Theories About Why We Dream

“Dreams are maps.” (Carl Sagan)

There are about as many theories as to why people dream as there are people. But in all of these theories, dreams are linked with health of the individual, of a loved one or a community. Even in modern times, dreams are seen as prophetic or as elaborate and elegant mirrors of emotional health. Dreams may also indicate the physical health of the dreamer.

Ancient Dream Theories

In ancient times, dreams were thought to be communications from the gods or the world of spirits. Shamans would enter a dream state in order to find cures or where game herds were migrating. Societies like some Native American tribes would send their adolescents off to endure extreme physical trials such as fasting, taking hallucinogens or being bitten by a snake in order to receive a dream that would guide them for the rest of their lives. They would not be accepted as adults in the community until they had such as dream, since the dream showed that the individual had transformed from child to adult.

Greece once had a healing temple called "esclepeion" devoted to the god of healing, Asclepius. Patients would enter, sleep and tell their dreams to the temple workers, who interpreted them as ways to treat the patients. The temple healers knew enough about medicine to drain and clean infected wounds while the patient was under a stupefying drug like opium.

Tibetan Buddhism would train monks to become lucid during their dreams as training for what happens during death. Dream then were all about training the mind to go through the horrors of death and out the other side.

The Royal Road

By the time of the Enlightenment, dreams had lost their status and were to be ignored. The first scientist to truly take them seriously was Sigmund Freud in his classic book "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900.) Freud would infamously label dreams as "the royal road to the unconscious" where symbols would show patients' repressed sexual fears or obsessions.

Even psychiatrists have trouble with this narrow view as to why we dream. Freud was living at a time of extreme social mores and often encountered people that had huge obligations to family and community that went contrary to what they would really like to do. Psychiatrists, psychologists and neurologists now think that Freud was only partially right and that dreams serve numerous purposes.

Modern Theories

There are several theories as to why we dream that all have credence, including the theory that we dream for all of these reasons. The first is that we dream to prepare ourselves for survival situations. We have nightmares to help us know how to react in certain situations. We dream about sex in order to keep the sexual organs fit. We dream about anything we have learned in the day in order to remember them for later.

Another theory put forth by Frances Crick and Graeme Mitchinson is that we dream to forget. The brain cannot possibly remember every single detail of waking life, so it selects what to discard and what to keep.

Illness can also affect dreams to the point that "strange dreams" or "nightmares" are listed as side effects to certain medications. Forgetting dreams is escalated if the dreamer abuses drugs or alcohol, so dreams seem to respond to chemicals ingested.

But just why we dream – we may only discover that in our wildest dreams.

References:

“Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama.” Edited by Fransico Varela. Widsom Publications; 1997.

“Why do we dream?” Psychology Today Blog. Nov. 11, 2009 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/200911/why-do-we-dream

“Sleep Temple.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_temple