POTATO

To see potatoes in your dream symbolizes an essential or basic element in your life, since potatoes are basic nourishment. It may also suggest laziness or stupidity. To see or eat mashed potatoes in your dream, suggests that you are experiencing concern over your financial affairs. Potato skin relates to the most potent aspect of a situation or the place where the greater number of benefits can be found. To see or eat crisps or potato chips in your dream symbolizes overindulgent behavior. It can also relate to the various methods you use to satisfy a basic need. To see a pretzel in your dream symbolizes twisted perceptions or confused thought processes concerning a relationship or situation in waking life. It may indicate that you are preoccupied with some complex issue and are not sure how to handle it.

The food of the poor, particularly in the 19th century, which thereby connects this image to fear of social decline—note Van Gogh’s painting The Potato Eaters, for example, where dark and somber colors convey the mood of poverty.

At the same time, the image of the potato refers to groundedness, since it grows underground. As a root plant, the potato addresses the rootedness of the dream- er. As a tuber, the potato has a peculiar androgynous shape: it could represent a phallic symbol as well as typically feminine shapes. As one of the basic food forms, the potato also represents the nurturing female as well as the power of Mother Nature.

(see Garden, Farm, Vegetables) An alternative earth emblem.

Because of its broad ranging use in folk remedies, a symbol for the return to health, usually in a physical sense.

Provision and the staples of life. Potatoes were an essential crop to many communities.

In a more negative sense, sitting on the side lines of life, getting sucked in by non-active pastimes (e.g., “being a couch potato”).