Although Sigmund Freud suggested that dreams play out our repressed wishes–a wish that our heart makes, if you will–his theory is scientifically invalid.

According to Freud, individuals have repressed wishes that, in their raw form, are too scary for our sleeping minds to handle. This “latent content” is censored through a filter. Our dreams then depict “manifest content” that we can recall. While Freud claimed he could reverse-engineer this process and reveal our our heart’s wishes and the truth behind our dreams, this scientific theory cannot be proven correct or incorrect because it is not testable. Additionally, different psychoanalysts provide different interpretations of the same dream, pointing to the subjectivity of Freud’s “science.”

Fosshage, J. L., & Loew, C. A. (1987). Dream interpretation: a comparative study. New York: PMA Publishing corp.