In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.”

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[Surely dreaming has some sort of physiological purpose. But how does that undercut the power of interpretation? Dreams aren't designed with analysis in mind – that's precisely what makes them so interesting. In a sense, dreams are the purest form of free-association. When we're not awake to censor ourselves, our expressions run rampant. Dreams can be confusing, scary, mystifying and weird, but they cannot be someone else's. They may feel foreign – they often do – and it's always useful to consider why that's so. After all, one thing's for certain: we are their authors, intentionally or not. -Ed.]

(photo: detail from The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli)