Oneirology

The birth of oneirology as a discipline is often dated to the 1950s and the discovery by Kleitman and Aserinsky of the sleep cycle and the subsequent discovery of REM sleep. However the term itself goes back much further - Freud himself used it in his classic The Interpretation of Dreams.

Oneiorology is a relatively new discipline and as such the definition is still a little clouded. It tends to be used to refer to any and all studies of dreams and dreaming. It can be usefully divided into two main fields: study of the causes of dreams and study of the content & interpretation of dreams. As such it incorporates a number of disciplines from biology to psychology.

Note that these approaches do not need to opposed to each other. It is conceivable that the meaning of dreams is related to their purpose and hence to their cause.

At the other extreme we have the activation-synthesis theory that states dreams are nothing more than random brain activity and that dream interpretation is hence pointless.