Dream purpose

List of purposes

     What you will encounter again and again as you work on dreams is the fact that the unconscious is obviously concerned with building ego-strength in most people (there are glaring exceptions, though, especially in the psychically ill). Dreams reveal new strengths, faculties and talents and help us learn how to use them. These and other reasons for dreams are summarized in the following table:
       Some purposes of dreams
  1. Share or transmit wisdom
  2. Digest emotions and feelings
  3. Give warnings and premonitions
  4. Alter and/or enlarge self-concept via added awareness, deepening
  5. Act as an alarm clock, both figuratively and/or literally
  6. Provide meaning and direction in life
  7. Supply symbols and make energy available
  8. Act as a mirror, increase self-knowledge
  9. Provide hope and healing
10. Work on and even solve problems
11. Enlarge palette of choices
12. Provide humor and lightness
13. Supply companionship and opposition
14. Prepare for future directions and/or happenings
15. Try out possible future scenarios
16. Maintain physiological homeostasis and psychic balance
17. Break with the every-day, like a small vacation
18. Reveal personal myth
19. Fill in for what is not or cannot be lived
20. Provide transcendental experiences
21.  . . . 

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