ABSTRACT
Collective writings on dreams, sleep and nightmares also reveal the inherent sense of vulnerability of the body, mind and soul in sleep. This book suggests that collective understandings of dreams were defined within three broad cultural lenses: health, prediction and spirituality. It demonstrates that private narratives and reflections on dreams do support a general knowledge of the three major frameworks, or lenses, through which dreams were understood. While modern western notions of dreams are largely limited to psychological models, early modern English writers saw dreams as caused by a wider variety of natural and supernatural, internal and external factors. Premodern ideas of dreams, unlike modern conceptualizations, saw them as providing insight, not only into our past history, but also into our present and future. Dreams were viewed as useful as part of the diagnosis of disease and health of the body as well as the mind.
