Here is a link to an interesting article I found in a psychology journal.
The authors analyse ordinary people's interpretation of their own dreams. Participants from both Western and Eastern cultures believed that their dreams contained hidden meanings and the authors assert in their paper that generally, people are more likely to perceive their dreams as internally generated that waking thoughts, a necessary precursor to the theory that dreams contain meaning. The concept of 'motivated interpretation' is basically the idea that a participant will be motivated to interpret the meaning of their dream content in line with pre-existing beliefs, perceptions or values. Dream content was seen to reinforce and reflect beliefs/values of importance in the waking-life of the participant and therefore was ascribed greater significance or meaning. Dreams which were incongruent (incompatible or differentiated) with existing beliefs/values were found to be less likely to be endorsed or influential upon diurnal (waking) life. The article presents the empirical studies as well as a literature review of other scholarly work in this area of psychology and dream science.
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