Sigmund Freud, who wrote the 1900 landmark study "The Interpretation of Dreams," believed that nightmares were an expression of people's darker, primitive side.
But some experts today view nightmares in a much more positive light. They believe these dreams are the psyche's means of unearthing, and sometimes resolving, life's conflicts.Rosalind Cartwright, director of the Sleep Disorder Service and Research Center at the Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, says both good and bad dreams offer a review of what's going on in a person's life and a rehearsal for what's coming up. But when the subject of a dream becomes too much to handle, such as a problem that seems insurmountable, the dream can turn into a nightmare.
According to Ladies' Home Journal, a Meredith magazine, people can learn to read the symbols in their dreams. For example, being chased in a nightmare represents feeling stuck or feeling threatened. Climbing can be symbolic of a desire to realize an ambition or anxiety about making a change, while falling often mirrors feelings of loss, insecurity, lack of control or fear of failure.
When people miss planes, trains and buses in dreams, it often means they feel they are not progressing in life or fear they are missing an opportunity. Taking tests represents anxiety over a tough task, and appearing nude symbolizes fear or ridicule, exposure or embarrassment.
Once the symbols in a nightmare are clear, people can learn to work through the problem that caused the dream.
The nightmare itself will go away when the person realizes it isn't harmful. Cartwright recommends a technique in which people go back to sleep and try to change the nightmare's ending.
Some sleep scientists go even one step further with an approach called lucid dreaming, or the ability to recognize a dream as it occurs. By facing the threatening image, the dream character tends to merge with the dreamer. Having dealt with the fear, the dreamer is able to banish the image.