The Purpose of Dreams: Prophecy, Psychology, or Random?

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, and my fascination with them runs deep. I’ve read books on dreams, and during my psychology studies in college I asked a lot of questions about them. I discuss dreams on an almost daily basis. Whenever a conversation on dreams comes up, the burning question always revolves around the purpose of dreams, if any. This article won’t attempt to interpret the individual symbols in dreams, but to discuss the purpose of dreams themselves.

Although many authors and “experts” take sides on the issue, I’m a firm believer that there is no single purpose of all dreams. A dream must first be interpreted, after which a purpose can be surmised.

Keep in mind that a dream’s purpose and a dream’s interpretation aren’t the same thing. If a dream is literal, the purpose is usually obvious. Sometimes a dream seems literal, but it is actually symbolic. A dream about drowning, for example, may be more about being unable to keep up with a problem in life than literally drowning. One the symbolism is determined, you can look at the other images of the dream to interpret it more accurately. The more symbolic a dream is, the more you should determine what those symbols mean first. In other words, try to figure out what the symbols mean and then figure out why your mind would present those symbols to you at all. Let’s take a look at some of the purposes of dreams.

People dream for a variety of reasons.

Dreams as Psychology
I believe most dreams fall into this category – that many dreams force the dreamer to deal with events in their life that they aren’t dealing with when awake. When a recently-deceased loved one appears to the dreamer, often people interpret this as a literal “appearance” by them. A more likely explanation is that the dreamer’s mind is dealing with the loss of that person. A frightening event may be revisited in dreams years later, particularly if the dreamer never completely dealt with the event at the time, or tried to just forget about it. There are endless reasons why such dreams exist, but the most likely general explanation is that the dreamer’s mind is presenting events that are significant in some way and have not been properly addressed by the conscious mind while awake.

Dreams as Prophecy
The epic nature of some dreams, even if they seem highly symbolic, gives them the gravity of a true prophecy. Indeed, I wrote of an epic dream years ago where I was teleported to the year 2926. At the time, I took the dream literally, that I somehow actually visited the distant future. After years of dream research, I came to realize that this dream wasn’t about the future as much as it was about my present at the time and  issues I was dealing with in the upcoming months. As a skeptic, prophecy isn’t my first choice when attempting to interpret a dream. That said, I can admit that I’ve had very specific dreams that did in fact come to fruition years later, so it’s hard for me even as a skeptic to completely dismiss the idea. But dreams of nuclear war or Armageddon typically aren’t prophecy as much as they are symbolic about the immediate events in a dreamer’s life. The few prophetic dreams I’ve encountered personally and from friends are typically much more mundane than those scary end-of-the-world dreams.

Random Firings of Neurons
Even if a dream has a clear-cut purpose, there are always those “random” moments that make no sense or seem unrelated to the events surrounding it. I have a friend who is a dream interpretation guru, and she will often describe such elements as a “throw-in.” Some dream elements, or entire dreams, are simply random thoughts or images drawn from the pool of our memories. I once had a dream that included a row of Uncle Sams doing the can-can dance in the sky while bowling each other into clouds. The only interpretation of such a scene is that it was just a random image my mind created. I don’t think, however, that most dreams are without purpose. I reject the school of thought that all dreams are random firings of neurons in the brain while asleep. If that were the case, then why would the people and places in dreams change throughout our lives? I don’t dream about the people or events I dreamed about 20 years ago. Most of my dreams are about the people in my life now, which lends credibility to the school of thought that dreams typically are a person’s current life events.

Keep in mind that certain foods, drugs, vitamins, etc can affect dreams. I’ve found that taking melatonin to help me sleep also tends to help me remember dreams the next day. I used to think that melatonin would “make me have weird dreams” but I now believe that those “weird dreams” have always been there, and that the melatonin simply allows me to recall them easier after I wake up.

I’ve always found dreams fascinating. I recently had an Inception-style dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. I find it helpful to keep a log of my dreams, even if I only remember snippets of them. The more you are able to interpret your own dreams, the more you’ll be able to determine why your mind is presenting this information to you.