Porcupines and Hedgehogs: The Secret Language of Dreams and Symbols

Schopenhauer’s Porcupines

Schopenhauer tells a lovely little story about a group of porcupines on a freezing winter’s day.

They huddle together for warmth, but as they move closer, their quills begin to prick one another. So they move apart. Before long, the cold becomes too much, and they creep back towards each other again, only to be hurt once more.

Eventually, they find a distance that works: close enough to share some warmth, but not so close that they injure one another.

Schopenhauer used the story as a way of thinking about human relationships. We need closeness, warmth and companionship, but of course we also come with our sensitivities, defences and sharp edges. Too much distance can leave us lonely. Too much closeness can feel painful or overwhelming.

A Dream of a Prickly Creature

A client once brought me a dream that immediately made me think of this story.

She dreamt of a porcupine, or perhaps a hedgehog, in trouble at the side of the road. She tried to pick it up and help it, but the more she tried, the more it struggled, and the more its spines pricked her skin.

Eventually, she stopped trying to grasp it and began talking to it very gently. The animal calmed down and looked into her eyes as though it understood her.

She was then able to lead it away from the road and into a hedgerow, where she left it happily eating slugs.

Symbolism

Hedgehogs and porcupines make wonderful symbols of vulnerability and self-protection. They are soft creatures covered in something sharp. Their prickles are not there because they are aggressive; they are there to protect them when they feel threatened.

A hedgehog adds another dimension. When frightened, it curls in on itself, hiding its softer body and presenting only its spines to the outside world. We can do something very similar. When we feel frightened or exposed, we may withdraw, become prickly, or make ourselves difficult to reach.

What interested me most about this dream was the change in the way she related to the animal. At first, helping meant trying to pick it up and carry it somewhere safer. But the harder she tried, the more it resisted. Its prickles were doing exactly what prickles are there to do: protecting something vulnerable.

A Different Way of Approaching the Prickles

Only when she stopped trying to hold on to it did something else become possible. She was no longer doing something to the animal. She was in relationship with it.

We had already been working in therapy with a frightened, defensive part of her that she was trying very hard to change, control, overcome, or somehow “sort out”. The dream seemed to suggest another way of approaching it: not “What am I going to do about you?” but “Can I get to know you?”

The old idea of “as within, so without” came to my mind. What we meet in the outside world so often seems to echo something taking place within us.

And there was certainly an echo here. In some of her relationships, she could work very hard to help, rescue, persuade, or reach someone, only to find that the harder she tried, the more they withdrew or became defensive — and the more hurt she became.

The dream seemed to be showing her something different.

Less carrying, perhaps. More accompanying.

This is where her dream departs slightly from Schopenhauer’s porcupines. His animals solve the problem by finding the right distance between them. In her dream, it is not only the distance that changes. It is the manner of approach. The animal does not settle because she gives up on it, but because she stops trying to seize it.

The roadside feels important too. The animal is exposed, somewhere it does not really belong, on the edge of a place concerned with movement and getting somewhere. She leads it away from the road and back into the hedgerow, somewhere it can fend for itself.

And she does not take it home.

I like that part of the dream very much.

She does not rescue it by making it dependent upon her. She helps it back to a place where it can manage on its own and leaves it there, happily eating slugs.

At the beginning, she seems to imagine that helping means picking the creature up and carrying it. By the end, she has discovered another kind of help: making contact, gaining its trust and allowing it to find its own way.

The Prickles Are Not the Creature

Frightened and defended parts of us are not always terribly grateful for our efforts to improve them. Sometimes the harder we try, the sharper the prickles become.

They may need something gentler.

What I particularly like about the dream is that the animal does not have to lose its prickles. Nothing about it needs to be taken away or fixed. What changes is the way it is approached.

Perhaps that is the message of the prickles: not go away, but please come closer differently.

The prickles are not the creature. They are what the creature has developed to protect itself.