We may correlate the patterns we see in a person s life to patterns we perceive in the wisdom literature, or in history. We intuitively and emotionally respond to the correspondences between the patterns in the sport of basketball and patterns of effort, competition, risk taking and skill in our own lives. I believe it is perhaps to miss the point to ask if dreams have meaning. Nothing can have meaning without reference to a corresponding pool of patterns with which to make the connection. Clearly the answer is yes.
Dreams are a wealth of metaphors and analogies that pertain to important issues in people s lives.
The clinical literature of dream interpretation is full of such data. It can t be denied. One psychologist, Morton Schatzman, declares that we can only be sure that a dream means something when it solves a problem. I believe he is stumbling onto a correlated hypothesis, partially related to a larger pattern of understanding the meaning of dreams suggest. Dreams that solve problems are merely cases where the observer can clearly recognize that there are patterns in the dream that are relevant and applicable to patterns in life for which the observer has a known, keen interest.