Dream interpretation: Scientific and common-folk approaches in trying to explain the existence and value of dreams

The world of unconsciousness when we go to bed and sleep every night can offer many insights and valuable thoughts regarding our brain activity. Many people have devoted their life researching the subject and came up with many theories and explanations that pertaining to the world of dreams and how to interpret them. Interpretation of dreams allows to make meaningful connections between brain activity at night, expressed by visions and symbols on one hand, and what these visions and symbols can represent in reality on the other hand.

Many skeptics of these theories argue that dreams that we have at night have no particular meaning or they are visions that cannot be interpreted or applied in any way to our everyday living. And this is not just the denial of spiritual and superstitious nature of the dreams we have. The scientific meaning of brain activity at night is that it is just a collection of memories and flashbacks that the brain has processed during the day and somehow projects these images into our mind while we are asleep. But one can argue that sometimes we have very interesting and unusual dreams that cannot be explained easily by what we have encountered in our daily activities.

Take, for example, the dreams of flying, meeting celebrities, having magic powers or some other dreams. These unconscious messages bear a very distinct meaning that cannot be just the product off our everyday activity. Many people will look for specific answers in order to explain and find validation for these types of dreams because they do not know how to approach them. While other people can be fearing or become uncomfortable knowing that these images can be a warning sign for something, but they do not know what they mean.

Common FolksCultural and traditional norms sometimes stand in the way for some people to successfully interpret and find the correct answer to their inquiries, because they have some kind of a bias towards resolving their visions and recollections from the dreams they had.

A scientific justification of dreaming usually deals with characterizing human brain and its nocturnal activities as a product of evolution, and having dreams and visions at night means some distinct steps in cognitive activity of human race. This theory offers explanations for different types of dreams we might have, such as nightmares, recurring dreams or something closely related to recollections of reality. At the same time, it is very hard to find a meaningful representation or a connection between various symbols and things that occur in reality, while using this scientific approach. Part of the problem is that people naturally tend to seek for explanation or to console their feelings by finding a direct connection between what they dreamed about and an identifiable, concrete explanation of that dream.

Although scientific theories are valuable being trying to describe and explain dream activities, and also in assessing the psychological nature of dreaming, interpretation of dreams is not fully represented by these methods, so people should look for other sources of information when they try to find a direct connection between their dreams and possible future repercussions or impact on their lives.