Asylum
An institution for the housing of the mentally ill — a building dedicated to holding minds the household could no longer hold.
An asylum in a dream is the dream's image of a building dedicated to holding minds the household could no longer hold. The asylum is not necessarily cruel and is not necessarily kind; the place exists because some interior states require a structure larger and more specialised than a family kitchen can provide. The dream brings the asylum when something in your life — a person whose suffering has outgrown what the people around them can manage, an interior of yours that has been moved to a more formal containment, a fear of such a removal — is currently being met by an institutional answer. An asylum visited as a respectful caller is the dream affirming the use of the proper container. An asylum imagined with horror, with no actual encounter behind the image, is the dream noting that the place is being filled with the dreamer's anxiety rather than with what it actually is.