Dream interpretation century the English physician and writer Sir Thomas Browne wrote a short tract upon the interpretation of dreams. Dream interpretation was taken up as part of psychoanalysis at the end of the 19th century; the perceived, "manifest" content of a dream is analyzed to reveal its "latent" meaning to the psyche of the dreamer. One of the seminal works on the subject is "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud. A paper in 2009 by Carey Morewedge and Michael Norton in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" found that most people believe that "their dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths."
Dream interpretation waking beliefs and desires. The ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia have left evidence of dream interpretation dating back to at least 3100 BC. Throughout Mesopotamian history, dreams were always held to be extremely important for divination and Mesopotamian kings paid close attention to them. Gudea, the king of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash (reigned 2144–2124 BC), rebuilt the temple of Ningirsu as the result of a dream in which he was told to do so. The standard Akkadian "Epic of Gilgamesh" contains numerous accounts of the prophetic power of dreams. First, Gilgamesh himself has two dreams foretelling the arrival of Enkidu.