Yeah I generally agree with the above... I think it's not anywhere close to as precise as we'd like it to be though.

It seems to me from everything I've experienced and everything I've heard that dreams are basically thoughts that your brain interprets and connects together.

So in the same way that your waking thoughts turn to something often if it's really weighing down on you, your dreams can too. Poeple who've lost a family member, or are nervous about school starting, that sort of thing.

But as your thoughts can wander, so can your dreams, which leads to the bizzarre stuff. And sometimes connections are made that are somewhere in between... The point being that there are definitely some psychoanalytical conclusions you can draw, but if it sounds like a stretch, it probably is.

The metaphoric stuff mentioned by Gravy though I think is good too, because emotions are thoughts, just not object-oriented. So if you're feeling afraid of something coming up in your life, in your dreams you might be afraid and thus have something frightening happen in the dream. That's just a theory though.