The reports of the dreams that fill our nights become more interesting and intriguing as days go by, but they sidestep a very fundamental question: Why are we dreaming at all? Traditional psychologists and psychiatrists may say that "dreams are the arena in which we parade and encounter fears and wishes banished from daytime thoughts
" But two Harvard psychiatrists, J. Allen Hobson, M.D., and Robert McCarley, M.D., believe that dreams are caused by stimulation of the brain, and that neurons and neurotransmitters, not buried memories and pains, are the "stuff" of which dreams are made of. But out of all theories before his own, and of all these theories thought today, Sigmund Freud's" is the one that stands out the most. He believed that a dream represented an ongoing wish along with the previous day's activities. They may even portray wishes that have been inside us since early childhood. In fact, he believed, every dream is partially motivated by a childhood wish. Another interesting idea was that nothing is fabricated during a dream and that they are biologically determined, derived completely from instinctual needs and personal experiences. .
It will no doubt surprise anyone to be told that dreams are nothing other than fulfillments of wishes. According to Aristotle's accurate definition," a dream is thinking that persists in the state of sleep". The theory of dreams being wish fulfillment has been divided into two groups. Some dreams appear openly as wish fulfillment, and others in which the wish fulfillment was unrecognizable and often disguised. Others disagree and feel that dreams are nothing more than random memories that the mind sifts through. .
Then why aren't adult dreams usually straightforward wish fulfillments? Classical psychoanalytical theory postulates that emotional processes construct dreams; that dreams are instigated by a relatively infrequent, unpredictable, forbidden unconscious wish that rises during sleep.