Dreams
I'm at a party on a Saturday night. Everyone from the senior class is there and the few juniors that hang out with us. It is the first party of the year. All my friends are gathered in Dana Mottet's beach front house. Her parents were gone for the weekend and it was the perfect opportunity for a party. Also, her twenty-one year old brother decided to help us out in the drinking department by taking a trip to the liquor store. We all sat around thinking about how it's going to be the best year of our lives. I mean, after all, we are seniors and we rule the school. All of a sudden out of nowhere my best friend and I are out in the middle of the lake in her paddleboat. I look down into the water and I see something shiny at the bottom that keeps attracting my eye. I tried to ignore it but I couldn't, as I reach into the water to try and grab the mysterious object I get pulled in. All I remember is screaming and trying to get out of the water but I couldn't, something kept pulling me back down. After frantic screaming, everything stopped and became silent. I had drowned. The sound of my alarm clock kept going off, which woke me from my sleep. I realized that I just had a very strange dream.
Most mornings, I wake up remembering that something happened. It takes me awhile to realize what I remember was a dream. Sometimes they seem so real; I don't believe it was a dream. I have always wondered why we dream. It doesn't make much sense to me for us to think about almost real-life situations in our sleep. What is a dream? Why do we have them? How do our dreams relate to real-life?
The Webster's dictionary definition of a dream is a series of thoughts or visions during sleep. However, to begin understanding what this definition means, we must first start with a thing called rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep. This means sometime during the eight hours a person is asleep, they will spend some of the time in REM sleep, where their eyes are moving at a fast pace.
What is a dream? A dream is number of events and sensations that pass through the mind while sleeping. Sleep is not a break for your mind, but it is a state of consciousness (Turner, 2012, 1). People may lose their sensor skills when they are unconscious, yet the mind is running with full ability until the end of time. What is sleep? Sleep is a natural period in which one loses complete consciousness (Turner, 2012, 1). An average human spends one third of their life sleeping. Sleep is a basic need for the health of the human body, yet our mind does not truly rest like the rest of our body. Dreams have always been a mystery in the historical world, but it has been known dreams can be understood as events in another objective world. Dualism is
The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suggested that sleep was not, as it was thought to be, a dormant state but rather a mentally dynamic one. Your brain is, in fact, very active in this state, almost to the level at which it is when a person is awake. Yet during this active stage in which most dreams occur, the movements of the rest of the body are completely stilled. To imagine this paralysis during dreams not occurring is a frightful image, since in many cases dreams are violent and active. When the neurotransmitters that control the movement of the body do not work properly the person develops REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD).
Dreams (Chapter 3 Page 82-98) - A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.
The average person spends over one-third of their life sleeping, and over this period of time he or she can have over 1,825 dreams (Wicklinski). By definition, dreams are mental images, thoughts, or emotions that are experienced while sleeping. In the beginning, dreams were thought to be messages sent from the gods or spirit world. Researchers now have many theories explaining why people dream. Many of these theories explain that dreams can resemble an individual’s sensory experiences or even secret wishes. All people dream, but only 42% of people can recall their dreams from the night before (“Dreams”). The study of dreams is a topic that is constantly being debated by researchers for many reasons. Dreaming is important because it can impact people’s health, provide insight into what they are feeling, and reveal information about their behavior.
Many people dream, but most do not know what they mean and why. One dictionary definition says dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. But there is more to dreams than one phrase. Some studies have shown that
The first question that is going to be addressed in this paper is “Why do you dream?” There are many reasons why people dream. There are many reasons why people dream. One theory as to why people dream is that “dreams help us sort and place the day’s experiences into our memories. Deep, slow-wave REM sleep stabilizes our memories and experiences, converting them into long-term learning” (Baird p.96). Another theory is that your brain is always firing neurons; even when you are unconscious. The neurons that are being fired are the ones that are responsible for creating images and the limbic system (emotions). This results in your brain weaving these signals together. Therefore creating dreams. The last theory is that dreams play a main part in cognitive development. According to Baird “The brain activity associated with dreaming may help to develop and preserve neural pathways… The way dreams change over time also seems to indicate a developmental role.” (Baird p.97) The older you are the more your dreams change. When you are an adult your dreams t...
Dreams are series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams occur during a certain stage of sleep known as REM. Several different psychologists, including Freud and Hobson, have studied dreams. Psychologists have provided many theories as to what dreams are and the meanings behind them.
Despite the large amount of time we spend asleep, surprisingly little is actually known about sleeping and dreaming. Much has been imagined, however. Over history, sleep has been conceived as the space of the soul, as a state of absence akin to death, as a virtual or alternate reality, and more recently, as a form of (sub)consciousness in which memories are built and erased. The significance attributed to dreams has varied widely as well. The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, dream is defined by a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring involuntarily in a person’s mind during certain stages of sleep. Dreams have fascinated humans since the beginning of time. The recorded history of dream interpretation dates back to 3000-4000 B.C. with the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. They documented their dreams on clay tablets. People back then saw the dream world as an extension of reality, but that it was a more powerful realm. Furthermore, they believed that when they dream, their souls would leave their body during sleep and travel to the dream world.
Dreaming is the series of visualizations or feelings during a period of time when you are asleep. It is a form of thinking...
What is a dream? Why do we have dreams? Do dreams have deeper meaning in our lives? The answers to these questions have eluded and intrigued many psychologists throughout history and have sparked my interest as well. As an avid and vivid dreamer I have often found myself wondering what the true meanings to my dreams were. So what are dreams? “Strictly speaking, dreams are images and imagery, thoughts, sounds and voices, and subjective sensations experienced when we sleep.”1 Even after thousands of years of research, psychologists have still not come to an agreed answer on why we dream. There are as many opinions out there as there are individual dreams. Some psychologists believe dreaming is simply the minds way of distracting itself from outside information during sleep to allow people to get deep rest. Others such as Dr. Eric Hartman suggest dreams serve almost as a psychotherapy in which the brain can make connections between different emotions and thoughts in a safe protected environment. Do dreams have any direct correlation to everyday events and experiences? Are they meant to aid individuals in understanding and interpreting their world around them?
We spend one third of our lives sleeping and 15-20% of that time is spent dreaming. (1) Dreams are a sequence of images that appear involuntary to the mind of somebody who is sleeping, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events, according to the Encarta dictionary. There are many types of dreams. Lucid dreams can be the most fascinating if one can master them. In lucid dreams you realize that you are dreaming and instead of automatically waking up you stay asleep and control every aspect of your dream. Your thoughts can effortlessly paint any dreamscape and you have full mental faculties as you would if you were awake.(4) Your imagination is the limit! Another more mysterious type of dream is precognitive dreams. This is where time and space no longer seem to fit any rational logical meaning. Precognition is an ability to know and experience a future event before it ever occurs (4) Many experience this type of dream and slowly forget it over time, until it happens in real life. When it occurs in real life you automatically feel a sense of déjà vu and you notice something familiar about the s...
Over the two weeks in which we logged our dreams and sleep schedules, I made some very interesting discoveries and self-revelations. Many of these ideas come from related symbols each dream share. Before we can start to dismantle these dreams, their relations to one another and myself, allow me to tell you about each one.
All of us dream, several times at night. It is believed by some that we sleep in order that we may dream. Dreams can come true if somebody makes them true, as the saying goes, “A dream is just a dream, unless you make it come true”. Dreams provide us the actual picture of our thoughts. Dreams may tell us about any physical event which took place with us or which is going to happen with us. The dream is trying to inform the dreamer about his condition in any walk of life. Basically, we can dream about anything logical or illogical, fictious or non-fictious and reasonable or unreasonable.
Sigmund Freud once suggested that dreams are the emotions that have been repressed and the desires, wishes and thoughts the sleeping mind wants released. His suggestion is just one of many theories about why people dream. Although other concepts have been proposed, dreams are seen as vehicles of which the human mind uses to find relief and rejuvenation in during the rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep.