Everyone dreams, and many people have different interpretations of dreams. I will briefly discuss some basic facts about dreams, Sigmund Freud's theories of dream interpretations, and Raskolnikov's dreams and their significance.
Dreams are stories that a person "watches," or even takes part in, during sleep. Dream events are imaginary, but they are related to real experiences and needs in the dreamer's life. They seem real while they are taking place. Some dreams are pleasant, others are annoying, and still some are frightening. Everyone dreams, but some people never recall dreaming. Others remember only a little about a dream they had just before awakening and nothing about earlier dreams. No one recalls every dream.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician who originated psychoanalysis, developed one of the best known theories of dream interpretation. Freud suggested that dreams are fulfillment's of the dreamer's wishes, usually in disguised form. The disguise involves condensation (combining several ideas into one image), displacement (shifting a feeling from one idea or person to another), and the use of symbols to represent what cannot be pictured directly.
Raskolnikov's dreams in Crime and Punishment are symbolic. The dream he has about the peasant beating the horse is a repulsive and degrading dream. When Raskolnikov awakens, he wonders if he can actually "take and ax, split her skull open, tread in the sticky blood and hide." In the dream, we see Raskolnikov's dual nature at work. He is both the peasant who beats the horse to death and also the boy who feels great compassion for the horse.
Through these three paragraphs, I gave examples of the history of dreams, Sigmund Freud's theories of dream interpretations, and the significance of one of Raskolnikov's dreams.