Dreams are immensely personal  but the problem is that dreamer, unless he is skilled in dream interpretation, cannot understand his own dreams. The dreaming experience is his own but normally it is a challenge  for his understanding. The dream emerges as enigmatic, a puzzle a problem that demands INTERPRETATIONS of various sorts to UNDERSTAND what it MEANS.  The high lighted words indicate that dealing with dreams is rather different and that a rational approach  to it  constitutes a from of science that is different from the quantitative i.e. what is now called interpretive social sciences or  simply Hermeneutic Sciences.

For us Asians this distinction is of fundamental importance for it would appear that sciences developed not only in the West  but also the East but only that  the East developed the hermeneutic sciences more than the positive sciences. Dravidian culture , represents a high water-mark of this for about the time of ancient Greeks  itself they have already to their credit a clear articulation of the methodology which is available to this day in Marapiyal, which is interestingly enough a text that comes appended to Tholkaappiyam , a text in Linguistics  that also includes an existential analysis of ordinary life also using  the living language for accessing the deeper layers of the human mind.

Dream studies, now largely conducted in USA, is emerging as a form of Hermeneutic Science  and through that introducing the hermeneutic sciences along with the positive as valid forms rational inquiry. A survey of such studies indicate numerous interesting developments that can be taken as challenges to the largely psychometric ways of studying psychology.

First of all we see that a dream is taken as something very similar to poetry, a story  i.e a TEXT of a kind and not simply  an assemblage of cognitive  material stored in memory  connected  together in random manner so that a kind of pattern emerges.  A dream as a TEXT also means that it is NOT simply a brute FACT  that can be statistically dissected and measured. Dream as a TEXT is also  means a FORMATION, something that crystallizes as if on its own beyond the regulative controls and ego interventions of the person. This is more apparent in dreaming than elsewhere: the dream is a production while our ego is put to sleep and self is made actionless,  the agentivity arrested thorough sleep and sleep-like processes. The self is made simply a WITNESS of something that works withoin and over which he has no control.  It is for this reason that  dreams, myths and so forth are called AGAMAM, the word coming from the Ta. aak-: to make , produce etc. and  because of  which the psychology that studies them is called  Agamic Psychology.  For this reason too they becomes a distinct  pirmaaNa, a RELIABLE way of coming to know TRUTHS, something that was denied and refused by the ancient Buddhist logicians of South India but who lost the battle in the end and something similar that is done currently by the positivistic West.

The  Agama piramaaNa  is accepting  hermeneutic sciences along with the positive as  RELIABLE methods for apprehending truths  the chief elements of which  are NOT experimental replication and verification but rather interpretive dialogues in which AGREEMENT is reached.

When a person has a dream he already interpretes in his own way . This is self-interpretation called thanporuttu anumaanam. However when uncertainties  prevail he consults another who may be more experienced in such matters. He relates the dream to him and gets possibly another interoperation and in this way both enter into an INTERPRETIVE DIALOGUE. And as it proceeds there comes a point where the dreamer feels that's it! That's the meaning! At this point the purpose of the dialogue is accomplished and it comes to a natural close.  In between there is providing a Ethu, reasons for the interpretation and eduththukAddu, illustrative examples to JUSTIFY the interpretations.  Attaining AGREEMENT is both having the same understanding (oththak kaatchi)  and  at that what was initially  only a possibility(uththeesam) becomes a nikamanam, an established conclusion.  In the further studies by the ancient Tamils of this phenomena they discovered the presence of anmaciRsakthi, the flow of LUMENS that drives away doubts and uncertainties through providing a CLARITY that induces subjective certainty and agreement. This clarity also makes them feel that UNDERSTANDING reached is OBJECTIVELY TRUE for at least TWO different individuals SEE the SAME WAY .

Just one more thing: attainments of  such clarifying LUMENS is not  just cognitively important, it is also very essential for mental and physical  HEALTH, a notion central  to Siddha Medical System which is emerging now as a powerful alternative to modern medicine.

Those who are interested for deeper presentations of these views can get them in  Dravidian Philosophy Campus(https://members.tripod.com/loga/tindex.htm) under " Hermeneutical Studies"