In the 3rd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. A thousand years later, Ancient Egyptians wrote a dream book listing over a hundred common dreams and their meanings. And in the years since, we haven’t paused in our quest to understand why we dream. So, after a great deal of scientific research, technological advancement, and persistence, we still don’t have any definitive answers, but we have some interesting theories. Here are seven reasons we might dream.
1. WE DREAM TO FULFILL OUR WISHES In the early 1900’s, Sigmund Freud proposed that while all of our dreams, including our nightmares, are a collection of images from our daily conscious lives. They also have symbolic meanings which relate to the fulfillment of our subconscious wishes. Freud theorized that everything we remember when we wake up from a dream is a symbolic representation of our unconscious, primitive thoughts, urges and desires. Freud believed that by analyzing those remembered elements, the unconscious content would be revealed to our conscious mind, and psychological issues stemming from its repression could be addressed and resolved.
Comments are closed.