upar'oh cholem - and Pharaoh was dreaming

The Torah writes upar'oh cholem "and Pharaoh was dreaming" instead of writing "and Pharaoh the King of Egypt was dreaming." This was an allusion to the future, i.e. that the King of Egypt would be brought down by water, that his fate would be linked to the river Nile.  This river was to be the beginning of the ultimate demise of the Egyptian Empire as the foremost Empire of its period at the time of the Exodus of the Yisraelim. 

This is the reason why throughout this Parsha Pharaoh is never accorded his title as "the King of Egypt."  The failure of the Torah to mention the name "Pharaoh King of Egypt," is a compliment to Yosef.  The only time Pharaoh's title is mentioned is when Yosef is described as standing in front of this ruler in 41:26 as in that verse mention of Pharaoh's title further enhances the phenomenal rise to power by Yosef.  It underscores that Yosef's extraordinary attributes were responsible for Pharaoh retaining his position of power.  Had it not been for Yosef and the part he played in strengthening the political power of Pharaoh during the years of famine, his decline would have set in much sooner.

The entire land of Egypt, nay even the whole earth, would have been a loser hand it not been for the advice proffered by Yosef how to cope with the impending sevn years of drought.  You should appreciate that dreams are caused by one or several of three factors:

1) because of the food a person consumes prior to going to sleep
2) because of certain thoughts which he entertained before dropping off to sleep
3) in order to reinforce and provide encouragement to a person's emotional balance

The food a person consumes produces a sense of haughtiness and results in some kind of vapor rising to a person's brain.  Dreams which are engendered through this phenomenon are to be totally disregarded; they do not contain any message to the person who drams them. 

When a dream is the continuation, albeit in his subconscious, of thoughts he had entertained on an ongoing basis priori to dropping off to sleep, such dreams are the type which were dreamt by Nevuchadnetzar as mentioned by Dani'el 2:29 when he said to the King that his thoughts came to him while he was contemplating the future.  See he had done so, G-d used this as the appropriate time to reveal some of the future to the King in his dream.

Finally, the third cause of a dream.  This is the kind of dream to which it always pays to pay attention as it is a reflection of the dreamer's personality.  Dreams which are the result of a person's imagination draw images for him during his sleep of matters which had already been the subject of his thinking and planning during his waking hours, matters which had already coalesced in his planning and thinking.  During sleep, when a person's emotions are not interfering with his thought-processes, the factors which prompted him to pursue a certain course of action while he was fully awake are reinforced and engraved in his imagination.  Such dreams are not the result of wishful thinking, but are in the nature of a minor prophetic vision.  This is what the Sages had in mind when they said (Berachot 57) that a dream is 1/60th prophecy. These kinds of prophecies are granted to young children and feeble minded persons (Bava Batra 12) precisely because their minds have not yet been filled with all kinds of images during their waking hours which would have left an impression on their minds even while they were asleep and as a result of which it would be impossible to tell whether such dreams are inspirational or a continuation of what they thought while awake.  Dreams of such a nature are granted both to the righteous and to the wicked; they are not due to the dreamer having been immersed in thoughts of such a nature previously; they are not self-induced.  G-d wanted to let Pharaoh have such a dream in order to frustrate his advisors and professional dream-interpreters in order to elevate Yosef to the position of viceroy of Egypt, i.e. King, except in name.