Thread: Why do you believe dreams mean anything specific?

I'm honestly really confused by the sheer number of people who ask what their dreams mean and appear to believe that they could actually have some kind of predictive power (like the date of one's death), or that anything specific is meant. I don't think dreams are entirely without meaning, don't get me wrong. I think only the dreamer can truly find meaning in their dream, in the same way a person finds and essentially assigns meaning to just about anything in life. It's not entirely useless for others to pitch in with their opinion, but ultimately they would just be brain storming to help give the dreamer ideas. At most, I think dreams may offer some insight into one's psychological condition, and the meaning you could derive from them revolve around this subject. In this way, a dream might be allegorical to some situation you have going on in your life in a way. Whether it truly is a result of some inner struggle or thoughts could be argued, but I would say at least half of the time, even then, the meaning you come to in how it's connected to said situation is made up. The process one goes through in determining the meaning of a dream is almost entirely fueled by confirmation bias. You could literally make up any connection you wanted about something you saw or that happened in a dream in comparison to something in real life.

Now, if this helps people get through some issue they are having, then I don't see the problem with it. Even believing what I do, I sometimes interpret my own dreams (although to be fair, my dreams are so bizarre and nonsensical most of the time that it's impossible to find meaning in them), just because it's kind of entertaining and might give me some ideas about how to handle some aspect of my life. However, more often than not, I see people requesting dream interpretations because what they dreamed was deeply disturbing or frightening to them, and they are either already have come up with a meaning they desperately want not to be true (that they are going to die on a specific date, or that they're secretly having thoughts of killing their nephew, or want to rape somebody--something typically scary that happened to them or awful that they did to somebody else and need reassurance that they aren't a bad person as a result), or they need to believe that they had such an awful experience for a good reason. When I see something like this happen, I feel as though if people didn't believe dreams have definite meanings, then they wouldn't be left thinking they were going to die soon, or that they are capable of or in anyway want to murder a child/baby. I've had dreams about killing before, even at times I've killed family members. I don't have them often, but I know whenever I have a dream like that, that I'm not secretly harboring homicidal thoughts toward people or my family. I know when I have a disturbing dream, that dreams are often completely random--the byproduct of memory consolidation and the often times bizarre meshing of the associations between the memories and other things that you experienced subconsciously throughout the day. What I mean by this is that when you see a couch, you invoke all sorts of other imagery and sensory information in your memory, but you don't acknowledge it all on a conscious level. All the details of whatever you are observing and perceiving are an amalgamation of what you're sensing and the corresponding associated memories that give it meaning, and the memories drawn upon to make these associations are likely experienced again at night when short-term memory is becoming long-term memory, only your mind doesn't filter these associations out because it isn't experiencing any sensory information that grounds your experience to reality.

So, if you are someone who believes dreams can have definite meaning, why? Please describe, in what cases, dreams have meaning and toward what. I'm sure if you believe they do, then there must be different situations or levels to it. Also, if you believe dreams have definite meaning, how can you back this statement up? Can a skeptic really ever believe something like this? It's not always possible to be scientific about things, and this is one of those things (right now anyway, if not forever). As a skeptic myself, I find the whole proposition extremely unlikely. How do you reconcile being able to have such little empirical evidence for something like this, but still believing it? This goes even a step further for some people, I know, who believe much stranger and mystic things are going on when you dream (like being in another universe/dimension/reality or that they give you access to ESP-like phenomena and stuff). If you happen to be someone like this, could you explain your reasoning for believing so too, without relying on an answer like, "well, we don't know much about this kind of stuff and it can't be disproven so blah blah, etc." Just because something can't be disproven in no way means you should believe it, and I find is one of the poorest reasons for believing in something with an utter lack of evidence supporting it.

Btw, sorry if this is technically the wrong forum for it. Since this is in general dream discussion, and it would have the most readers I want to respond to my question, I put it here. I know a lot of the site doesn't visit the Extended Discussion area, I know I didn't way back when I first signed up. As I understand it, this thread still fits here though, or at least I hope so! If it's wrong, though, I apologize.