A brief history of dreams

Dreams have been central to human culture across history, often viewed as prophetic or spiritually meaningful. In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud transformed the study of dreams. The activation-synthesis hypothesis is a key neuroscientific theory, but the neuroscience of dreaming remains a young field reliant on expensive technology, leading to slow progress and small sample sizes. The Continuity Hypothesis proposes that waking thoughts, behaviors, and emotions carry over into dreams in transparent ways. Carl Jung developed a method of dream analysis called amplification.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Dreams have been integral to human culture all over the world and throughout human history. In many ancient and medieval accounts of dreaming, dreams were often seen as prophetic, gifts from the gods, communications with ancestors, or as having some other kind of religious or spiritual meaning. In the early 20th century, oneirology had a huge makeover thanks to perhaps the most famous oneirologist of them all, Sigmund Freud. One of the most influential neuroscientific theories is the activation-synthesis hypothesis. The neuroscience of dreaming is one of the youngest academic fields of oneirology and is reliant on expensive technology, which necessarily means that progress is slow, laborious, and relies on small sample sizes. The Continuity Hypothesis, conversely, states that aspects of waking life, like our thoughts, our behaviours, and our emotions, carry over dreams in very transparent, obvious ways. Jung also developed a new method of dream analysis called amplification.