A dying cavalry officer dreamed of a soldier showing him his horse's decaying corpse; Jung interpreted this as the unconscious communicating that the physical warm-blooded body would die, but that the essential 'I' observing the corpse would persist.

Death dreams do not necessarily predict actual death; rather, they signal that a person must face and confront their mortality and the possibility of death—a psychological-spiritual necessity that can lead to either continued living (with transformation) or actual death.

When dying people are strongly identified with their body and fear that bodily death means complete annihilation, their dreams shift to symbolic content designed to detach them from physical identification and suggest survival beyond bodily dissolution.

A gruesome or unsettling physical sensation can occur when hearing certain death dreams, which comes from the nervous system's sympathetic response and seems to indicate that 'this really means death,' though this cannot be proven scientifically.

Some dreams can signal that a person is approaching actual death, but it is impossible to be completely certain of this before the person actually dies, since continuation beyond the dream is always possible.

Based on her experience with dreams, Von Franz believes that dreams do not cheat and are not mere wish-fulfillments, so if dying people's dreams point toward life after death, there must be something of life or consciousness continuing after death.

The dying woman was comforted by her candle-and-window dream without consciously understanding its symbolic meaning, which is characteristic of how terminal patients respond to archetypal dream content.

Dreams of dying people are not directly about death itself, but instead use symbolic narratives about journeys, passages through darkness, rebirth, meeting beloved partners, or detachment from the body to represent the transition process.

Dreams of dying people consistently contain the same archetypal motifs found across different human cultures' death rituals and afterlife beliefs: rebirth, long journeys into another realm, transformation, partial destruction with survival, and others, suggesting a universal psychological response to approaching death.

The core message of most dreams of dying people is that the life process continues in another medium beyond physical death.

Critics objected to Von Franz's interpretations of dying dreams by claiming they represent mere wish-fulfillment, but Von Franz disputes this by noting that dying dreams also contain harsh, unsentimental messages about actual death, not only comforting reassurance.

A dying woman dreamed of a burning candle on a windowsill that flickered and seemed to go out, triggering panic about 'the great darkness,' but then the candle appeared outside the window (beyond the threshold), large and burning steadily again; she died four hours later comforted by this dream, which symbolized the continuation of her life in another medium.

The unconscious message in the tree-hovering dream is that the life process is losing only its contact with earthly reality, but the process of living itself continues in another medium.

Sometimes there is an 'uncanny smell' or intuitive feeling around certain death dreams where one senses they forebode actual death, but this is a parapsychological or mediumistic intuitive feeling rather than a scientifically explicable phenomenon.

It is worthwhile to continue psychological analysis and dream work with dying and elderly people, contrary to the practice of many psychological schools that dismiss them as having nothing to adapt to in life anymore.

A woman with metastatic cancer everywhere had shocking death dreams (watch stopped and couldn't be repaired, favorite tree felled), which she correctly interpreted as signaling her illness outcome, but the shock of the dreams motivated her to face her underlying psychological problem she hadn't confronted; she survived 15 years and is still alive.

The window in the dying woman's candle dream represents an isolating threshold between realms, symbolizing that the life process continues but in a different sphere beyond the physical boundary.

A man dreamed he saw an abyss with a large tree at its border losing its roots and falling during an earthquake, but at the moment of falling, the tree began to hover in midair and continued to exist without earth-roots, symbolizing that the life process continues in another medium after loss of earthly contact.

The voice of nature and instinct, as expressed through dreams, helps dying people to die in peace and provides comfort, contrasting with the lack of attention to this in conventional psychological practice.

The tree dream can be interpreted to suggest that while the life process continues, the individual ego-consciousness may not persist; in contrast, other dreams point to the continuation of individual conscious identity.