Very often dreams present patterns that correspond to the universals in a concrete situation a person is confronting in their individual life. Many problems that confront us in life are basically unsolvable. They have to be lived with, dealt with as best we can. Montague Ullman s work with dreams, where he has people brainstorm the metaphors in a dream, demonstrates just how fruitful it can be to look for patterns in dreams and how they correspond with life issues. Ullman s work is one answer, therefore, to the empirical question of how to interpret dreams.
Dreams are no different from other outputs of human life.
They have meaning no more, no less, than other areas. That is, their meaning comes from the same activity of human perception that other areas get their meaning. From the pattern recognition activity of human beings. What you can not deny is that historically speaking, empirically speaking, it is a fact that dreams have contained patterns that people have recognized as corresponding to previously unrecognized patterns in their lives, patterns which when recognized, are responded to with emotional reactions of profound significance. I would direct you to your dreams.