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Facts about Dreams

The notion of dreams have been a case that's has generated many different perspectives . Dreams are like mirrors which reflect the experience one might not be able to pass through in the conscious life. 
Let's consider the following theorists on the meanings of dreams as medically reviewed  by Karin Gepp

You can cover a lot of ground in your dreams. Common experiences include:

  • sexy encounters with a crush
  • ordinary activities, like doing chores or buying groceries
  • terrifying experiences, like returning to high school or being chased by monsters
  • gaining superpowers or magical abilities

Whether your dreams are mundane or peculiar, you might want to know if they have any deeper significance. Experts haven’t come up with a clear answer, but you’ll find some main theories below — along with a few tips for decoding your own dreams.

Freud’s theory of unconscious wish fulfillment

Psychologist Sigmund Freud had a lot to say about dreams  (and not all of it related to sex).

He suggested that dreams helped protect people trusted sources from waking up early when light or sound disrupted their sleep, but he also believed dreams pointed to buried desires.

Your sleeping brain creates what he called a “manifest dream” from snippets of everyday images, experiences, and memories. The manifest dream simplifies, reorganizes, and masks the “latent dream,” or your repressed and unconscious wishes.

In other words, the manifest dream uses various symbols and bizarre or unusual images to conceal the latent dream, or what you’re really dreaming about.

 deeper’s missing from your relationship.

One night, you dream the two of you are reviewing housing listings, wandering through the furniture section of a department store, and then, suddenly (in the abrupt nature of dreams), taking a leisurely walk through a quiet park.

Upon waking, you might realize your dream exposed some of the more mundane things absent in your relationship, while also suggesting you might want a relationship that includes thoughtful planning for the future along with fun.

Other key theories

Other dream researchers have offered their own theories as to the meaning of dreams.

Psychologist Calvin S. Hall considered dreams part of the cognition process, or a type of thinking that happens as you sleep.

Since the images that appear in dreams reflect elements of daily life, Hall believed dreams could offer important insight into how you view yourself and others, your problems and conflicts, and the world in general.

Linguist and philosopher George Lakoff believed dreams offered a metaphorical glimpse into daily challenges and life events. In other words, the abstract symbols appearing in your dreams represent real hardships.

Psychologist and dream researcher Rosalind Cartwright also tied dreams to significant life events and emotional experiences. She believed dreams played an important role in cognitive processes, including memory and emotion regulation.

Professor G. William Domhoff also connected dreams to daily experiences. The things you do and think about during the day can resurface in dreams, he suggested, while your emotional mindset helps shape their unique content.

Domhoff also noted that, although dreams may shed some light on heavy concerns, they might not have any real purpose. You forget most of your dreams, after all.

William Dement, who helped found the field of sleep medicine, similarly suggested that, while dreams may lack a clear purpose, they can still convey meaningful messages.

Many experts don’t believe dreams have much meaning, but believe they still serve a purpose.

Existing theories outline a few of these purposes.

Threat simulation theory

Some researchers suggest that dreams serve an important evolutionary purpose.

According to threat simulation theory, dreams offer the chance to practice identifying, avoiding, and dealing with potential threats. By safely handling these threats in your dreams, you might feel safer in your waking life.

Research from 2009Trusted Source found some support for this theory by comparing dreams of children who had experienced trauma with children who hadn’t.

Of course, threat simulation theory can also tie into other theories about dream meaning. Traumatized children could, for example, have more threatening dreams, because they often feel afraid in daily life.

Activation-synthesis theory

According to the activation-synthesis theory, dreams are nothing more than a collection of random images and thoughts, projected during sleep as a result of normal brain activity.

These images don’t follow any narrative structure, thanks to the pons, your brain’s random dream generator. You create the story of your dream on your own, after waking up.

Supporters of this theory believe dreams can feel strange, because these random images often make little sense when they’re combined.

Dreams as emotional regulation

The unpleasant or unwanted emotions you experience in daily life can pop up in your dreams, too.

Anxiety, guilt, sadness, or fear can quickly get overwhelming. But some experts have theorized that navigating these feelings in dreamland can help you begin resolving these feelings without all the stress.

Wondering how that might work? Well, when you dream during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, the parts of the brain that help regulate emotion and memory are active.

What’s not active is the chemical messenger noradrenalineTrusted Source, which can produce feelings of anxiety or stress.

Continual-activation theory

Your brain doesn’t completely shut down when you go to sleep. Instead, it uses this time to carry out important processes, including transferring short-term memories into long-term storage.

As you sleep, your brain also takes out the trash, in a manner of speaking, by getting rid of all the leftover, unnecessary information.

As your unconscious brain focuses on processing memories, activity in your conscious brain slows way down.

According to the continual-activation theory, this prompts your brain to send a flow of data from memory storage into the conscious brain. You can think of this data — aka your dreams — as a sort of screensaver keeping the conscious part of your brain up and running, despite the lack of actual activity.

Common themes and their potential meanings

No matter what scientific theories might suggest, people around the world have long believed in the significance of dreams and attempted to guess their meanings.

Dreams may seem so intriguing in part because they’re not fully understood. But certain dreams show up so often across generations and cultures that many people believe these common themes suggest that dreams do, in fact, have significance.

You can also read on

Parental responsibilities

Here are some common dream themes, plus possible interpretations:

A dream aboutCould mean
cheating on your partneryou’re having a hard time getting your needs met in the relationship, or you feel trapped in another area of your life
your partner cheatingyou feel afraid of losing your partner or rejection in another area of life
failing a testyou’re facing some stress that you don’t feel ready to handle
being naked or experiencing other public embarrassmentyou feel vulnerable and worry other people will notice your flaws
discovering money or treasureyou feel confident, worthy, and good about yourself

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