Do Dreams Carry Messages From the Future?
Some dreams seem to 'come true'. What does science say, and why do dreams feel like prophecies?
Almost everyone has a story: something they saw in a dream happened a few days later. For most of human history, dreams were read as signs from the future. So what do we know today?
The short answer
Controlled scientific studies have not found reliable evidence that dreams foretell the future. In a sleep-lab study led by psychologist Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh, for example, dreams showed no sign of anticipating events chosen at random the next morning.
So why do some dreams seem to come true?
The same research shows something interesting: people remember the matches between a dream and a later event much better than the misses. We have several dreams every night, thousands over the years. Some of them are bound to resemble something that happens later. The thousands that don't, we forget.
The brain rehearses the future
Some researchers see dreaming as a simulation in which the brain rehearses possible scenarios. Dreaming about an exam you are anxious about, a breakup or a health worry is the brain preparing you for possibilities. When the event happens, the dream looks like a prophecy, but the mind was making a guess from clues it already had.
Jung and meaningful coincidences
Carl Jung called the moments when a dream and an outer event line up in a meaningful way "synchronicity". For Jung, these moments were less about reading the future than about noticing the link of meaning between our inner and outer worlds.
The dream's real message
Dreams don't tell the future, but they say a great deal about the present: what you fear, what you hope for, what you are preparing for. Instead of asking "will this dream come true?", asking "what is this dream telling me now?" is a far more fruitful path.