In the interpretation of dreams, Wolf is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as instinct, the wild, threat, and the shadow of the psyche.
Common readings
The wolf is read now as raw instinct and the wild, now as a threat, and in Jungian terms often as a figure of the shadow, the disowned side of the self.
The reading of dream symbols has a long documented history, from the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus in the second century to Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung. Such meanings are interpretive conventions of those traditions, offered here as ways the image has been understood rather than as fixed or established fact; in practice a symbol takes much of its sense from the individual dreamer and the setting of the dream.
What changes the reading
Interpreters weigh the wolf's behaviour against the dreamer's response. A wolf watching from the treeline, a pack circling, an outright attack and a wolf that walks beside the dreamer are four different dreams, and fear met with flight reads differently from fear met with stillness. The lone wolf and the pack carry distinct senses, solitude and threat in company respectively. Where the wolf speaks or leads, older folk registers of the guide animal are usually allowed to soften the plain reading of danger.