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."
Psychology of religion and dreams researching dreams is worthwhile. Some have debated that dreams are purposeless and completely random, whereas other have suggested dreams having an adaptive function that allows for positive implications. Although there isn't findings of specifically lowering negative effects, research has alluded to dreams embellished with religious themes having a positive benefit for the user. The biggest finding was related to dreams and religion included exploring this connection as a form of coping. This effect of the Western worldview of dreams and dream interpretation with religious connotations has spread as far as the churches in Nigeria, Africa. These churches believed their leaders