A dream is a stream of thoughts, emotions and/or images that occur in the mind of a person while asleep. Dreams can be fascinating, interesting, scary or frightening. Understanding the meaning and purpose of dreams can be inexplicable. Dreams are often rich and compelling, hence the common belief that they do have a meaning (Domhof, n.d.). However, there is no specific purpose of dreams identified so far. Many researchers have tried to explain the purpose of dreams from different perspectives. In this paper, I will refer to different theories of dreams and empirical studies on this baffling psychology topic to unravel various aspects of dreams in pursuit of knowledge regarding to their purpose.
Various theories have been advanced to explain the reasons behind dreams. Despite the existence of such theories, the purpose of dreams is not yet known with certainty. Interpreting the dreams has become a dream in itself. However, interpretation of dreams has become a center of interest to most researchers in the recent past. Nowadays, researchers agree that dreams carry a meaning within themselves (Cherry, 2012). According to Domhof (1996), dreams occur coherently and in systematic relations to other variables. Therefore, dreams can be said to carry a meaning. If dreams have a meaning, they may have a purpose too. Let us find out the purpose by looking
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On the other hand, Carl Jung’s theory holds that dreams are personal and that their interpretation involves knowing exactly about the dreamer (Domhoff, 1996). These two theories are therefore almost related, but Freud argue that dreams express the dreamers wishes while Jung suggests that dreams express the dreamer’s personality. However, both dreams focus on the dreamer as the center point of dreams. Thus, we can correctly postulate that the purpose of dreams centers on the traits and wishes of the