DREAMS
What are dreams and what do they mean?
Gao Xingjian
REM dreams – “hallucinations of the sleeping mind” – are vivid, emotional and bizzare. They are unlike daydreams, which tend to involvle the familiar details of our lives – perhaps imagining and alternative approach to something we have to do, or picturing ourselves explaining to an instructor why paper will be late, or replaying in oru minds personal encounters that we relish or regret. The dreams of REM sleep are so vidid we may confuse them with reality.
Occasionally, we may be sufficially aware during a dream to wonder whether we are, in fact, dreaming. When experiencing such LUCID DREAMS, some poeple are able to test their state of consciousness. If they can perform some absurd act, such as floating in the ait, then they know they are dreaming.
Do people dream if they are blind from birth?
Studies of blind people in France, Hungary Egypt and USA all found them dreaming of using their other senses – hearing, touching, smelling, tasting. Yet even congenitally blind people can experience visual images in dreams.
We spend six years of our life in dreams, many of which are anything but sweet. Fot bot men and women, 8 in 10 dreams are marked by negative emotions. People commonly dream repeatedly failing in an attempt to do something; of being attacked, pursued, or rejected, or of experiencing misfortune. Across the world people of all ages show an unexplanable gender difference in dream content. Women dream of males and females equally often, whereas 65 % of characters in men’s dreams are males. No one is sure why.
Why do we dream?
Dream theorists have proposed several possible explanations of why we dream. Here are some of the main theories, proposed by science:
- To satisfy our own wishes (Freud). In his land bookmark he proposed that dreams provide a psychic safety valve that discharges othewise unacceptable feelings. According to Freud, a dream’s manifest or apparent, content is censored , symbolic version of its LATENT CONTENT, which consists of unconscious drives and wishes that would be treathening if expressed directly.
- To file away memories. Theory proposes that dreams may help sift, sort and fix the day’s experiences in our memory. We have known it for some time that REM sleep facilitates memory. In experiments, people have herad unusual phrases or learned to find hidden visual images before bedtime. If awaken everytime before they entered into REM sleep, they remembered less the next morning than if awakened during other stages of sleep.
- To develop and preserve neural pathways. Dreams may also serve a physiological funtion. Tehy may be associated with providing constant stimulation to sleeping brain. This theory suits very well in the developmental point of view. Infants, whose neural networks are faster developing, spend a great of time in REM sleep.
- To make sense of neural static. Other propose that dreams erupt from neural activity that spreads upward from the brainstem. According to this theroy REM sleep triggers neural activity that evokes random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories.
- To reflect cognitive development. Some dream researchers adispute both the Freudian and activation-synthesis theories, preffering instead to see dreams as part of brain maturation and cognitive development. For example, prior to age 9, children’s dreams may seem more like a slide show and less like an active story in which the dreamer in an actor.
REM Sleep
There is one major thing all dream theorist agree on: We need REM sleep. Deprived of it by repeatedly being awakened, people return more and more quickly to the REM stage after falling back to sleep. When finnaly allowed to sleep undisturbed, they literally sleep like babies – with increased REM sleep, a phenomenon called REM REBOUND.
Other mammals also experience REM sleep and REM rebound. It occurs in mammals and not in animals such as fish, whose behavior is less influenced by learing. All of this reminds us one again of a basic lesson: BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF BEHAVIOR ARE PARTNERS, NOT COMPETITORS.
What do you dream about?
Are your dreams positive or negative most of the time?
How well do your remember your dreams?
We would love to hear some of your experiences, thoughts and opinions.
Write in the comment below!
Jonathan Swift
Author
I was always curios. The waves of euphoric exploration on the newly-discovered topics carry me deeper into the ocean of knowledge. And then i start to write. As a psychologist and enterpreneur i developed a critical view of the world which offers unlimited possibilities for improvement. Because there is too much "false" teachings and personal growth guides out there, i decided to build my own knowledge base with science proven information and recent discoveries. I invite you to create it with me. Only with helping each other and spreading love through the Universe, we will all grow and raise our frequency of existence.
