Sleep and Dreams We often hear people ask the question, 'What did you dream about last night?' This shows that dreaming is a very common experience. Everyone in normal health spends parts of the night dreaming. And just as there are many different types of dreams, there are a variety of dream functions. Let's look at just five. The first is the function of the experience-monitoring dream. In this, the mind reviews past experience, that is, the experience of the previous day or some event in the more distant past. Such a review is a way of learning the lesson of that experience. Often the dream has an outcome different from what really happened. It represents a more, or less, desirable result. For example, after an unsuccessful interview for a job, you may dream that you are in the same room, before the same people, but now speaking calmly and effectively. If that dream occurs before your interview, it may be of the creative type. This is another important function of the dream that helps solve problems by suggesting answers. Freud and his followers attach greatest importance to the function of the wish-fulfilling dream. According to Freud, in our dreams we satisfy desires which our circumstances or personal limitations do not allow us to achieve. For example, a boy with little pocket money may dream a lot of coins falling from the sky. Such dreams are usually very sweet, but short-lived. The fourth dream function is that which brings us to some external reality, usually by some sensory stimulus (感官刺激). For example, you dream that you are at or in a fire you start up, and find a cigarette burning in your bedside ash-tray. In this way the senses send messages to the 'sleeping' mind warning us of the need to awake in order to take some form. of action. Finally, the predictive function (预见功能) of the dream, a function people are most uncertain about. But whether or not we believe in the possibility of events being predicted in dreams, the fact is that throughout the ages men have done so. One famous example is about the birth of Buddha. It is said that, one night before Buddha was born, his mother dreamed that a white elephant entered her womb (子宫). Ten months later she gave birth to this great religious leader. The first paragraph suggests that both dreams and functions of dreams are