Dream interpretation in the psychology of religion: A topic review

The earliest recorded dreams show that they were seen as part of a religiou s worldview, either as messages from the gods or as visitations by spirits and the gods themselves. The ancients made sense of dreams not as indicator s of the dreamer's psychological state, but as real encounters with the spi rit world and the sacred realm. In this article I examine how both of these perspectives on dreams, the ancient religious view and the more recent psy chological view, have been treated in the psychology of religion, based on a review of the major English-language texts in the psychology of religion since 1970 and developments in dream research during the last 25 years.