At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud suggested dreams were a window into our unconscious minds, wishes that we held while we were awake and expressed while we were asleep. Since then, we’ve learned how to study dreams and even pinpoint when a sleeping person might be dreaming. But there are still unanswered questions about why we have them, what they symbolize, and how they can give insight into our lived realities.
WIRED asked psychotherapist David Billington, MA from The Dream Research Institute and co-author of The Neural Correlates of Dreaming, Dr Francesca Siclari, what are dreams and what, if anything, do they mean?