Restoring Faith in Dreaming: A Response to Kelly Bulkeley’s Big Dreams

The purpose of this paper is to respond to Bulkeley’s (2016) book Big Dreams by highlighting his significant contributions to the study of sleep and dreaming and, most importantly, to the study of psychology and religion. The bulk of this paper raises questions regarding both methodology and content to extend the conversation and provoke discussion. The paper concludes with a note of appreciation (from my own psychoanalytic perspective) to Bulkeley for rebutting the trend in scientific psychology to reject dream content as meaningless byproducts of the brain’s nocturnal consolidation of memories and for offering sound scientific evidence for the continued appreciation of the meaning—including the spiritual and religious meaning—of dreams, restoring my faith (in dreams)! © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.