Theories attempting to explain the origin of dreams range from providing stimulation for the development of the brain to enhancing storage and reorganization. Contrary to popular belief, dreaming is not caused by eating certain foods before bedtime, nor by environmental stimuli during sleeping. Dreaming is caused by internal biological processes. Now, as in the past, the most significant controversy centers on the question of whether dreams have intentional or actual personal meaning. Many psychotherapists maintain that while the neurological impulses from the brain stem may activate the dreaming process, the content or meaningful representations in dreams are caused by nonconscious needs, wishes, desires, and everyday concerns of the dreamer. Recent research indicates that dream content reflects problems that the dreamer experiences in life, and the function of such dreams is to facilitate the emotional resolution of the problems. The most recent method was developed for use with adult populations, and involves simply asking subjects to write down the last dream they can remember having, "whether it was last night, last week, or last month"(Domhoff, 1996, p.310; Domhoff & Schneider, 1995). The subjects are also asked to write down the date and times that they recall the dreams. The survey included many sub-samples ranging from 25 all the way to 250 dreams from Hall and Van de Castle's(1966) normative sample of 500 dreams. These dreams were provided by 100 college men between the ages of 18 and 22. Samples of 100 to 125 single dreams from each subject came close to duplicating the norms. Another study of 100 most recent dreams written down by college women between the ages of 18 and 25 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the early 1990's showed the findings did not differ from the Hall and Van de Castle(1966) female norms based on 500 dream reports provided by 100 college women between 18 and 22.The methods used for the s...
