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Recurring dreams can't be random
The argument from repetition
Neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro presents the argument in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams. If neurons only fired at random, the same dream could not show up again, so a recurring dream means dreams serve some purpose or carry some meaning for the dreamer, even without any symbolism.
The opposing view
The opposing view, the activation synthesis hypothesis, treats dreams as the forebrain trying to make sense of whatever neurons happen to fire during REM sleep.
Unpleasant recurring dreams
Recurring dreams are rarely pleasant. Pleasant recurring dreams are essentially nonexistent. The best a person can hope for is a neutral one, and most are unpleasant if not straight-up bad dreams.
Where did activation synthesis come from?
Harvard psychiatrists Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley published the theory in 1977 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. It grew out of the discovery that cells in the brainstem fire in bursts during REM sleep and drive activity in the cortex above them. The pair argued that the forebrain builds a story from those signals. Hobson and colleagues later proposed a revised version called AIM.
Why are recurring dreams so often unpleasant?
Finnish researcher Antti Revonsuo proposed in 2000 the threat simulation theory, which holds that dreaming evolved partly to rehearse dangerous situations. On that view the mind runs threats over and over, so recurring dreams skew toward chases, falls, and attacks. Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle's analysis of thousands of dream reports in the 1960s found that negative emotions outnumbered positive ones.
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