn child. Such symbolic images are called archetypal images. They arise from the collective unconscious long held by the community to which the dreamer belongs. Animals, plants and other figures that appear in a community's myths, folk tales and legends are reproduced within the dream. Beyond animals and plants, the archetypal images of conception dreams take many forms, including celestial bodies such as the sun, moon and stars, natural elements such as fire and water, jewels, people and objects.
Von Franz said such archetypal dreams can occur at important turning points in life, including pregnancy and childbirth, entering school, adolescence, marriage, personal crises and the period of preparing for death. Not only the expectant mother but also close family and relatives, such as her own mother or her husband, can have telepathic conception dreams.
