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... People as far back as the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, and Egyptians took their dreams seriously, often believing that they were messages from the gods. Even later religious thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther thought that dreams should be studied for self-knowledge and came from God, notes Adrienne Quinn, author of Dreams: Secret Messages From Your Mind. ... Robert McCarley of Harvard Medical School points out, "the feeling was dreams were ephemeral thing, not something to base solid science on" (qtd. ...
More recently, however, research has linked the creation of dreams to something more tangible - chemical reactions in the brain. Dreams are not dismissed as meaningless anymore; rather, they have proved valuable in learning about human nature. Sharon Begley asserts that it is human nature to look for meaning in everything, and so humans instinctively attempt to extract sense from the various thoughts buried in their memories, through their assorted dreams. ... It has forced people to consider the study of dreams as seriously as any science. But these two men, while sharing the belief that dreams hold information about people, differed in how they interpreted the dreams. ... He realized that dreams provide insight to the mind while treating neurotic patients: "It happened in the course of this treatment that patients, instead of bringing forward their symptoms, brought forward dreams. A suspicion thus arose that the dreams too had a sense. ...
In "Dreams on the Couch", David Gelman explains that Freud believed that dreams were a result of wishes that are normally repressed because of society, especially ones concerning sex and violence. Because directly dreaming about such things would usually disturb the sleeper enough to wake him or her, dreams are devised by the sleepers mind to disguise the wishes as something more acceptable, although sometimes strange.
Approximate Word count = 1459
Approximate Pages = 5.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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