Dreams: Definition, Research, & Interpretations​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Dreams are the periods of sleep when we are conscious while sleeping and tell ourselves stories. Can we interpret our dreams in meaningful ways? Should we?​
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I have always been envious of the people around me who easily and often remember their dreams. It must be so interesting, so entertaining, I imagine, to be treated each night to one or more random, unpredictable stories in which you play some kind of role. At the same time, people who remember their dreams must contend with the question of what, if anything, those dreams mean. Is it worthwhile to try to interpret our dreams?
 Why do we have them in the first place? Let’s see what the psychological research can tell us about dreams—their origins, their functions, and their interpretation.
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What Are Dreams? (A Definition)​

Dreams are the conscious experiences we have when we are sleeping (Farthing, 1992). They are the periods of time during sleep when we are aware, but neither fully conscious nor unconscious. A conscious experience during sleep is considered a dream if there is order and a narrative, if what you experience seems to follow a plotline or have some kind of logic to it.
 
That’s the definition of dreaming on an experiential level, but we can also think of dreams as neurophysiological processes (Hobson, 2002)—firings of our brains and even our entire nervous systems that happen while we are sleeping. Sleep scientists have paid incredibly close attention to the specific brain patterns that emerge while we are sleeping, finding all sorts of differences in how our brains fire during different parts of sleep. These patterns of brain activation are closely related to the nature and quality of the sleep we get.
 
As you may know, dreams are not an experience limited only to humans; they are actually experienced by all animals whose brains include a cortex, which is a brain structure that supports more complex thought (Hobson, 2002). I know animals dream because, while I am not aware of what I look like when I’m dreaming—a fact for which I should probably be grateful—I have watched many dogs have dreams, and it is absolutely adorable. They make little barking sounds, toss and turn, and move their legs like they are running. Just like humans, their eyes show the rapid eye movements associated with the stage of sleep in which we dream most.

Why Are Dreams Important?​

Scientists and psychologists have gone back and forth about whether dreams are important. In the time of Sigmund Freud—and in the decades that followed, in which his theories continued to strongly influence the medical and psychology fields—dreams were seen as an invaluable source of insight into our unconscious thoughts and feelings (Freud, 1953). It was thought that a therapist trained in psychoanalysis could help a client interpret what happened in their dreams, finding the meanings necessary to improve the client’s waking life.
 
However, Freud’s approach to the interpretation of dreams received almost no scientific validation; using these techniques did not consistently lead to positive changes in people’s lives (Revonsuo, 2000). This left sleep scientists and people providing therapy with the question of whether dream content was truly significant for our self-understanding (alongside equally important questions such as why we dream in the first place). Were dreams perhaps just random and meaningless firings of our brain cells?
 
The answer to this question is almost certainly no. As long as people have been dreaming, they have noted how the content of their dreams contains elements of their waking lives. Often, these elements are things that frighten, confuse, or challenge us, which has led some researchers to propose that dreams serve the function of giving us chances to rehearse facing threatening situations and figure out how we might want to respond to them (Revonsuo, 2000). From this perspective, it is argued that we developed a tendency to face down threatening parts of our lives in our dreams because doing so again and again might help us stay alive—especially when we were evolutionarily much younger, living shorter and more dangerous lives.
 
Later researchers looked at this idea, which we might call the threat simulation hypothesis of dreams, and argued that we can expand the function of dreams beyond simply preparing for threats; instead, we can see them as a general tool for rehearsing situations of importance in our lives (Franklin & Zyphur, 2005). If this is the case, dreams serve the broader function of giving us opportunities to flex our cognitive muscles and develop better ways of thinking about and approaching meaningful moments in our lives.
 
For more general information on how psychological research has illuminated our understanding of the importance of dreams, I recommend watching this video:

Video: An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreams

The Science of Dreams

In recent years, the research conducted by sleep scientists on dreams has focused most particularly on measuring brain activity while people are sleeping, comparing dreaming experiences across different groups of people, and determining how dreams may be useful topics to explore in psychotherapy (Bulkeley, 2017). That last topic in particular is worth noting; even though Freud’s approach to interpreting dreams has not been scientifically validated, other methods of incorporating dreams into therapy seem to have a more solid evidence base. For example, psychologist Clara Hill (2004) has developed a method of using clients’ dreams to inform their work in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). By treating dreams as valid content for applying the same CBT tools used to understand our waking experiences, she has demonstrated that people can get therapeutic benefits from reflecting on and interpreting their dreams. 
 
On the topic of the neuroscience of dreaming, scientists are investigating how people’s environments affect their dreaming, even as they sleep, as well as trying to understand why some people recall their dreams more often than others (Scarpelli et al., 2022).

Interpretation of Dreams

Broadly speaking, there are two ways that cultures can approach the topic of dreams (Laughlin, 2011). The first approach is the one taken by what we might call monophasic cultures—cultures that see our waking lives as the only meaningful reality and that insist on trying to make dreams rational and understandable. The second type of culture sees more value in alternative forms of consciousness, so these are sometimes called polyphasic cultures. While developed Western nations generally take a monophasic worldview and downplay the possible significance of dreams, they are actually the exception on a global scale. Simply put, the majority of cultures see experiences such as dreaming, as well as meditative states and drug-induced trances, as being equally valuable and worthy of understanding as our experiences of being fully awake and sober (Laughlin, 2011). In other words, in these cultures dream interpretation matters, and it does not have to follow rules and expectations we have for the time we spend awake.

So most people around the world see dreams as having their own meaning, including the ability to reveal truths about who we are that our experiences while awake cannot show us (Freud, 1953; Laughlin, 2011). In fact, skepticism about the importance of dreams and the utility of interpreting them may be limited only to smaller circles, as most nonscientists and nonexperts across both Western and Eastern cultures believe that dreams provide valuable information about who we are and what we want (Morewedge & Norton, 2009). Furthermore, most of us interpret and are thus influenced by the content of our dreams; for example, the behavior of a friend in a dream you have might influence how you perceive your friend that day (Morewedge & Norton, 2009).
 
I am of the opinion that it is reflecting on how we interpret dreams, and not the content of the dreams themselves, that might provide the most valuable information about our own psychology. For example, you might notice yourself routinely dismissing parts of your dreams as irrelevant or reacting very strongly to certain aspects of your dreams but not others. Here, the valuable questions would be “Why do I want to ignore these parts of my dreams?” and “Why am I so strongly affected by these particular aspects of my dreams?” Answering these questions might help shed light on how you operate while you’re awake; there might be parallels between your reactions to your dreams and your reactions to your waking thoughts.

Dreams of Snakes​

It is very common for our dreams to involve animals. This is more true for children than for teenagers and adults, and the animals most often present in their dreams are the most common domesticated household pets such as cats and dogs (Schredl & Blagrove, 2021). That said, snakes are a relatively common animal to appear in dreams, perhaps because we are evolutionarily programmed to perceive them as threats.

Dreams of Being Pregnant

While sleep scientists have not looked closely at general dreams about being pregnant, they have studied the pregnancy-related dreams of people who are currently pregnant. In one study, most of the women that participated had dreamt about their own pregnancy, and a significant number had had frightening dreams (Blake & Reimann, 1993). These dreams became more common as the women grew closer to actually giving birth. Interestingly, conflict with the other parent of the baby was the most common topic for pregnancy-related dreams in this study. A more recent study found that dream content changes as mothers go from being pregnant to having their child, with mothers becoming more focused on how they will change after the birth and the dreams becoming more positive over time (Coo et al., 2014).

Dreams About Death

It has been argued that our dreams about death reveal our concerns related to dying (Cookson, 1990), which most often focus on loss of control, fear of transition, and uncertainty about what happens to our consciousness when we die. Our dreams regarding death are a space in which we grapple with the possibility of being separated from everyone else in our lives and with the inevitability of our eventual bodily breakdowns. Perhaps not surprisingly, dreams about death increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as people began to develop insomnia and to dream about how to stay alive if infected (Meaklim et al., 2023).

Dreams of Flying

Flight is a pretty common aspect of people’s dreams, in the sense that most people have dreamed at least once about flying. In one study, dreaming about flying was related to feeling fewer negative emotions, being more open to new experiences, playing an instrument, and recalling one’s dreams more often (Schredl, 2007).

Dreams of Being Chased

The experience of being chased by somebody who intends to harm you is a common element of nightmares (Schredl & Göritz, 2018). These dreams are more typical of younger people than older people, which may reflect the relatively stronger sense of powerlessness felt by children than by adults.

​Dreams of Falling

Similar to flying, dreams of falling are also commonplace. Some scientists think that falling dreams fit into a broader category of dreams having to do with gravity in general (Maggiolini et al., 2007), which would seem to reflect a fear of being at the mercy of forces stronger than oneself. For myself, I know that dreams in which I am falling elicit a sense of terror and may even leave me grabbing the sides of my bed in fear as I wake up from the dream. While I have not been able to identify something I feel that powerless about in my life at the moment, it is easy for me to believe that my brain is probably trying to process something in my life that I cannot really control.

Articles Related to Dreams

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Dreams

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Dreams​

I believe we should be flexible when it comes to how we think about our dreams. Dreams certainly do not predict the future, no matter how many stories we see in books or on screens that suggest as much. But they are a part of our lives about which we get to create the meaning: To a large extent, our dreams can mean what we want them to mean. So I encourage you to keep in mind that your dream interpretations can reflect your own bias or the expectations that you carry with you in general. Catching yourself falling into them in dream interpretation might help you see how they show up when you’re awake too.

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