Significance of dreams

[Maia]

A subject that has always fascinated me is dreams. What are they, and do they have any meaning? I should add, though, that I don't subscribe to the sort of dream interpretation systems that are so common online, which seem completely arbitrary.

The most significant thing about dreams, I think, is their emotional signature. Many, perhaps most of my dreams, are set in places I've dreamt about before, but I usually only know this because of having had a similar emotional reaction in previous dreams. A few are based on places in the real world, but most aren't. I also, incidentally, tend to dream in cycles. I might go for a few days or weeks with no dreams at all that I remember, followed by a few days of intense ones.

[Zarathustra]

Have you tried reading Freud?