I have stated time and again in my analysis that dreams are about our emotions. Specifically, dreams reveal the underlying structure of the motivational forces that drive our waking life and choices. A question Quora magazine posed to Paul King, Director of Data Science, Computational Neuroscientist asked, "What is Dreaming?" Below is an excerpt from his answer.

The Science: Neuroscience Studies
Regarding the biological evolution of REM sleep and dreaming, emotion theorist Jaak Panksepp (1998) comments that: "People who hold dream experience in great esteem may be correctly affirming the importance of affective information that is encoded through our ancient emotional urges for the proper conduct of our waking activities... the REM system may now allow ancient emotional impulses to be integrated with the newer cognitive skills of the more recently evolved brain waking systems. This could help explain many striking attributes of REM sleep, ranging from its heavy emotional content to its apparent functions of enhancing learning and solidifying memory consolidation."

Stickgold et al (2001) propose that the emotional features of dreams "reflect an attempt, on the part of the brain, to identify and evaluate novel cortical associations in the light of emotions mediated by limbic structures activated during REM." In other words, the brain is trying to interlink our experiences of the world with our emotional drives.

So while dream content might not be our subconscious trying to send us messages, the analysis of dreams may reveal the underlying structure of the motivational forces driving our life strategy and choices.

Dreams may also allow the brain to explore hypothetical situations in some abstract way in order to refine action strategies for use in the future. The imagery of dreams may result from the brain's sense-making machinery processing signals generated by internal motivational systems, unconstrained by sensory input. In other words, dream imagery could be one part of the brain trying to make sense of the "internal test patterns" generated by another part of the brain.
End of quote

Highlite this part of his answer: So while dream content might not be our subconscious trying to send us messages, the analysis of dreams may reveal the underlying structure of the motivational forces driving our life strategy and choices.
Precisely my position.

It is from identifying the patterns that form the structures of the motivating energies a trained dream analyst like myself are able to discern. Here at the Dream Forum I am limited to referencing the outlines of these energies because I know only the age and gender of the dreamer. With more in-depth information I would be able to identify the exact experiences {from early life as well as recent} the dream is trying to communicate.

Jerry

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 67 Male Cocoa, Fl