Do dreams really mean something?
“What anyone thinks about, he will dream about,” this folk proverb instructs that dreams are reflections of our desires and dreams, our longings, worries and even fears. But can dreams actually mean something?
Since the dawn of time, dreams have been attributed prophetic functions. Astrologers and fortune tellers spared no effort in uncovering the hidden meanings of dreams, believing them to be predictions of future events. Thus:
- The biblical prophet Daniel chided King Nebuchadnezzar for his dream of a great statue being shattered by a stone. The phenomenon of the prophet Daniel lay not so much in his ability to explain the dream (the statue as a metaphor for the empire), but in the fact that he was able to guess what such a dream was for the king!
- Sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph prophesied to the Viceroy, who had a dream about a vine – a return to Pharaoh’s favor, and to the Baker, dreaming of three baskets of bread – death! However, he became famous for interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh himself, who in his dream saw seven fat cows and seven skinny cows, seven full ears and seven empty ears – foreshadowing alternating periods of abundant harvest and crop failure.
- Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were divine revelation. They immortalized the contents of many dreams on papyri, and we also learn from papyri that they sometimes even slept in temples, for they were convinced that in such a hallowed place they would experience divine proximity and wisdom.
As you can see, the dream is firmly rooted in the history and culture of mankind – art, broadly understood, is fascinated by dreams continuously to this day, only changing and giving them different roles and meanings.
The meaning of dreams vs. science
But what does science say about dreams? In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars – such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung – concluded that dreams do not have supernatural functions, but provide insights into the inner workings of the mind. In his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” Freud detailed a complex system of dream analysis. In a nutshell, his theory was that while our conscious minds slumber, our unconscious minds produce images that can give us detailed insight into our innermost IAM.
Modern scientists believe that dreams are merely a side effect of much more complex neurological processes. Although to ordinary bread eaters it seems that the brain is switched off during sleep, scientists know that sleep is a period of intense neurological activity. Somnology – the science that deals with the physiology of sleep – treats the function of sleep, its disorders and treatments – but one looks in vain for issues related to its meaning and interpretation in its subject matter. If that’s the case, perhaps dreams don’t actually mean anything?
See also:
Well, Tore Nielsen – a professor and sleep researcher at the University of Montreal – proposes a theory intermediate between Freud’s almost magical, symbol-based system of dream analysis and the view that dreams are simply random. According to him, dreams are closely related to neurological memory consolidation processes, but that doesn’t mean they are random. The dream stories that our brains weave together from seemingly random images result – at least in part – from our emotional states.
One thing, therefore, we can be sure of: whether dreams foretell the future, allow us to commune with the divine, or simply give us a better understanding of ourselves – the process of analyzing them has always been and will remain highly symbolic!