If you do find yourself punching, kicking or fighting with someone in your dream, try to think about what triggered the violent attack. It is possible that your dreaming mind conjured up the image of an attack as a safety valve through which you can release your frustration. Another interpretation suggests that dreams in which you inflict violence on someone or something may be prompted by a sense of helplessness or resentment in waking life.
Perhaps there is someone whose authority you find powerless to resist? If this is the case, your dream may be compensatory by allowing you to exact revenge against the person or object of your resentment. It is also possible that your unconscious was encouraging you to stand up for yourself.
Alternatively, dreams which feature violence can symbolize your hidden desire for power and control in waking life. When interpreting this dream, try to identify whether the target of the violence represented an aspect of yourself, particularly if the victim was a stranger. Or could your unconscious have conjured an archetypal image of the stranger to bear the brunt of your anger? [1]
The word attack is also used in many ways, so might refer to an ‘attack’ of an illness, or ‘heart attack’. Can express the difference between feeling threatened by a work/relationship/sex problem, or feeling challenged by it in a way to stimulate creativity or research. Someone else being attacked: anger or aggression towards another.
To understand your dream consider all of its details and think about whether you are the attacker or the attacked.
If you are being attacked, then maybe you are feeling somewhat vulnerable in some area of your daily life.
If you are doing the attacking, it may be that you are releasing some of your frustrations and anger while expressing negative feelings in such ways that you are unable to do in daily life. [3]
The same kind of dream can mean feeling threatened by one’s own repressed aggressiveness, anger, or sexuality, especially if one is being attacked by an animal.
If one is the attacker, it can reflect everything from selfassertiveness to the desire to attack something or someone in one’s environment. “Attack” can also be used as a metaphor, as in attacks of hunger, illness, conscience, guilt, etc. [4]
If we are being attacked by animals we are turning our own aggression and/or sexuality inwards; we have fear of our own natural urges.
2- If the dreamer is the attacker he needs to defend himself by positive self-expression he is making attempts to destroy some urge or feeling in himself or others.
3- There is a Spiritual or psychic threat. [5]
To dream that you are being attacked by someone suggests that you are feeling stressed, vulnerable and helpless, or facing difficult changes, in real life.
A dream of being attacked by an animal is a warning to be careful with those around you. Someone means you no good.
If you dream that you kill an attacking animal, your life will be saved by a stranger. [6]
The message of this dream may also be preparing you to protect yourself from negative projections coming your way, or to find a healthy outlet for your stress.
See also: Victim, Perpetrator, Anger. [8]
Depth Psychology: Character traits, cravings, or needs that you haven’t been aware of until now appear suddenly and violently from nowhere, making you anxious and afraid. [9]