Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, first became aware of the implications of dreams in psychoanalytic therapy when he comprehended that in the process of free association, his patients often described their dreams pertaining to the night before. He then learnt that these dreams had a certain meaning, though this meaning was concealed.
“The Interpretation of Dreams” was published by Freud in 1900, and in which he incorporated much of the data gathered from both his clinical experience in this domain as well as the insights he acquired by free association for his own dreams.
It was on the basis of this data that he came to the conclusion that a dream is a conscious expression of an unconscious wish or fantasy, which is not accessible to that individual in the awakened state.
Dreams dwell in a central spot in today’s psychoanalytic practice and theory, and are the subject of ongoing research.
However, to date clinical psychiatric treatment has not yet clearly elucidated the value of dream interpretation.
So, what is the purpose of dreams?
Being a huge fan of this subject, I might throw my two cents. It appears that by your interesting question, you are more interested in the psycho-analytical value of dreams. Well as you pointed out, there are benefits in dreaming as Freud, Jung, and others have hypothesized. It appears that there might be some types of dreams (about 5, 6), each of which might serve a specific psychological purpose. And every night dream is usually composed of them all. They are beyond the scope of this comment and I think the interested person has already read about them in numerous books published in this field... However, modern science has hypothesized even more appealing merits for dreaming (that I am interested in). These hypothesize the consolidation of memory during REM sleep from hippocampus to the neocortex. So by dreaming, we might allow our brains to categorize the recent activities into long-term memory. These two notions (psycho-analytic and neurological) are different but not necessarily contradictory. It is plausible that while consolidating the memory, one can be helped by dreaming also regarding the improvement of their mental health by regulating certain (mostly unknown) centers and circuits (such as amygdala or unknown circuits in the neocortex). The problem is that the current technology does not suffice to investigate very accurately and rapidly the neural processes. But the more critical issue is that the psycho-analytic part is not very well purified. There are infinite latent variables involved in it that makes this sector almost bordering on pseudoscience, as it is not very well replicable and predictable, and finally objective... So from a psychological standpoint, there are some irrefutable (and not so useful) theories (actually hypotheses) that can amuse the reader by their mystical nature, but do not prove or reject anything (so are not basically different from the ancient interpretations of dreams). This slows down (or makes impossible) its investigation unless there are new approaches to it or to the science in general.
Rodolfo Llinas has interesting insights on how the mind works during sleep as well as wakefulness in his book "I of the Vortex". If I recall correctly, he basically says that because the brain has an internal oscillation frequency of ~40 Hz both during sleep as well as wakefulness, they're pretty much the same thing from that perspective. And you exist as a person with particular experiences and wishes similarly in both situations (sleep/wake). When you're off of that frequency, you don't exist as a person with experiences and wishes but of course you continue existing as a biological entity. So what's the meaning of dreams? It looks like they have similar contents as during wakefulness but of course lack of dreams seem to have deleterious effects. Please take a look at this dog: http://youtu.be/wI8XgJ3JebE
Almilaji, I had a thought upon watching the effects of the sun through a magnifying glass the other day. Neither the glass nor the sun exist for this purpose; yet, this purpose for them exists. Whether or not dreams exist for a purpose, they sure do serve some.
Dear Chinedu
Thanks a lot. Some dreams are thought to heal the traumatized ego by showing to the dreamer something he wants to be or have but can't in real life. For example, I want to be rich and I am not. In some dreams I can see myself very rich. I can or cannot remember the dream later, but the healing effect might take place once I see such a dream.
Some other dreams try to forecast something for the dreamer and try to warn him/her of some dangerous upcoming events. It is hypothesized that subcouncious is much more powerful than the conscious mind, in reading the hidden signs. So sometimes, the subconcious might be warning us of certain problems...
Some dreams are thought to be designed to keep the person in the dreaming state and disallow him from awakening. For example, my clock is ringing to wake me up, and my dream tries to neutralize it by converting the sound of my clock to some background sound in the dream flaw. For example, in the dream I can see a phone constantly ringing, and then not urged to wake up.
Some types of dreams reflect the bodily needs such as hunger, thirst, etc. For example, I am thirsty, I see a river and I drink from it a lot.
Some dreams are designed to make a certain situation for a man who has not ejaculated for a while to ejaculate. These are not the random and casual causes of ejaculation, but are actually thought to be a specific response to the male's need to ejaculate.
Some other dreams reflect the higher-order status of the psyche. For example, someone dreams that he is lost and can't find the way home, and sees such a dream repeatedly, But with improvements in his life and self-esteem, his dreams might change gradually to better dreams until finally he sees himself not anymore lost, or he sees himself that he is first lost but could manage to find the way.
I would like to thank everyone for your valuable contribution to this question!
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