Typical Dreams:
Help! My Teeth are Falling Out!The meaning of teeth falling out in dreams (Freud referred to it as: "dreams due to dental stimulus"), though it is a common dream theme across the cultures, has remained a mystery for a long time. Freud discovered that it surely must be an important dream symbol, because an interpretation always stumbled on great resistance in his patients.
According to Freud, because of "an overwhelming mass of evidence", men dreaming of teeth falling out is caused by nothing other than the masturbatory desires of puberty. He explains: "But here I may draw attention to the frequent `displacement from below to above' which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria, which ought to be localised in the genitals, may at all events be realised in other, unobjectionable parts of the body. Only one feature - the teeth - is beyond all possibility of being compared in this way; but it is just this coincidence of agreement and disagreement which makes the teeth suitable for purposes of representation under the pressure of sexual repression."
Freud also connotates the wordplay and the 'Witz' element of teeth. In Austria there is an expression for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or To pull one off. There are expressions more or less similar in other languages. Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a connection. Psychoanalysis can admit of such a meaning only at the most as a joking allusion to the sense already indicated.
In a sense, we think that Freud left out an important childhood phenomenon, namely: the shedding of teeth. Don't we all vividly remember a tooth losening in our mouths and the strangeness of that experience? And, as is nowadays recognised, that a baby and a young child regards his body, body parts, for instance his stools, as his possesion. Losing these possesions (the stools taken away by mother who says that they are 'dirty') can be a traumatic experience. An experience that perhaps is still haunting us in our dreams.
We also want to stress the relation between teeth, the mouth, and talking. We need our teeth to bite our tongue. And, showing one's teeth can be a form of agression and danger (not so different from laughing, but that is another theory!). In addition, dreaming of losing our teeth may be symbolic for losing our agression, and the powerlessnes we experience in our lives.