“It is difficult to explain why so many people dream – sometimes regularly – of the experience of teeth falling out, breaking or rotting. In other words, experiences that are not particularly common in the lives of adults,” write the study authors. The difficulty of finding an explanation for these dreams has given rise to numerous interpretations over time, starting with the ancient Greek dream interpreter Artemidorus, who associated the loss of teeth in dreams with the settlement of financial debts. Later, a text in the Jewish Talmud defined dental dreams as a prophecy of the imminent death of a family member, while psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud related such dreams to sexual themes such as masturbation and castration.
