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Dreams have long fascinated the human race. This alternate reality, separate from the conscious world we see around us, has captured the interest of many people throughout history. In fact, mankind has been studying dreams since the invention of the written word. Perhaps the lure of dreams is that there seems to be some significance behind them. Most reject the idea that dreams are just random meaningless fragments of data. The vivid sensations that dreams create are just too powerful to ignore. The world of dreams is filled with peculiar phenomenon and unexpected events that beg our attention. Consider the following example of a dream:
I was in a fairly large square room; the room was dark…I was sitting on the floor against the wall…In …show more content…

However, this kind of thinking did not last long. A Greek philosopher in the 5th Century named Heraclitus was probably the first to suggest that dreams actually originated from within. He stated that each individual’s dreams were unique and were products of his own mind. Socrates and Plato followed where Heraclitus left off, corroborating his theory with their own research. Finally it was Aristotle who completely dispelled the notion that dreams were attempts at divine communication. His practical approach to dream research paved the way for future scholars such as Freud and Jung. Aristotle stated that dreams were most often fragments of the days events, and could sometimes provide insight into one’s personal problems. (Parker 10-15)
In 1899, more than two thousand years after Aristotle, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams and “modern dream psychology was born” (Fontana 26). Freud looked down on other methods of dream interpretation because they were too rigid. Psychologists would create lists of dream symbols along with their meaning so that they could quickly look up the meaning of a dream. Freud believed that each person associated dream symbols with different things. For example, a ship going through a storm could represent a difficult time at work for one person, but it could represent a health problem for someone else. Freud developed his own method of dream interpretation, which he called free

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