The Secret About Dreams

Dreams
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.The content and purpose of dreams are not yet understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is known as oneirology.
The cultural meaning of dreaming
Jacob's dream of aladder of angels, c. 1690, by Michael WillmannThroughout history, people have sought meaning in dreams or divination through dreams. Dreams have also been described physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep; psychologically as reflections of the subconscious; and spiritually as messages from gods, the deceased, predictions of the future, or from the Soul. Many cultures practicedream incubation with the intention of cultivating dreams that are prophetic or contain messages from the divine. Judaism has a traditional ceremony named Hatavat Halom. Literally meaning "making the dream a good one", through this rite disturbing dreams can be transformed to give a positive interpretation by a rabbi or a rabbinic court.
psychology theories of dreams
Evolutionary psychologistsbelieve dreams serve some adaptive function for survival. Deirdre Barrett describes dreaming as simply "thinking in different biochemical state" and believes people continue to work on all the same problems personal and objective in that state. Her research finds that anything math, musical composition, business dilemmas may get solved during dreaming, but the two areas especially likely to help are1) anything where vivid visualization contributes to the solution, whether in artistic design or invention of 3-D technological devices and 2) problem where the solution lies in "thinking outside the box" i.e. the person is stuck because conventional wisdom on how to approach the problem is wrong. In a related theory, which Mark Blechner terms "Oneiric Darwinism," dreams are seen as creating newideas through the generation of random thought mutations. Some of these may be rejected by the mind as useless, while others may be seen as valuable and retained. Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo posits that dreams have evolved for "threat simulation" exclusively.

Dream interpretation
Dreams were historically used for healing (as in the asclepieions found in the ancient Greek temples ofAsclepius) as well as for guidance or divine inspiration. Some Native American tribes used vision quests as a rite of passage, fasting and praying until an anticipated guiding dream was received, to be shared with the rest of the tribe upon their return.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung identified dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and theconscious. They also assert together that the unconscious is the dominant force of the dream, and in dreams it conveys its own mental activity to the perceptive faculty. While Freud felt that there was an active censorship against the unconscious even during sleep, Jung argued that the dream's bizarre quality is an efficient language, comparable to poetry and uniquely capable of revealing theunderlying meaning.
Fritz Perls presented his theory of dreams as part of the holistic nature of Gestalt therapy. Dreams are seen as projections of parts of the self that have been ignored, rejected, or suppressed.Jung argued that one could consider every person in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer, which he called the subjective approach to dreams. Perls expanded this point of view tosay that even inanimate objects in the dream may represent aspects of the dreamer. The dreamer may therefore be asked to imagine being an object in the dream and to describe it, in order to bring into awareness the characteristics of the object that correspond with the dreamer's personality.

Movies and Novel inspired by dreams
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