Exploring Dreams: Why Do We Dream?

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Why do we dream? Many would ask. Does our dream serve a purpose to our lives? Usually we define dream as an experience that we might remember upon awaking that comes through nonphysical channels. Having life goals and wishes for the future is another way we define dream. From the Oxford English dictionary, dream is defined as a series of thoughts, images and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams depend greatly on one’s thought and imagination but there is a great possibility that they are related with reality.

If dream have a great possibility that they are related with reality; then, what is dream? Dream is a communication of our mind, body and spirit and represented in a communicative environmental state of being. Dream includes any images, thoughts and emotion that are experienced while we are sleeping. Dream can be vivid and very vague from joyful emotions to frightening imagery. Usually when we sleep at night and slip into our dream state, we feel liberated and act in a manner that we do not allow ourselves to in our daily lives. Ideas and visions can come from our dream which authors, screenwriters and poets turn into stories and artists and musicians explore dream for inspiration.

Knowing what is dream, let us explore how the concept of dream first comes about. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was considered the father of dreams. Dr. Freud’s began analyzing dream in order to understand the different aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. He believes that nothing can occur by chance. At every level of our unconscious mind, every thought is being motivated. Dr. Freud’s theories are based on the idea of repressed longing and the desires that cannot be expressed in a social setting. Dream allow...

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... our lucid dream state is similar to the preparation or training in our waking world.

Therefore, having explored what are dreams, the history of dreams, the reason for dreaming and different categories of dream, we now understand that everybody dreams despite consciously or subconsciously. In fact, we spend one-third of our lives sleeping. Dreams depend greatly on our imaginations and thoughts and it can be related to reality because this how our brain works. Different people have different dream, as every dream is unique. Psychoanalysts state that the causes of dream are the suppressed desires of a dreamer while some researchers see it as the result of subconscious thoughts and desires. Different people have given different theories about dream but the question is still unanswerable. The reasons and values behind dreams arouse curiosity to many including myself.

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