I have been writing a book on conceptions of dreams from Homer to Freud since discovering that there is no comprehensive book about dream theory in the west. It is an opportune moment for such a book. Since the discovery of REM sleep in 1953 by Aserinsky and Kleitman, scientists have learned a good deal about the physiology of dreaming. But no one has come up with a persuasive theory of the function or significance of dreams. Consequently, a history of conceptions of dreams cannot be written as a series of approaches to and deviations from an accepted theory. An account of earlier conceptions may prove useful to scientists as well as to scholars who want to know how dreams have been understood in the past.
In the broadest terms the history of dream theory over the last three millennia is a story of secularization. Originally valued as a form of divination, dreams came to be viewed as psychological events that do not reveal the future. But it's not as simple as that. In antiquity Aristotle and Epicurus denied a divinatory function to dreams, and as late as 1899 Sante de Sanctis polemicized against scientific credence in the dream as prophecy. Over the centuries dreams have repeatedly been regarded as significant and insignificant. Focusing on Greco-Roman antiquity and the nineteenth century, the two most important periods for theories of dreaming, I am documenting and explaining the different kinds of significance attributed to dreams.
Last updated: March 20, 2009 14:49
