This paper attempts to demonstrate the association between dogs and death in the dreams of analytic patients and in diverse burial practices and myths. It further tries to show that when the image of a dog (or jackal) is evoked in response to fears of death, the dog most basically represents the mother. This representation of mother contains contributions from all the developmental stages of childhood from oral to oedipal, but the earlier contributions are the most significant. The rage, anxiety and longing engendered by the threatened loss of the maternal object (one meaning of death) finds representation via repression, displacement and projection in the figure of the dog (or jackal).

Although the last believer in Anubis and Egyptian mortuary practices died approximately two thousand years ago and other religions and cults which had the dog as a central figure in their mortuary beliefs are no longer in existence, the image of the dog in association with death does continue to occur in the dreams of people. This was illustrated by the dreams of two patients.