Everyone dreams. Young, old, rich poor, American or not, dreaming is a part of the human condition. Since men became capable of thinking, they began dreaming. But when they began dreaming, they also were troubled by it. Why do I dream? What do my dreams mean? These are the questions they asked. Thousands of years before the field of psychology developed, these questions were discussed and debated. They still are. In this paper, I will look at these questions and review some of the many ways in which they have been answered over the ages. A number of theories have been developed.
             According to John Suler of Rider University, Babylonians saw dreams as messages from supernatural beings (good dreams came from the gods and bad ones from demons), while the Assyrians saw dreams as omens. Bad dreams demanded action to counter them, while other dreams were seen as "advice" (Suler, 1996).
             The ancient Egyptians tried to figure out dreams in terms of prophecy. In a papyrus dream book that dates back nearly fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, certain dream symbols are explained. If you dreamed, for example, that your teeth were falling out, it meant your relatives were plotting to kill you (Psychology Notebook: Dreams, accessed at library.thinkquest.org, 2002). In the Old Testament of the ancient Hebrews, Joseph was skilled at dream interpretation and was called by Pharaoh, who had nightmares, for help. He told the ruler that his dream was a warning that seven years of famine would follow, and for this valuable warning, Joseph was made a prince of Egypt (Robertson, 2000).
             To the Greeks, dreams were good or bad. Sometimes a treatment or sleep ritual would be worked out for bad dreams such as abstaining from sex, meat or drink. Dreams often told a prophecy (Suler, 1996).
             In 350 B.C., Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher wrote two essays about dreams. The first, "On Dreams" viewed dreams as a "faculty ...